the maintenance of public order. A rebellious city or province was laid
waste, and its inhabitants exterminated. Rebellion against the "Child of
the Sun," was the greatest of all crimes.9

The simplicity and severity of the Peruvian code may be thought to infer
a state of society but little advanced; which had few of those complex
interests and relations that grow up in a civilized community, and which
had not proceeded far enough in the science of legislation to economize
human suffering by proportioning penalties to crimes. But the Peruvian
institutions must be regarded from a different point of view from that in
which we study those of other nations. The laws emanated from the
sovereign, and that sovereign held a divine commission, and was
possessed of a divine nature. To violate the law was not only to insult
the majesty of the throne, but it was sacrilege. The slightest offence,
viewed in this light, merited death; and the gravest could incur no
heavier penalty.10 Yet, in the infliction of their punishments, they
showed no unnecessary cruelty; and the sufferings of the victim were not
prolonged by the ingenious torments so frequent among barbarous
nations.11

These legislative provisions may strike us as very defective, even as
compared with those of the semi-civilized races of Anahuac, where a
gradation of courts, moreover, with the fight of appeal, afforded a
tolerable security for justice. But in a country like Peru, where few but
criminal causes were known, the right of appeal was of less consequence.
The law was simple, its application easy; and, where the judge was
honest, the case was as likely to be determined correctly on the first
hearing as on the second. The inspection of the board of visitors, and the
monthly returns of the tribunals, afforded no slight guaranty for their
integrity. The law which required a decision within five days would