The "blood-wite" or compensation in money for personal wrong was the first effort of the tribe as a whole to regulate private revenge.

The freeman's life and the freeman's limb had each on this system its legal price.

"Eye for eye," ran the rough code, and "life for life," or for each fair damages.

We see a further step towards the modern recognition of a wrong as done not to the individual man but to the people at large in another custom of early date.

The price of life or limb was paid, not by the wrong-doer to the man he wronged, but by the family or house of the wrong-doer to the family or house of the wronged.