Development of law.

Police.

In the development of law during this period within the Roman commonwealth, probably the most important material innovation was that peculiar control which the community itself, and, in a subordinate degree, its office-bearers, began to exercise over the manners and habits of the individual citizens. The germ of it is to be sought not so much in the religious anathemas which had served in the earliest times as a sort of substitute for police (P. 184), as in the right of the magistrates to inflict property-fines (multœ) for offences against order (P. 159). In the case of all fines of more than two sheep and thirty oxen or, after cattle-fines had been by the decree of the people in 324 commuted into money, of more than 3020 libral asses (30), the decision soon after the expulsion of the kings passed by way of appeal into the hands of the community (P. 259);. and thus procedure by fine acquired an importance which it was far from originally possessing. Under the vague category of offences against order men might include any accusations they pleased, and by the higher rates in the scale of property fines they might accomplish whatever they desired. The dangerous character of such arbitrary procedure was brought to light rather than obviated by the mitigating proviso, that such property-fines, where they were not fixed by law at a definite sum, should not exceed half the estate of the person fined. To this class belonged the police laws, which from the earliest times were especially abundant in the Roman commonwealth.