o
allowed none of their members to marry with persons born out of the pale
of their own order. The child of a patrician and a plebeian, or of a
patrician and a client, was not considered as born in lawful wedlock;
and however proud the blood which it derived from one parent, the child
sank to the condition of the parent of lower rank. This was expressed in
Roman language by saying, that there was no "Right of Connubium" between
patricians and any inferior classes of men. Nothing can be more
impolitic than such restrictions; nothing more hurtful even to those who
count it their privilege. In all exclusive or oligarchical,_pales_,
families become extinct, and the breed decays both in bodily strength
and mental vigor. Happily for Rome, the patricians were unable long to
maintain themselves as a separate caste.

Yet the plebeians might long have submitted to this state of social and
political inferiority, had not their personal distress and the severe
laws of Rome driven them to seek relief by claiming to be recognized as
members of the body politic.

The severe laws of which we speak were those of debtor and creditor. If
a Roman borrowed money, he was expected to enter into a contract with
his creditor to pay the debt by a certain day; and if on that day he was
unable to discharge his obligation, he was summoned before the patrician
judge, who was authorized by the law to assign the defaulter as a bonds
man to his creditor--that is, the debtor was obliged to pay by his own
labor the debt which he was unable to pay in money. Or if a man incurred
a debt without such formal contract, the rule was still more imperious,
for in that case the law itself fixed the day of payment; and if after a
lapse of thirty days from that date the debt was not discharged, the
creditor was empowered to arrest the person of his debtor, to load him
with chains, and feed him on bread and water for another thirty days;
and then, if the money still remained unpaid, he might put him to death,
or sell him as a slave to the highest bidder; or, if there were several
creditors, they might hew his body in pieces and divide it. And in this
last case the law provided with scrupulous providence against the
evasion by which the Merchant of Venice escaped the cruelty of the Jew;
for the Roman law said that "whether a man cut more or less [than his
due], he should incur no penalty." These atrocious provisions, however,
defeated their own object, for there was n