among the nations of the world in this respect, Polybius bears most striking and ample testimony, as we have already seen; whilst their miserably degraded and fallen character is painfully forced upon our notice by their historians as well as their poets. Livy, when recording the attempt of the tribunes to insnare the people into such an interpretation of the oath which they had sworn to Cincinnatus, as would involve the guilt of equivocation and subterfuge, accounts for the failure of the attempt, by observing, "that the neglect of the gods which prevailed in his age had not, in those earlier days, reached Rome; nor did every one then, by their subtle interpretation of an oath, make it and the laws bend to their purpose; but, on the contrary, all shaped their own moral conduct by their oath and the laws*;" whilst Juvenal, (every fair deduction being made from his representation, as an overcharged, highly-coloured statement of the vices and crimes which he had undertaken to lash with the utmost severity of his severe pen,) still places the moral and religious condition of his contemporaries in so revolting a light, that we would gladly turn our eyes from them. But perhaps our duty requires us to look steadfastly at the object, and trace the evil to its origin; and then inquire, whether similar causes have not been in operation among us; whether they are not still working the

* Liv. iii., 20.

same melancholy results; and whether we have any control over them, to arrest their progress, and diminish the mischief they may be causing.

Before leaving this brief review of the subject of perjury, as far as relates to the parts of the ancient world with which we are best enabled to become acquainted, I cannot help referring to the testimony borne by Xenophon to a similar progress of degeneracy in Persia. After painting in bright colours the high sense of honour, and the most religious observance of an oath which characterized that nation in the time of Cyrus, and which induced all people, without any suspicion or fear, to trust their property and their persons to them, upon the mere pledge of their oath, that writer laments that in his day no one could place any confidence at all in them. The rulers set the example of injustice and perjury, and the people were not long in following it; for, as Xenophon justly observes, such as the rulers of a country are, such, in general, will also be the people.

CHAPTER XIV.

PERJURY (CONTINUED).

GERMANY.

THE laws of ancient Germany, must ever supply an interesting subject of inquiry to us Englishmen, inasmuch as many of our institutions may easily be traced to them as their origin. It is, I believe, often difficult to ascertain precisely, what was the ancient law, and what was introduced by Charlemagne, or other monarchs, by positive enactment. In many cases, the old law was incorporated in the new enactment, with more or less of modification and change. Still there is much recorded of the ancient unwritten law of various states. On the subject of perjury, the following particulars are, as I believe, gleaned from the best authorities.

In the earliest times, a witness who injured a party by false-swearing, was punished by such damages as were an equivalent to the injury sustained. If the offender was not able to pay, he became the slave of the party whom he had wronged. In either case, he was never afterwards

*Heineccius, Elementa Juris Germanici, lib: ii., tit. 27.

allowed to enter a court of justice as a witness. And the suborner of perjury in such a case, was condemned to a hundred lashes, to have his head shaven (decalvari), and to be branded.

The law of the Visigoths, provided that perjury should be visited by confiscation of goods, amputation of the hand, by "the shaven head,” and Scourging.

By the law of the ancient Burgundians, whoever were the witnesses of one who consented to the wager of battle, should he fall, they as well as any other person who was proved to have instigated them, were fined each three hundred shillings, lest the crime of many offenders might be supposed expiable by the death of one; and their guilt of perjury was considered as proved by the death of the friend whose cause they had sworn to be just.

By the Salic law, a perjured man was only subject to a fine of fifteen shillings; and the prosecutor on an unfounded charge of perjury was visited by the same fine.

In the majority of the States north of the Rhine, a distinction prevailed between false-swearing knowingly, and false-swearing ignorantly. In the former case, it was a capital offence; in the latter,

* This punishment of having the head shorn was by no means confined to perjury. Immediately after a culprit was condemned to the galleys, he suffered this indignity. It continued to be a mark of infamy in Italy, I believe, till the French invasion at the end of the last century.

the juror was to lose his hand or redeem it. Probably, the punishment, in the latter case, was for carelessness in so solemn an act: otherwise, we can scarcely see the reasonableness of any punishment whatever.

In one state Louis the Pious enacted, that when two witnesses on oath contradicted each other*, they should both fight it out with shield and club; that the vanquished should lose his hand, and that the partners in his crime should be compelled to redeem theirs. The credit of a witness was thus made to depend upon his strength and skill in single fight.

The ancient law of Germany was, perhaps, strictly speaking, that the perjurer should lose his thumb. This was changed by Charlemagne (to whom the German law-writers ascribe the attribute of Divine vengeance, calling his enactments the offspring of the Nemesis Carolina) into the loss of the two fingers, because, after the introduction of Christianity, the juror either lifted up his two fingers, or laid them on the Gospels†.

*Heinec: 317.

By various councils and decrees of the Church in former days, enactments of punishments and penances of various kinds have been made against perjury, the good effects of some of which may well be doubted. In one Council it was enacted, that any Clerk convicted of perjury should be debarred from the communion for two years. In another, that whoever should entice a man to commit perjury, should be sentenced to excommunication for life; whilst the per