The Struggle for Law
other persons of position should flee also. A poor soldier who, to obey this order, had retreated twice, but who, being pursued by his adversary, finally resisted and killed his pursuer, was condemned to death as a salutary lesson to himself and as a deterrent example to others.
People of very high position and of distinguished birth, likewise officers, should be permitted to make rightful resistance in defense of their honor; but, adds another, in limitation of this, in case of mere verbal injury, they should not go as far as killing. There were, on the other hand, other persons, even state officials, who could not be allowed to enjoy this privilege; and the ministers of civil justice were dismissed with the remark that “as mere men of the law, spite of all their claims, they had to depend on the law of the land and the rights it accorded to all alike, and that they could make no further pretensions.” The merchant class fared worst of all. “Merchants, even the richest,” we read, “constitute no exception. Their honor
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