520 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
were death and mutilation, and a gradual substitution of a system of fines for the less serious offenses. Private warfare and blood feuds were the rule, and organized revenge' was the principle predominating in primitive justice. Moral rights were unrecognized, and force was the only method of offense or defense. With the development of community life it was found impracticable and inexpedient for every injured individual or family to pursue, capture, and wreak vengeance upon the perpetrator of an injury, and the gradual delegation of the right to the chief or sovereign was substituted. Specific crimes were declared, and certain chosen representatives administered, not jus- tice in the modern sense, but vengeance, which was the prevailing sentiment of the one injured. Many of the crimes and punishments of primitive law exist today almost unchanged, but are administered with a different knowledge and purpose. The rule then, as now, was, " the greater the crime, the greater the penalty."
The procedure corresponded to the idea of crime, and consisted pri- marily in nothing more than private warfare. From this it developed into the law of infangthef, which was a recognition of the right of the injured party to exterminate the offender or receive compensation for the act. Sir Francis Palgrave observes upon this point : " Perhaps the name legal procedure can scarcely be given with propriety to these plain and speedy modes of administering justice ; they are acts deduced from the mere exercise of the passions natural to man, and the law consists only in the restrictions by which the power of self-protection was prevented from degenerating into wanton and unprovoked cruelty." Following infangthef came the development of police organization, purgation, ordeal, and trial by combat. The last three were charac- teristic of the early courts or tribunals where the trial was conducted. These latter were at first only public meetings for the adjustment of personal difificulties. Accusation by either a committee appointed for that purpose or a private accuser was the method of indictment, and the receiving of testimony was common in these primitive courts. The idea of revenge as the permanent factor in early punishment of crime is clearly brought out by a study of the methods of trial and punishment.
The second period is dominated by the idea of repression, not unmixed, however, with that of vengeance. The repressive theory in existence at this period differs from the present one in the idea of
'This is not unknown today, as is illustrated by the Mafia of Italy and the well- known "vendetta."
