[46] Prince, Digest of the Laws of the State of Georgia, p. 781.
[47] Stephen, Slavery of the British West India Colonies, i. 188. Edwards, History of the British West Indies, ii. 202 sq.
[48] Gwentian Code, ii. 5. 31 sq. (Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, p. 339). For ancient Swedish law on this subject, see Gotlands-Lagen, i. 19. 37.
[49] Ta Tsing Leu Lee, sec. cccxiii. p. 336.
Very frequently the penalties or fines for bodily injuries are influenced by the class or rank of the parties even when both of them are freemen. Among the Marea, whilst a commoner who wounds another commoner simply pays him compensation for the hurt, a commoner who wounds a nobleman must abandon to him all his property and become his slave.[50] At Zimmé the fines for assaults “vary greatly, according to the rank of the party complaining.”[51] Among the Ossetes the limbs of a noble are rated at twice as much as the limbs of an ordinary freeman.[52] The Laws of Ḫammurabi contain the following provisions:—“If a man has caused the loss of a gentleman’s eye, his eye one shall cause to be lost. If he has shattered a gentleman’s limb, one shall shatter his limb. If he has caused a poor man to lose his eye or shattered a poor man’s limb, he shall pay one mina of silver. If a man has made the tooth of a man that is his equal to fall out, one shall make his tooth fall out. If he has made the tooth of a poor man to fall out, he shall pay one-third of a mina of silver,”[53] According to the Laws of Manu, if a man of a low caste does hurt to a man of any of the three highest castes, the offending member shall be cut off;[54] and he who intentionally strikes a Brâhmana in anger, even if it were only with a blade of grass, “will be born during twenty-one existences in the wombs of such beings where men are born in punishment of their sins.”[55] In early Teutonic and Celtic codes we meet with the principle that the compensation by which a bodily injury is to be atoned for varies according to the rank of the parties concerned.[56]
[50] Munzinger, Ostafrikanische Studien, p. 244.
[51] Colquhoun, Amongst the Shans, p. 132.
[52] von Haxthausen, Transcaucasia, p. 409.
[53] Laws of Ḫammurabi, 196-198, 200 sq. Cf. ibid. 202 sq.
[54] Laws of Manu, viii. 279.