Wergeld

“ Where a wergeld of 200s. is payable, then 30s. must be paid as manbot, which equals 5 mancuses; where the wergeld is 1200s., that is, for a thegn, the manbot is 120s, which amounts to 20 mancuses. "For the oath of a thegn equals the oaths of six villeins; if he is killed he is fully avenged by the slaying of six villeins and if compensation is paid for him, his wergeld is the wergeld for six villeins." Some freemen are 200 men, some 600 men, and others 1200 men. A 200 man has a wergeld of 200s., which equal 4 pounds. ”

“ Now let us compare the wergeld of the liber in these districts, viz. 53 solidi and 1 tremissis of Merovingian currency, with what the statement in the Ripuarian law would lead us to expect it to have been, viz. 160 of the same solidi. It is exactly one third of what it ought to be. And the inference from what we have learned in the last section would be that the maker of the laws had divided the wergeld of ancient custom by three. ”

“ If she commit adultery and she is a betrothed woman, if she is a commoner, let 60 shillings be paid in compensation to the guarantor, and let that be in livestock or cattle, but let no one give any human as part of it. If she be of 600 shilling wergeld, let 100 shillings be paid in compensation to the guarantor. If she be of 1200 shilling wergeld, let compensation of 120 shillings be paid to the guarantor. 19. If anyone lends his weapon to another so that he may kill with it, they may combine, if they are willing, in the matter of paying the wergeld. ”

“ A moment’s consideration makes it clear that a wergeld of a hundred head of cattle, whether paid as of old in cattle or in gold or silver, was a payment too large to be paid in coin. It was a payment that no ordinary individual could pay without the aid of his kindred, and it is hardly likely that so large an amount in actual coin could be collected even from the kindred of the murderer. ”

“ Schmid as a ‘fit and proper’ one; and Liebermann would take it to refer to the wergeld of a person of middle rank or position. We must leave the true meaning for the present in doubt.
Reason why not a full wergeld. Their dangerous work.
Apart from the amount of the wergeld, if we would understand this passage we have surely first to consider for what reason these two royal officials should be singled out from all others and made liable to pay wergelds. The inference must be that in the performance of their duties they were peculiarly liable to injure others. ”

“ Even when money is substituted, the coins are small in value but numerous [62] (e.g. 200 solidi, 400 argentei) . The reason for this lies in the diffused nature of the responsibility for payment, quite a number of families and individuals of the wider kindred being liable to contribution. Secondly, there is no parallel, in analogous instances of wergeld, for the assumption that the total amount was collected and deposited in court at any time, much less before the validity of the murder-charge had been established. ”

“ If any Englishman is slain without fault on his part, compensation shall be paid to his relatives according to this wergeld. Wite and manbot shall be paid to the appropriate lords in accordance with the amount of the wergeld. ”

“ In the case of every payment of wergeld for a slaying, two parts are the responsibility of the paternal kindred, and one third part is the responsibility of the maternal kin. If the kindred of a man who slays another abandons him and will not pay compensation for him, then all the kindred shall be free from the feud except the wrongdoer alone, if they thereafter provide him with neither food nor protection. ”

“ If a man slay another in the King's tun [enclosed dwelling premises] , let him make bot with 50 shillings. 6. If any one slay a freeman, 50 shillings to the King, as drihtin beah [payment to a lord in compensation for killing his freeman] . 7. If the King's ambiht-smith [smith or carpenter] or laad-rine [man who walks before the King or guide or escort] , slay a man, let him pay a half wergeld. 8. [Offenses against anyone or any place under] the King's mund byrd [protection or patronage] , 50 shillings fine 9. If a freeman steal from a freeman, let him make threefold bot ”

“ For if a knight or other freeman, or a bondsman, or any such person of whatever condition or sex, is bound to the king for any debt—which, indeed, must be a punishment for a misdemeanour, not a spontaneous offering,—the treasurer shall be content with that preferred oath of the sheriff which is to be taken at the end; and the man or woman, the action against whom, by reason of their poverty, has become void, shall again be written as debtor in this yearly roll as in the last. ”

“ When a man makes dollars, one third of which only is silver, and passes them for good coin, he must lose his ears, &c.
But Legislatures can, with the solemn face of rulers, and guardians of justice, boldly give currency to an adulterated coin, enjoin it upon debtors to cheat their creditors, and enforce their systematic knavery with legal penalties. The differences between the man who makes and passes counterfeit money, and the man who tenders his creditor one third of the value of the debt, and demands a discharge, is the same as between a thief and a robber. ”

“ But very definitely, the evil does include transactions whereby gold, coined or uncoined, is to be delivered in satisfaction of a debt expressed in terms of dollars, payment, not sale, being then the end to be achieved. As definitely, indeed more obviously, the evil includes transactions whereby a debt is to be discharged, not in bullion, but in dollars, if the number of the dollars is to be increased or diminished in proportion to the diminution or the increase of the gold basis of the currency. ”

“ They will use every means in their power to get hold of their money, or, without mercy, clutch the property that secures it, and foreclosures, executions, sheriff's sales will be the order of the day. The creditor, to save himself, will appear in his most relentless temper, and in thousands of cases the debtor, thus getting rid of his indebtedness, together with his property, in the manner most disastrous to him, will have reason to curse those who pretended to relieve him by “making and keeping the volume of the currency equal to the wants of trade.” ”

“ Arbitrary and profligate governments have often resorted to this miserable scheme of robbery, which Mill designates as a shallow and impudent artifice, the 'least covert of all modes of knavery, which consists in calling a shilling a pound, that a debt of one hundred pounds may be canceled by the payment of one hundred shillings." No such debasement has ever been attempted in this country, and none ever will be so long as any sentiment of honor influences the governing power of the nation. ”

