While we are comparing the laws as to assaults and their penalties, we may pause to note one conspicuous difference between the legislations. The Babylonian lawgiver made a considerable allowance for class distinctions. His was eminently class legislation. Some at once feel that this fact places his law on a lower level than the law of God. Such is a grotesque misapprehension. In Babylonia there was what we have not yet attained nor can do until the State bears all law expenses and gives a poor man justice free of cost. There was one and the same law for both rich and poor. But the aristocrat was treated differently from the commoner. In the eyes of some this is a far worse crime than favouring the rich against the poor, which is the vice of all democracy. But Hammurabi was in this much finer than we might expect, for he treated the aristocrat more severely in every respect than the man of humble birth. I do not attempt to defend that method, but it does need a little explanation. The facts are these, the aristocrat in Babylonia took a very high view of his personal dignity as one of the conquering race. On his continued support and loyalty the safety of the throne, and consequently the welfare of all Babylonia, depended. The commercial-minded Babylonians, rich or poor, like any other commercial group in the history of the world, could never defend for long even their own money-bags, and for all their industry, brains, and wealth could only pay for protection so long as the pay they were willing to offer exceeded the spoil their mercenaries could wring from them. The aristocrat was actually of a lower civilization, as conquerors were always apt to be, but he held the land by force of arms. Hammurabi was as dependent on his noble Amorites as William the Conqueror was on his Normans. He held them to his allegiance in practically the same feudal manner as did William and his successors hold the Barons. Now the aristocratic _amêlu_ or patrician of Babylonia was very sensitive to a personal injury. He would accept no compensation for a blow as might a commercial plebeian. The exact retaliation ’eye for eye, tooth for tooth, limb for limb’ was his sole satisfaction. The _mushkênu_ or commoner had to be content with a money payment. So far for the contemporary public opinion. We say that the proud patrician was conservative of a more primitive type of law, which we find to be that of a nomad Semitic folk, the Bedawin Arabs, still. So far as the Hebrew clung to the same law we discern aristocratic views with a lower type of civilization.