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As it grows more powerful, the community tends to take the offences of the individual less seriously, because they are now regarded as being much less revolutionary and dangerous to the corporate existence: the evildoer is no more outlawed and put outside the pale, the common wrath can no longer vent itself upon him with its old licence⁠—on the contrary, from this very time it is against this wrath, and particularly against the wrath of those directly injured, that the evildoer is carefully shielded and protected by the community. As, in fact, the penal law develops, the following characteristics become more and more clearly marked: compromise with the wrath of those directly affected by the misdeed; a consequent endeavour to localise the matter and to prevent a further, or indeed a general spread of the disturbance; attempts to find equivalents and to settle the whole matter ( compositio ); above all, the will, which manifests itself with increasing definiteness, to treat every offence as in a certain degree capable of being paid off , and consequently, at any rate up to a certain point, to