state. In the feudal
system, however, it is not the state which guarantees, secures, and
defends the rights of the individual. Whoever claims protection and
justice is referred to his immediate feudal superior, to whom alone, and
not to the state, as a whole, he owes duty. The state, as a moral
person--as a society--is entirely in the background.

It is one of the rarest phenomena which present themselves in the
Christian laws of the Orient, that in connection with this state-life
based upon pure private right, the modern notion of society should have
had its rise. One of the first appearances of change was in the criminal
law of the assizes. Not that this rose above the spirit of the times,
for it was barbarous in the extreme, impregnated throughout with the
idea of literal retaliation--for instance, whoever secretly buried a
dead body, must be buried alive--and again, it recognized scarcely any
punishment but death and the most horrid mutilations, such as cutting
off of nose, ears, tongue, hands, etc., and cannot, with all the
palliations arising from the necessities of the Crusaders, be regarded
as an improvement upon the preceding.

But among the genuine products of the middle ages, suddenly arose a
principle which has become the basis of modern criminal law, though it
won its first recognition, and that with difficulty, centuries later.

Punishment inflicted upon the guilty was at that time universally
regarded as an atonement due to the injured person, but the assizes
declare: 'Punishment is decreed, not in the interests of the injured,
but in those of the entire state.'

In carrying out this principle, the sufferer from theft, when he might
have taken the thief and voluntarily let him go, was punished by
forfeiture of body and estate to the feudal lord, and the assizes
declare that 'when no one in case of murder appears to make complaint,
the king, or the ruler of the land, or the lady of the city where the
dead was found, shall do so, for the blood of the slain cries to
heaven.'

As before intimated, there are two grand divisions of the assizes. Those
of the high court contain a complete system of feudal law, of which
indeed a fuller view could scarcely be found than the one above named by
John of Ibelin. The feudal law of the Orient was like that of France of
that day, though peculiarities are everywhere to be met with as the
result of the constant state of siege in which Jerusalem was involved;
and hence