6. Like every other science, law has advanced gradually to its present state. At first, laws regarded only great in conveniences and concerns of highest importance. Crimi nal laws extended only to such crimes as were most dread ed, and in proportion as new and more artful disorders arose, new remedies were applied ; whilst civil institutions, properly so called, regulated the public worship of the gods, the distribution oC lands, marriage, succession. To detail the progress of law in different countries, and to trace the successive improvements which one country de rived from another in this respect, would be sufficiently interesting and instructive. We here sketch only the outline.
7. The earliest of all laws is that of nature, according to which, men, in their wildest state, originally lived. As in such a state they had little need of law, so the dictates of nature were comparatively few and simple—a mere ray of that moral sentiment and right reason which God has intended should, in a more advanced stage of the social progress, direct and regulate our more frequent intercourse with one another.
8. So far as regards human regulations, it is scarcely to be doubted that the first were those domestic rules which the father of a family would have occasion to observe in the control of it. Nov can these regulations, or first prin ciples of human laws, be regarded as unimportant, since, in the earliest condition of society, families form so many distinct communities.
9. When men began to unite in villages and cities, these more private regulations would be found inadequate to re strain a more numerous society ; and a body of rules, as well as an authority accompanied with greater power than the merely paternal, became necessary. Afterwards, when many towns and districts united for their common conve nience and defence, the judicial regulations necessarily multiplied ; and the Supreme Authority from which they emanated and were to be enforced, issued, sooner or later, in the different states thus formed, in a Monarchy, an Aris tocracy, a Democracy, or a compound of two or more of these simpler forms of magistracy.
10. The conduct of the justest and wisest individuals in all their transactions of a public nature, would naturally suggest a rule of behaviour to others, whilst their counsels and advice would gradually acquire force, and be adopted as a general regulation. Thus sages and philosophers were the first authors of laws.
11. Moses, the most ancient of legislators, ordained several sorts of laws to the Jews. Besides those which, as we are bound to believe, were dictated to him by the Deity himself, commonly denominated the decalogue, as being dis-. tributed into ten commandments, he instituted ceremonial laws for the regulation of their public worship, and political laws for their civil government.
12. The lawgivers of nations bordering on that of the Jews, borrowed many of their institutions from the laws of Moses.
13. Osiris, one of the earliest of the kings of Egypt, re gulated the worship of the gods, the distribution of lands, and the distinction of ranks. He abolished the creditor's
right to reduce his insolvent debtor to slavery in acquit tance of the debt ; and, to insure a better chance of sound decision in the courts of law, he prohibited the use of rhe torical embellishment in public pleadings.
Amasis annexed the punishment of death to murder, calumny, and perjury ; and they who, having it in their power to assist a fellow-subject in danger of losing his own life, allowed the fact to take place, became liable to the same penalty.
This extraordinary people used to deposit the embalmed corpses of their fathers with their creditors in security of their debts, and if the pledge was not redeemed some time before their own death, the deepest infamy was incurred. They had even a tribunal before which they tried men after their death, that the dread of posthumous condemnation on the one hand, and thc.hope of applause on the other, might impel them to the practice of virtue. Their kings them selves were subjected to certain exclusive regulations ; their food, in pat ticular, and occupations, were the objects of certain fixed rules, from which they could make no de viation without responsibility to the laws.
14. In Crete, Minos instituted a community of tables and repasts ; he required all the children in the state to be brought up together, proscribed idleness and luxury, and enjoined the greatest reverence to he paid to the divinity, and to the fundamental laws of the state.
15. Lycurgus, the Lacedmmonian lawgiver, also insti tuted, in imitation of Minos, a community of tables and a public education of the youth. He established a senate, which might temper the power of the kings by an equipol lent authority. He prohibited the use of gold and silver money, that, by thus obstructing commerce, he might the more effectually encourage the military spirit. He forbade the exercise of • any of the superfluous arts; ordained an equal distribution of the lands among the citizens ; and confined agriculture exclusively to the Helots, that the at tention of the citizens might not thus be withdrawn from their martial exercises. He permitted a community of wives, wishing, as it would seem, to people the state with out affording occasion for particular attachments, or the more endearing affections, lest the aptitude of the men for military occupations might be thereby impaired. With the same martial policy, unhealthy children were ordered to be destroyed ; for Lycurgus deemed the man unworthy to live who was incapable of bearing arms. In the same spirit, the youth of both sexes had their exercises of amuse ment together, which they performed naked, and in public; and one of the severest punishments to which the young men were subject, was that for inexpert theft—an extraor dinary department of education, in which they were care fully trained, as the means of rendering them enterprizing, dexterous, and bold. And, finally, to secure these martial Institutions from all mixture of foreign and less hardy man ners, strangers were strictly prohibited front settling at Sparta.