THE WAGER OF LAW. CHAPTER I. RESPONSIBILITY OF THE KINDRED. The conception of crime as a wrong committed against society is too abstract to find expression in the institutions of uncivilized communities. The slayer or the spoiler is an enemy, not of his fellows in general, but only of the sufferer or of his kindred; and if society can provide means for the wronged to exact reparation, it has done its duty to the utmost, and has, indeed, made a notable advance on the path that leads from barbarism to civilization. How recent has been our progress beyond this stage of development is illustrated in the provisions of a code granted so lately as 1231 by the Abbey of St. Bertin to the town of Arques. By these laws, when a man was convicted of intentional homicide, he was handed over to the family of the murdered person, to be slain by them in turn.[1] It still was vengeance, and not justice, that was to be satisfied. In early times, therefore, the wrong-doer owed no satisfaction to the law or to the state, but only to the injured party. That injured party, moreover, was not a mere individual. All the races of the great Aryan branch of mankind have developed through a common plan of organization, in which each family—sometimes merely the circle of near kindred, at others enlarged into a _gens_ or sept—was a unit with respect to the other similar aggregations in the tribe or nation, presenting, with respect to personal rights, features analogous to their communal holding of land.[2] Within these units, as a general rule, each individual was personally answerable for all, and all were answerable for each. A characteristic incident of this system was the _wer-gild_ or blood-money, through which offences were condoned and the aggrieved were satisfied by a payment made, when the crime was homicide, to the kindred of the slain, and generally contributed by the kindred of the slayer.