It is a principle of the Chinese law that “all persons who kill or wound others purely by accident, shall be permitted to redeem themselves from the punishment of killing or wounding in an affray, by the payment in each case of a fine to the family of the person deceased or wounded.”[51] But there are exceptions to this rule. Any person who kills his father, mother, paternal grandfather or grandmother, and any wife who kills her husband’s father, mother, paternal grandfather or grandmother, “purely by accident, shall still be punished with 100 blows and perpetual banishment to the distance of 3,000 lee. In the case of wounding purely by accident, the persons convicted thereof shall be punished with 100 blows and three years’ banishment: in these cases, moreover, the parties shall not be permitted to redeem themselves from punishment by the payment of a fine, as usual in the ordinary cases of accident.”[52] Again, slaves who accidentally kill their masters, “shall suffer death, by being strangled at the usual period.”[53] It is also a characteristic provision of the Chinese law that an act of grace is necessary for relieving all those from punishment who have offended accidentally and inadvertently.[54]
[51] Ta Tsing Leu Lee, sec. ccxcii. p. 314.
[52] Ibid. sec. cccxix. p. 347. Cf. ibid. sec. ccxcii. p. 314.
[53] Ibid. sec. cccxiv. p. 338.
[54] Ibid. sec. xvi. p. 18.
It is said in the Laws of Ḫammurabi:—“If a man has struck a man in a quarrel, and has caused him a wound, that man shall swear ‘I did not strike him knowing’ and shall answer for the doctor. If he has died of his blows, he shall swear, and if he be of gentle birth he shall pay half a mina of silver. If he be the son of a poor man, he shall pay one-third of a mina of silver.”[55]
[55] Laws of Ḫammurabi, 206 sqq.
It has been observed that the purpose of the Hebrew law of sanctuary was not merely to protect the involuntary manslayer from blood-revenge, but at the same time to punish him and compel him to expiate the blood he has shed.[56] If he left the city of refuge before the death of the high-priest, the avenger of blood might kill him without incurring blood-guiltiness; and he was not permitted to purchase an earlier return to his possession with a money ransom.[57]
[56] Goitein, Das Vergeltungsprincip im biblischen und talmudischen Strafrecht, p. 25 sq. Keil, Manual of Biblical Archæology, ii. 371.
[57] Numbers, xxxv. 26 sqq.