NOTE TO THE SIXTH EDITION. IN PREPARING this volume for a sixth edition I have had the great advantage of consulting Mr. Hunter's work on 'Roman Law,' a work which will command the gratitude and admiration of every student of the subject for its exhaustiveness, its accuracy, and its originality. In revising the translation I have consulted not only the rendering of the text of the Institutes' given by Mr. Hunter, but also the very careful and faithful translation of Messrs. Abdy and Walker. At the same time I have endeavoured to retain the character of my own translation, which is designed to reproduce the meaning of the Latin in a form intelligible to those who are not perfectly acquainted with the language in which the Institutes' were written. In this edition I have substituted, with a few variations, the text of Huschke (Leipsic, 1868) for that of the Kriegels. PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. THIS EDITION of the Institutes' has been in a great measure rewritten. The admirable and exhaustive work of Demangeat (Cours Élémentaire du Droit Romain') has supplied so much new material, and suggested so many alterations, and Mr. Poste in his edition of 'Gaius' has contributed so much that bears on some of the subjects treated in the Institutes,' that I have found it necessary to make many revisions of the Notes and some additions to them. I have, however, endeavoured, in a work which is only intended for those who are unacquainted with Roman law, to state nothing but what a beginner can understand, and to avoid as much as possible all difficult and controverted points. I must repeat what I stated in the Preface to the first edition, that in preparing this volume originally, I was under obligations to the French edition by Ortolan so great as to call for the amplest acknowledgment. I also derived great assistance from the edition by Ducaurroy, and from the Manuel du Droit Romain' of Lagrange, as well as from the Commentaries' of Warnkoenig, and the Institutes' of Puchta. In the Introduction is embodied much that was suggested by the 'Histoire de la Législation Romaine' and the 'Généralisation du Droit Romain' of Ortolan, and by |