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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: law of England is much more severe upon offences against property
than against the person, as becomes a people whose ruling passion
is money. A man may half kick his wife to death or inflict horrible
sufferings upon his children at a much cheaper rate of punishment
than he can compound for the theft of a pair of old boots.
In Zu-Vendis this is not so, for there they rightly or wrongly look
upon the person as of more consequence than goods and chattels,
and not, as in England, as a sort of necessary appendage to the
latter. For murder the punishment is death, for treason death,
for defrauding the orphan and the widow, for sacrilege, and for
attempting to quit the country (which is looked on as a sacrilege)
Allan Quatermain |
