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CORRIGENDA.

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GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

THE purpose of this Introduction is to give as full an account as is practicable, in a work such as this edition of the Institutes, of the history of Roman Law and Legislation. In order to allow the largest. possible amount of space to strictly legal topics, constitutional history has been avoided, except so far as it seemed that these could not be adequately understood without occasionally touching upon it. It is of course impossible to write on the history of any legislation without taking some notice of the persons or bodies by whom legislative functions are or have been exercised; but such digressions from purely legal matters can fortunately be confined within tolerably narrow limits, because the Roman system owed so large a part of its development in point of matter to the praetor, whose powers, so far as they were legislative, were exercised indirectly, and it may almost be said covertly, and in point of form to the jurists, whose constitutional position, despite their direct influence on law, was in reality quite unimportant.

So far as legislation goes, what will here be said is little more than a commentary, written in historical sequence, on the seven sources of law from which the Roman system is said (Inst. i. 2. 3) to be derived. As regards the system itself, apart from the agencies by which it was directly developed, or viewed from within rather than from without, the principal topics which will be treated are the relation of public and private law at Rome; the influence of caste, or, more precisely, of the patrician and plebeian elements respectively on the material character of the system; the duplication of institutions' which resulted from the co-existence of what we may perhaps call a purely national with a cosmopolitan legislative organ; the gradual absorption by what was cosmopolitan of what was purely national; and the development and character of the Roman scientific or philosophical jurisprudence.

Finally, the legislative work of Justinian will be described with tolerable fullness, concluding, in particular, with an examination of the scope and system of the Institutes.

Of the form of the earliest Roman law it is possible to speak more positively than of its matter and contents. The first trace of genuine legislation is to be found in the Twelve Tables, which the mythical founding of the city preceded by more than three hundred years. During these three centuries, the law by which the Romans were governed was unwritten; it was pure custom handed down by tradition from past generations, and doubtless identical in origin with the usages of the primitive Aryan stock. Modern comparative jurisprudence has established resemblances so striking between the earliest known inhabitants of Rome, the usages of the primitive Irish, and those of the Asiatic Aryan peoples which have been most open to observation, that (while admitting that it was modified on every side by such agencies as climate and the circumstances of a military people ever in arms) we must allow that the customary law of Rome, from which a new departure was taken at the time of the Twelve Tables, was of very great antiquity, though conjectures as to its age are no less unprofitable than idle. How the custom was preserved, and protected from contamination by foreign elements, we know from writers on the early history of Rome; it was jealously treasured up by the college of Pontifices, who were the first judges in all matters relating to the family and property, and who thereby acquired the title of 'guardians of the law;' 'omnium tamen harum (legum) et interpretandi scientia et actiones apud collegium pontificum erant, ex quibus constituebatur, quis quoque anno praeesset privatis' (Dig. 1. 2. 2. 6).

The statement that there was nothing in the nature of statute law until the enactment of the Twelve Tables may seem to be contradicted by the existence of the so-called 'leges regiae,' of which however we know little that is certain. 'Leges quasdam et ipse (Romulus) curiatas ad populum tulit. Tulerunt et sequentes reges, quae omnes conscriptae extant in libro Sexti Papirii, qui fuit illis temporibus... Is liber, ut diximus, appellatur ius civile Papirianum, non quia Papirius de suo quidquam ibi adiecit, sed quod leges sine ordine latas in unum composuit' (Pomponius in Dig. 1. 2. 2. 2). From this it would appear that Sextus Papirius, who, according to Dionysius (iii. 36), was a pontifex, made a compilation of these leges regiae in the reign of the last of the kings. Dionysius also tells us that, after the expulsion of the kings, l'apirius re-established those of them of which Numa was said to be the author; and we know a commentary to have been written on his

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