1937. CRIME, Lex Talionis and.—
They [the members of the Revision Committee of
the Virginia Code] were agreed * * * that for
other felonies [than treason and murder] hard labor in the public works should be
substituted, and in some cases, the lex talionis.
How this last revolting principle came
to obtain our [113]
approbation, I do not remember.
There remained, indeed, in our laws, a
vestige of it in a single case of a slave; it was
the English law, in the time of the Anglo-Saxons,
copied probably from the Hebrew
Law of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a
tooth,” and it was the law of several ancient
people; but the modern mind had left it far
in the rear of its advances.—
Autobiography. Washington ed. i, 43.
Ford ed., i, 60.
(1821)
