So far we have been considering the law of blood-revenge as purely an affair between the clans concerned; the rest of the tribal public keeping aloof, very much in the style of the Andamanese bystanders who retire into the jungle when there is a prospect of a row.  But with the development of a central authority, whether in the shape of the rule of many or of one, the public control of the blood-feud begins to assert itself; for the good reason that endless vendetta is a dissolving force, which the larger and more stable type of society cannot afford to tolerate if it is to survive.  The following are a few instances illustrative of the transition from private to public jurisdiction.  In North America, Africa, and elsewhere, we find the chief or chiefs pronouncing sentence, but the clan or family left to carry it out as best they can.  Again, the kin may be entrusted with the function of punishment, but obliged to carry it out in the way prescribed by the authorities; as, for instance, in Abyssinia, where the nearest relation executes the manslayer in the presence of the king, using exactly the same kind of weapon as that with which the murder was committed.  Or the right of the kin to punish dwindles to a mere form.  Thus in Afghanistan the elders make a show of handing over the criminal to his accusers, who must, however, comply strictly with the wishes of the assembly; whilst in Samoa the offender was bound and deposited before the family “as if to signify that he lay at their mercy,” and the chief saw to the rest.  Finally, the state, in the person of its executive officers, both convicts and executes.

When the state is represented by a single ruler, crime tends to become an offence against “the king’s peace”—­or, in the language of Roman law, against his “majesty.”  Henceforward, the easy-going system of getting off with a fine is at an end, and murder is punished with the utmost sternness.  In such a state as Dahomey, in the old days of independence, there may have been a good deal of barbarity displayed in the administration of justice, but at any rate human life was no less effectively protected by the law than it was, say, in mediaeval Europe.

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The evolution of the punishment of murder affords the typical instance of the development of a legal sanction in primitive society.  Other forms, however, of the forcible repression of wrong-doing deserve a more or less passing notice.

Adultery is, even amongst the ruder peoples, a transgression that is reckoned only a degree less grave than manslaughter; especially as manslaughter is a usual consequence of it, quarrels about women constituting one of the chief sources of trouble in the savage world.  With a single interesting exception, the stages in the development of the law against adultery are exactly the same as in the case already examined.  Whole kins fight about it.  Then duelling is substituted.  Then duelling gives way to the ordeal.  Then, after