lynch law

70:10.10Sui­cide was a com­mon mode of re­tal­i­a­tion. If one were un­able to avenge him­self in life, he died en­ter­tain­ing the be­lief that, as a ghost, he could re­turn and visit wrath upon his en­emy. And since this be­lief was very gen­eral, the threat of sui­cide on an en­emy’s doorstep was usu­ally suf­fi­cient to bring him to terms. Prim­i­tive man did not hold life very dear; sui­cide over tri­fles was com­mon, but the teach­ings of the Dala­ma­tians greatly less­ened this cus­tom, while in more re­cent times leisure, com­forts, re­li­gion, and phi­los­o­phy have united to make life sweeter and more de­sir­able. Hunger strikes are, how­ever, a mod­ern ana­logue of this old-time method of re­tal­i­a­tion.

70:10.11One of the ear­li­est for­mu­la­tions of ad­vanced tribal law had to do with the tak­ing over of the blood feud as a tribal af­fair. But strange to re­late, even then a man could kill his wife with­out pun­ish­ment pro­vided he had fully paid for her. The Es­ki­mos of to­day, how­ever, still leave the penalty for a crime, even for mur­der, to be de­creed and ad­min­is­tered by the fam­ily wronged.

70:10.12An­other ad­vance was the im­po­si­tion of fines for taboo vi­o­la­tions, the pro­vi­sion of penal­ties. These fines con­sti­tuted the first pub­lic rev­enue. The prac­tice of pay­ing “blood money” also came into vogue as a sub­sti­tute for blood vengeance. Such dam­ages were usu­ally paid in women or cat­tle; it was a long time be­fore ac­tual fines, mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion, were as­sessed as pun­ish­ment for crime. And since the idea of pun­ish­ment was es­sen­tially com­pen­sa­tion, ev­ery­thing, in­clud­ing hu­man life, even­tu­ally came to have a price which could be paid as dam­ages. The He­brews were the first to abol­ish the prac­tice of pay­ing blood money. Moses taught that they should “take no sat­is­fac­tion for the life of a mur­derer, who is guilty of death; he shall surely be put to death.”

70:10.13Jus­tice was thus first meted out by the fam­ily, then by the clan, and later on by the tribe. The ad­min­is­tra­tion of true jus­tice dates from the tak­ing of re­venge from pri­vate and kin groups and lodg­ing it in the hands of the so­cial group, the state.

70:10.14Pun­ish­ment by burn­ing alive was once a com­mon prac­tice. It was rec­og­nized by many an­cient rulers, in­clud­ing Ham­murabi and Moses, the lat­ter di­rect­ing that many crimes, par­tic­u­larly those of a grave sex na­ture, should be pun­ished by burn­ing at the stake. If “the daugh­ter of a priest” or other lead­ing cit­i­zen turned to pub­lic pros­ti­tu­tion, it was the He­brew cus­tom to “burn her with fire.”

70:10.15Trea­son—the “sell­ing out” or be­trayal of one’s tribal as­so­ciates—was the first cap­i­tal crime. Cat­tle steal­ing was uni­ver­sally pun­ished by sum­mary death, and even re­cently horse steal­ing has been sim­i­larly pun­ished. But as time passed, it was learned that the sever­ity of the pun­ish­ment was not so valu­able a de­ter­rent to crime as was its cer­tainty and swift­ness.