The instinct of retaliation throbs in all men, and vengeance swift and bloody would be sought for, which, where the kindred ties were close and strong, might spread a feud through villages and clans, such that the very children might be born devoted to the duty of a family revenge. The Teutonic nations, like the free peoples they were, always assumed that for a crime to have been committed, an individual must have suffered injury.[9] And they conceived the aggrieved plaintiff as no cowed weakling (or he would not have counted), but as a fighting freeman with spear and shield, who would repay a wrong with interest, and whom, if slain, his kinsmen would avenge. Thus the placation[10] of the injured party was the objective of the oldest laws. Allowance was made for human feelings[11] and impulses. Some ancient codes[12] permitted him like for like; an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, in the sense of so much, and no more.[13] But the Teutonic laws offered him compensation,[14] and, when it was possible, compelled him to accept it.[15] Thus crimes were met by restitution, not by punishment.[16] Every sort of injury which one freeman could do to another was first of all atonable by bōt (a money compensation paid to the injured man or his relations).[17] What this fine was depended firstly upon the nature and extent of the damage done, and secondly upon the rank and importance of the person injured.[18] For every man had his class and value; and every form of aggression against a freeman, from a wound which killed him outright to a blow which deprived him of a single tooth,[19] as well as the theft of anything he possessed, had its appointed fine according to his wer.[20] The tariffs varied with the different tribes,[21] but the main principle—of compensation—extends through all. In Mercia the wer-gild of a king was fixed at 7200 shillings or 120 Mercian pounds of silver,[22] to which great sum was added the cynebot of a similar amount which was payable to his people.[23] The wer-gild of a thane (_i.e._ county magnate) came to 1200 shillings, that of a ceorl (labourer) was 200 shillings.[24] These murder-fines, however, were much heavier than they look;[25] those of the kings,[26] numerous as they were, would in most cases have been hopelessly unpayable by private people, and those of the thanes by humble families. Even the wer-gild of the ceorl, or labourer, which was 200 scillings, or about four pounds, was not inconsiderable when we remember that in Æthelstan’s time one scilling would buy a sheep, and six scillings (or thirty pence)[27] an ox—the cost would be the price of a small herd.[28] So that frequently the man-fines[29] were never paid, and then we perceive that the wise compensation system of the codes arose more out of the fear of the vendetta than from humane principles;[30] if they were not paid, vengeance would be let loose.