not changing society by miracle, which, as has been said before, seems to have been no part of the purposes of God. But while it takes these institutions as they stand, it does not perpetuate them, but reforms them, mitigates them, and lays on them restrictions tending to their gradual abolition. Much less does it introduce any barbarous institution or custom for the first time.
To shew that this principle is not invented for the case of Slavery, we will try to verify it in some other cases first. It will be the more worth while to do this, because if the principle be sound, it may help to relieve the distress caused by doubts as to the morality of the Old Testament on other points as well as on the question now in issue. It may do this at a less expense than that of supposing the existence of two different Moralities, one for God, the other for Man, and thus making Man worship, what to his mind must be, an immoral God.
In times before the reign of Law, justice was done on the murderer by the nearest kinsman of the murdered as Avenger of Blood. Such justice was a degree better than no justice; and a custom which assigned the sacred duty of revenge to a particular person, instead of leaving it to any chance hand, was the first step towards the appointment of a regular magistrate. This institution seems to have been universal among primitive tribes. A relic of it lingered in the law of this country till the reign of George III., when Wager of Battle having been demanded in a case of murder by the nearest of kin against the murderer, as a common law right, the demand was with difficulty evaded.
