BLOOD AND IRON: a phrase used by Bismarck in the Prussian House of Delegates in a speech on the Constitution, 30 Sept. 1862: aNicht durch Reden und Majorititsbeschliisse werden die grossen Fragen der Zeit entschieden — das ist der Fehler von 1848 und 1849 gewe sen— sondern durch Eisen und Blut." "Not by speeches and majority resolutions will the great questions of the time be decided — that was the error of 1848 and 1849—but by iron and blood." (In the course of the same speech he said: "We are perhaps too cultured to en dorse a Constitution. . . In his Decla mationes Quintilian uses the phrase, "sangui nem et ferrum," whilst the German poet Arndt (d. 1860) declared that the ((brave proclaims himself master of the lands — with his iron, with his blood." money paid to the next of kin of a man who met with his death at the hands of another, accidentally or with pre meditation. The Greeks called it irwvii, the Latins peen, the Franks Allemanni and Scan dinavians manbote, wehrgeld or tvyrgile, the British Celts named it saarkard and the Irish Celts eric. The institution still flourishes in
many communities of Asia and Africa. In English criminal law the term blood-money was also applied to rewards raid to informers against highway robbers, thieves, burglars and utterers of false coin or forged bank-notes. Laws empowering such payments were passed between 1692 and 1742. In 1813 the total amount paid in this way was f18,000. By this time a number of persons made a living 'out of these laws by entrapping unwary and fool ish people into the commission of the crime of forging or uttering false coin and then inform ing against them. As early as 1756 one Mc Daniel had brought to the scaffold and earned the blood-money of no less than 70 victims. Parliament, recognizing the abuses the system had engendered, repealed all the laws relating thereto, except in relation to the forgers of bank-bills, in which case the informer can still get his pecuniary reward. See AVENGER OF BLOOD ; BLOOD FEUD ; OUTLAWRY.