the man himself), and for the other half give up the beast to the complainant. 2 So, by chapter thirty-five, if a slave killed a freeman, he was to be surrendered for one half of the composition to the relatives of the slain man, and the master was to pay the other half.  But according to the gloss, if the slave or his master had been maltreated by the slain man or his relatives, the master had only to surrender the slave. 3 It is interesting to notice that those Northern sources which Wilda takes to represent a more primitive stage of German law confine liability for animals to surrender alone. 4 There is also a trace of the master’s having been able to free himself in some cases, at a later date, by showing that the slave was no longer in [18] his possession. 1 There are later provisions making a master liable for the wrongs committed by his slave by his command. 2 In the laws adapted by the Thuringians from the earlier sources, it is provided in terms that the master is to pay for all damage done by his slaves. 4

In short, so far as I am able to trace the order of development in the customs of the German tribes, it seems to have been entirely similar to that which we have already followed in the growth of Roman law.  The earlier liability for slaves and animals was mainly confined to surrender; the later became personal, as at Rome.

The reader may begin to ask for the proof that all this has any bearing on our law of today.  So far as concerns the influence of the Roman law upon our own, especially the Roman law of master and servant, the evidence of it is to be found in every book which has been written for the last five hundred years.  It has been stated already that we still repeat the reasoning of the Roman lawyers, empty as it is, to the present day.  It will be seen directly whether the German folk-laws can also be followed into England.

In the Kentish laws of Hlothhaere and Eadrie (A.D. 680) [19] it is said, “If any one’s slave slay a freeman, whoever it be, let the owner pay with a hundred shillings, give up the slayer,” &c. 1 There are several other similar provisions.  In the nearly contemporaneous laws of Ine, the surrender and payment are simple alternatives.  “If a Wessex slave slay an Englishman, then shall he who owns him deliver him up to the lord and the kindred, or give sixty shillings for his life.” 2 Alfred’s laws (A.D. 871-901) have a like provision as to cattle.  “If a neat wound a man, let the neat be delivered up or compounded for.” 3 And Alfred, although two hundred years later than the first English lawgivers who have been quoted, seems to have gone back to more primitive notions than we find before his time.  For the same principle is extended to the case of a tree by which a man is killed.  “If, at their common work, one man slay another unwilfully, let the tree be given to the kindred, and let them have it off the land within thirty nights.  Or let him take possession of it who owns the wood.” 4