ION FOR MURDER.

It seems strange to those who are accustomed to the severity of penal
laws, which in most instances inflict punishment exceeding by many
degrees the measure of the offence, how a society can exist in which the
greatest of all crimes is, agreeably to established custom, expiated by
the payment of a certain sum of money; a sum not proportioned to the rank
and ability of the murderer, nor to the premeditation, or other
aggravating circumstances of the fact, but regulated only by the quality
of the person murdered. The practice had doubtless its source in the
imbecility of government, which, being unable to enforce the law of
retaliation, the most obvious rule of punishment, had recourse to a
milder scheme of retribution as being preferable to absolute indemnity.
The latter it was competent to carry into execution because the guilty
persons readily submit to a penalty which effectually relieves them from
the burden of anxiety for the consequences of their action. Instances
occur in the history of all states, particularly those which suffer from
internal weakness, of iniquities going unpunished, owing to the rigour of
the pains denounced against them by the law, which defeats its own
purpose. The original mode of avenging a murder was probably by the arm
of the person nearest in consanguinity, or friendship, to the deceased;
but this was evidently destructive of the public tranquillity, because
thereby the wrong became progressive, each act of satisfaction, or
justice, as it was called, being the source of a new revenge, till the
feud became general in the community; and some method would naturally be
suggested to put a stop to such confusion. The most direct step is to
vest in the magistrate or the law the rights of the injured party, and to
arm them with a vindictive power; which principle the policy of more
civilized societies has refined to that of making examples in terrorem,
with a view of preventing future, not of revenging past crimes. But this
requires a firmness of authority to which the Sumatran governments are
strangers. They are without coercive power, and the submission of the
people is little other than voluntary; especially of the men of
influence, who are held in subjection rather by the sense of general
utility planted in the breast of mankind, attachment to their family and
connexions, and veneration for the spot in which their ancestors were
interred, than by the apprehension of any superi