ce he redeemed several of them
from foreign captivity, and brought them back to their homes. It is
certain that no measure simply and exclusively prospective would have
sufficed for the emergency. There was an absolute necessity for
overruling all that class of preexisting rights which had produced so
violent a social fever. While, therefore, to this extent, the
Seisachtheia cannot be acquitted of injustice, we may confidently affirm
that the injustice inflicted was an indispensable price paid for the
maintenance of the peace of society, and for the final abrogation of a
disastrous system as regarded insolvents. And the feeling as well as the
legislation universal in the modern European world, by interdicting
beforehand all contracts for selling a man's person or that of his
children into slavery, goes far to sanction practically the Solonian
repudiation.

One thing is never to be forgotten in regard to this measure, combined
with the concurrent amendments introduced by Solon in the law--it
settled finally the question to which it referred. Never again do we
hear of the law of debtor and creditor as disturbing Athenian
tranquillity. The general sentiment which grew up at Athens, under the
Solonian money-law and under the democratical government, was one of
high respect for the sanctity of contracts. Not only was there never any
demand in the Athenian democracy for new tables or a depreciation of the
money standard, but a formal abnegation of any such projects was
inserted in the solemn oath taken annually by the numerous Dicasts, who
formed the popular judicial body called Heliaea or the Heliastic jurors:
the same oath which pledged them to uphold the democratical
constitution, also bound them to repudiate all proposals either for an
abrogation of debts or for a redivision of the lands. There can be
little doubt that under the Solonian law, which enabled the creditor to
seize the property of his debtor, but gave him no power over the person,
the system of money-lending assumed a more beneficial character. The old
noxious contracts, mere snares for the liberty of a poor freeman and his
children, disappeared, and loans of money took their place, founded on
the property and prospective earnings of the debtor, which were in the
main useful to both parties, and therefore maintained their place in the
moral sentiment of the public. And though Solon had found himself
compelled to rescind all the mortgages on land subsisting in