“ No one may take more than 6 pounds in interest for a 100 pound loan.
Persons seeking election to Parliament may not give or promise money, meat, drink, entertainment, present or gift to any elector.
Because the gaols were full of people in debt due to the late unhappy times such as the London fire, all prisoners for debt were to be released upon taking an oath that they had no property over ten pounds nor had disposed or conveyed property to defraud creditors. ”

“ No market town shall take an outrageous toll contrary to the common custom of the nation.
Since good sterling money has been counterfeited with base and false metal outside the nation and then brought in, foreigners found in the nation's ports with this false money shall forfeit their lives. Anyone bringing money into the nation must have it examined at his port of entry. Payments of money shall be made only by coin of the appropriate weight delivered by the Warden of the Exchange and marked with the King's mark. ”

“ Now, was there ever, since men emerged from a state of utter barbarism, an age in which there were no debts? Is not a debt, while the solvency of the debtor is undoubted, always reckoned as part of the wealth of the creditor? Yet is it tangible and real wealth? Does it cease to be wealth, because there is the security of a written acknowledgment for it? And what else is paper currency? ”

“ Silver the right arm and gold the left arm! Silver the money of the people, and gold the money of the rich. Stop this legalized robbery that is transferring the property of the debtors to the possession of the creditors.... Drive these money-changers from our temples. Let them discover your aspect, their masters—the people. ”

“ The first and principal point is gained when they have prevailed on him not to pay or settle the debt. If he wants money a worthy honest man attends, who will lend it him, doing these things frequently to men in his situation. Five different messages are sent to his acquaintances to bail him; the messenger mistakes the way, and goes to his other creditors for more writs; the prisoner is charged a shilling or half a crown for each of those services. ”

“ We may even concede the doctrine declared by the court of appeals of Virginia, that a debtor who pays to an executor in depreciated currency a debt payable in gold or its equivalent, knowing at the time that the currency is not needed for the payment of debts or legacies, or other uses of the estate, and that the safety of the debt does not require its collection, may be also charged as a participant in the devastavit. ”

“ To remedy this state of things it is now enacted, that, if any person should at any one time either exchange, lend, sell, borrow, buy, receive, or pay any broad silver money, or silver money unclipped, of the coin of the kingdom, for more than the same was coined for, and ought by law to go for, he should forfeit ten times the amount of the money so illegally exchanged. ”

“ But if the girl who is carried off be under the king's protection, then the "frith" (peace-money) shall be 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.
7. But if a bondsman of the king, or a leet, should carry off a free woman, he shall be sentenced to death.
8. But if a free woman have followed a slave of her own will, she shall lose her freedom.
9. If a freeborn man shall have taken an alien bondswoman, he shall suffer similarly.
10. If any body take an alien spouse and join her to himself in matrimony, he shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings. ”

“ He proved by practice that all other forms of wealth are reduced to thin wraiths before this personification of riches. Never again did the power of money show itself in such primordial brutality and violence as in its youthful days. After the sale of commodities for money came the borrowing of money, resulting in interest and usury. And no legislation of any later period stretches the debtor so mercilessly at the feet of the speculating creditor as the antique Grecian and Roman codes—both of them spontaneous products of habit, without any other than economic pressure. ”

“ The debtor is exposed to constant humiliations. Men of honourable principles must be disgusted by borrowing money from persons to whom they cannot pay it back;—disgusted with drinking wine, wearing clothes, and keeping up appearances, with other people's money. The Earl of Dorset, like many other young nobles, became involved in debt, and borrowed money upon his property. ”

“ So I had privately concluded to touch the treasury itself for the king's-evil. I covered six-sevenths of the appropriation into the treasury a week before starting from Camelot on my adventures, and ordered that the other seventh be inflated into five-cent nickels and delivered into the hands of the head clerk of the King's Evil Department; a nickel to take the place of each gold coin, you see, and do its work for it. ”

“ Having amassed enough by retail robbery of us while in our service, to establish some petty tavern, or some low livery-stable, they end by cheating us wholesale, for the loan of our own money, at their rate of interest. Well aware that, however deferred, we must pay eventually, they are satisfied—good, easy souls!—to renew and renew bills, whose current percentage varies from five-and-twenty to forty. ”

“ By means of those operations, the princes and sovereign states which performed them were enabled, in appearance, to pay their debts and fulfil their engagements with a smaller quantity of silver than would otherwise have been requisite. It was indeed in appearance only; for their creditors were really defrauded of a part of what was due to them. All other debtors in the state were allowed the same privilege, and might pay with the same nominal sum of the new and debased coin whatever they had borrowed in the old. ”

“ Thus the magistrate spoke. The others saluted and thanked him, And from his purse a gold-piece the pastor drew forth:—for the silver He had some hours before already in charity given, When he in mournful groups had seen the poor fugitives passing;— And to the magistrate handed it, saying: "Apportion the money 'Mongst thy destitute people, and God vouchsafe it an increase." But the stranger declined it, and, answering, said: "We have rescued Many a dollar among us, with clothing and other possessions, And shall return, as I hope, ere yet our stock is exhausted." ”

“ For this reason, according to his own account, proceeding upon an act of the convention now sitting, he ordained the old coin to be brought to the cunyie-house, where it would be ‘clippit, and put in ane close lockit coffer upon the count and inventar of the quantity receivit frae every person;’ and meanwhile the lately issued genuine placks and lions were to have currency at twopence and a penny apiece respectively—that is, at denominations above their value. Any one hereafter possessing the false coin, was to be punished as an out-putter of false money. ”