entire property of an impenitent heretic, a rule which was justified on the ground that his crime is so great that something of his impurity falls upon all related to him.[130] The Pope Alexander IV. also excluded the descendants of an heretic to the second generation from all offices in the Church.[131] Owing to religious influence, illegitimate children were not only deprived of the title to inheritance, but they were treated by some law-books as almost rightless beings, on a par with robbers and thieves.[132] If a person committed suicide, his goods were confiscated, and, according to a French mediæval law, his wife was besides deprived of her own private property.[133] Even in the latter half of the eighteenth century, in France, in the case of an attempt made against the life of the king, the whole family of the criminal was banished.[134] Nay, in various European countries, up to quite recent times--in England till 1870--forfeiture of property has been the punishment prescribed for certain crimes, including suicide;[135] which means, if not actually the imposition of penalties on the survivors in a case where the culprit himself is out of reach, at least a gross disregard of their ordinary rights of property. It is hardly necessary to point out how often, in the very society in which we live, "social punishments" are inflicted upon children for their father's wrongs. [Footnote 119: Douglas, _Society in China_, p. 71 _sq._ _Ta Tsing Leu Lee_, sec. ccliv. p. 270.] [Footnote 120: Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_, ii. 459.] [Footnote 121: Meursius, _Themis Attica_, ii. 2, in Gronovius, _Thesaurus Graecarum Antiquitatum_, v. 1968.] [Footnote 122: Aristotle, _De republica Atheniensium_ 1. _Cf._ _ibid._ 20.] [Footnote 123: Curtius Rufus, _De gestis Alexandri Magni_, vi. 11. 20.] [Footnote 124: Dionysius of Halicarnassus, _Antiquitates Romanae_, viii. 80.] [Footnote 125: _Ibid._ viii. 80.] [Footnote 126: _Codex Iustinianus_, ix. 47. 22.] [Footnote 127: _Ibid._ ix. 8. 5.] [Footnote 128: Laws of Cnut, ii. 77. _Cf._ Lappenberg, _History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings_, ii. 414; Wilda, _op. cit._ p. 906.] [Footnote 129: _Leges Edwardi Confessoris_, 19.] [Footnote 130: Lecky, _History of Rationalism in Europe_, ii. 36, n. 1. Eicken, _Geschichte und System der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung_, p. 572 _sq._ Paramo, _De origine et progressu Sancti Inquisitionis_ p. 587 _sq._] [Footnote 131: Eicken, _op. cit._ p. 573.] [Footnote 132: _Ibid._ p. 573.] [Footnote 133: Du Boys, _Histoire du droit criminel des peuples modernes_, ii. 236.] [Footnote 134: Hertz, _Voltaire und die französische Strafrechtspflege im achtzehnten Jahrhundert_, p. 27.] [Footnote 135: Stephen, _History of the Criminal Law of England_, i. 487 _sq._; iii. 105.]