" /1/ And authority for the statement was
cited from the reign of Henry VI., the same reign when, as we
have seen, the Admiral claimed a forfeiture of ships for causing
death. I am bound to say, however, that I cannot find such an
authority of that date.
We have now followed the development of the chief forms of
liability in modern law for anything other than the immediate and
manifest consequences of a man's own acts. We have seen the
parallel course of events in the two parents,--the Roman law and
the German customs, and in the offspring of those two on English
soil with regard to servants, animals, and inanimate things. We
have seen a single germ multiplying and branching into products
as different from each other as the flower from the root. It
hardly remains to ask what that germ was. We have seen that it
was the desire of retaliation against the offending thing itself.
Undoubtedly, it might be argued that many of the rules stated
were derived from a seizure of the offending thing as security
for reparation, at first, perhaps, outside the law. That
explanation, as well as the one offered here; would show that
modern views of responsibility had not yet been attained, as the
owner of the thing might very well not have been the person in
fault.
Pages:
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59