than that involving the forfeiture of freedom. Informers, another institution of Byzantine treachery and deceit, were encouraged, and, where they were not participants in illegal acts, were substantially rewarded for their suspicious and ignominious services. The recognition of malice prepense, and criminal intent, especially in cases of homicide, reveals a just perception of the responsibility attending the commission of crime, rare, indeed, among nations just emerging from barbarism, and quite at variance with other provisions asserting the existence of witchcraft, charms, and incantations. Under the Visigothic polity, a crime is expressly declared to die with its author, where he underwent a capital penalty; no blame or reproach attached to his family or his posterity, where they were not implicated in his guilt; and the sweeping and unjust law of attainder, which confiscated the property, and branded the descendants of an offender with infamy, for centuries in force in England, was unknown to the more equitable and indulgent system of the Visigoths. We are ignorant of the details of the procedure followed by the Visigothic tribunals. They had, however, their summonses and other writs of various kinds, their pleadings, arguments, depositions, appraisements, judicial opinions both oral and written, appeals and executions. The proceedings were conducted with due solemnity; the most assiduous care was exercised to insure the integrity of the magistrate; the rules of propriety were strictly enforced; exhibitions of contempt were punished with exemplary severity; and even a person of the highest rank, if guilty of marked disrespect to the judge, or participating in any unseemly demonstration, was unceremoniously ejected by the bailiffs. By the enforcement of such measures, the courts were not only invested with a proper dignity and importance, but their impartiality was established and secured; and all, even including the people of the lower classes, came to regard these tribunals as fountains of equity, and the protection and mainstay of their liberties. They were almost continually open; the judges had but few hours of rest or recreation; they were made responsible, in both person and property, for a proper determination of the causes brought before them; their remuneration was fixed by law, and was independent even of royal favor; and the crimes of oppression and bribery, when committed by a magistrate, were made the subject of some of the most savage enactments in the _Forum Judicum_, including degradation from office, forfeiture of property, scourging, decalvation, exile, slavery, and death.