ANALYSIS OF THE CHAPTER OF MR. SALVADOR, ENTI TLED THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE AMONG THE JEWS.* MR. SALVADOR has discussed with particular care whatever relates to the administration of justice among the Jewish people. We shall dwell upon this chapter, which undoubtedly will most interest our readers. Judicare and judicari, to judge and to be judged, express the rights of every He * This Analysis first appeared in the Gazette des Tribunaux. brew citizen; that is, no one could be condemned without a judgment, and every one might, in his turn, be called upon to sit in judgment, upon others. Some exceptions to this principle are explained; but they do not affect the rule. In matters of mere interest each party chose a judge, and these two chose a third person. If a discussion arose as to the interpretation of a law, they carried it to the lower council of Elders, and from thence to the Great Council at Jerusalem. Each town of more than one hundred and twenty families was to have its lower council, consisting of twenty-three members; and these had jurisdiction in criminal cases. The expressions, he shall die, he shall be cut off from the people, which are so often used in the Mosaic law, embrace three very different significations, which we are accustomed to confound. They indicate the suffering of death as a pun ishment, civil death, and that premature death, with which an individual is naturally threatened, who departs from those rules which are useful to the nation and to the individual himself. Civil death is the last degree of separation, or excommunication; it is pronounced, as a judicial punishment, by the assembly of the judges. There were three kinds of separation; which Mr. Salvador compares to the three degrees of civil excommunication provided for in the French Penal Code, and which condemn the criminal to hard labor either for life or for a term of years, or to certain correctional punishments. But the Hebrew excommunication had this advantage, that the party never lost all hope of regaining his original standing. The Hebrew lawyers, in relation to the punishment of death, maintained opinions, which deserve to be quoted : "A tribunal, which condems to death once in seven years, may be called sanguinary."—"It deserves this appellation, says doctor Eliezer, when it pronounces a like sentence once in seventy years."—" If we had been members of the high court, say the doctors Tyrphon and Akiba, we should never have condemned a man to death." Simeon, the son of Gamaliel, replied "Would not that be an abuse? Would you not have been afraid of multiplying crimes in Israel?" Mr. Salvador answers "No, certainly; far from lessening their number, the severity of the punishment increases it, by giving a more resolute character to the men who are able to brave it; and, at the present day, how many intelligent minds range themselves on the side of Akiba and Tyrphon! How many consciences refuse to participate, in any manner, in the death of a man! The flowing of blood, the multitude excited by an unbecoming curiosity, the victim dragged in triumph to the horrible altar, the impossibility of repairing a mistake, (from which human wisdom is never exempt) the dread of one day seeing a departed shade rising up and saying, “I was innocent," the facility which modern nations have of expelling from among them the man whose presence pollutes them the influence of general depravity on the production of crimes and finally the ab surd contrast of the whole of society, while in possession of strength, intelligence, and arms, opposing itself to an individual wretch (who has been drawn on by want, by passion, or by ignorance) and yet finding no other means of redress than by exceeding him in cruelty-all these things, and many others, have so deeply penetrated the minds of all ranks of people, that there will one day proceed from them the most striking proof of the power |