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proportions and just analogies. It took its rise in consuls. This proposal failed in consequence of

an age of magnificent achievements, but has outlived the nation and people from which it emanated, impressing wisdom upon the institutions of all civilized communities. The different branches of Roman jurisprudence grew up from the deepest roots of old Roman life, and expanded with its increasing energies, Its sources were those of long established use and want, codified in the twelve tables, the decisions of its decemvirs, or ten ablest men, continued by constitutional enactments, magisterial edicts and imperial decrees. The Romans were the first western community to work out systemtically from their own experience a series of practical judgments for universal guidance in the varied political and social relations of life. They lifted the human mind and its social activities from out of the contracting influence of the code law of the stationary and sacerdotal East, and opened the way to the expanding laws and secular civilization of the West.

Rome, when first established, was governed by purely arbitrary authority, without laws or recognition of right. The first institutions which are noticed, are the royal laws; which began to assume something like settled forms under Romulus. The first code of this prince began with the family, and regulated the authority of fathers over their children; and regulations adopted with respect to the succession of heirs to the property of the ancestors. Among those of his successor, Numa, we are told of ordinances governing sacrifices, their ceremonies and filial rights, prescribing boundaries to territorial possessions, and declaring it a sacrilege to the god Terminus, to displace or violate them. The credit of a law charging the public treasure with the expense of nourishing three infants produced at a birth, was due to Tullus Hostilius; and a law condemning vestals for the violation of their vow, was attributed to Tarquin the elder. The various laws existing previous to the time of Tarquin were known as the Papyrian laws, from their being collected by Papyrian. Serrius Tullius prescribed laws against creditors who imprisoned their debtors, against oppressions of the poor by the rich, and rules for the adjustment of contracts and the redress of injuries. These laws were abolished by Tarquin the Proud, but observed after his expulsion because they were humane and agreeable to the people.

The law which established the power of the Tribunes repealed all these regulations; some however continued to be observed; not as royal laws, but customs of the Roman people. With the view of reducing the laws to a less arbitrary rule, Terentillus Arsa, a tribune of the people, soon after the expulsions of the kings, demanded the selection of five citizens to make laws under the authority of the

war. Afterwards a Virginius renewed the demand and, after a long and bitter contest with the Senate, S. P. Posthumius, A. Manlius, and P. Sulpitius were selected to visit Athens and collect a body of laws suitable to the character and habits of the Romans. They were particularly ordered to collect the laws of Solon, and visit each of the cities of Greece for the purpose of studying the manners and customs of the people. From the laws collected in Greece, and the ancient usages of the Roman people. a code was written on ten tables of wood, and exposed to the correction of the people, in a public place. After being approved and engraved upon columns of brass they received the addition of two others, and thus were the twelve tables established, otherwise turmed the decemviral laws, because owing their authority to the decemvirs. This body of laws was considered as the foundation of the cival law, both public and private. In Greece, in Italy and on the Hellenized sea-board of Western Asia codes made their appearance at periods similar in point of the relative progress of each community. But the twelve tables of Rome, whereby laws engraved on tablets and published to the people took the place of usages deposited with the recollection of a privileged oligarchy, was the most famous specimen of all ancient codes and marked a sharply defined epoch in the history of jurisprudence in the progress from the period of customary law to the era of codes. Contrary to the practice of preceding nations which had placed the body of precedents and customary laws under the care of a traditionary priesthood or aristocracy, the practical Roman people placed them in the hands of the most experienced men of affairs, and then allowed their jurists and judges the largest discretionary powers in applying existing laws or creating new ones to meet the exigencies of each case. The spirit of Rome so constantly and successfully directed to objects of public utility, ensured to the laws their minute and practical provisions. It is true that the twelve tables mingled up religious, civil and merely moral ordinances without any regard to differences in their essential character, but we must remember that the severance of law from morality and of religion from law belonged very distinctly to the later stages of mental progress. Infants were taught to commit the twelve tables to memory, and Cicero placed them beyond the writings of philosophers, for their admirable precision, the justice of their expressions, and the .equity and wisdom of their principles.

However, these laws were soon found inadequate to the wants of the increasing populace of Rome, and resort was had to interpretations and expositions of numerous jurisconsults, increasing largely the number of annotations upon their precise sentences;

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and a long acquiescence in practice gave them the mer force of laws, and they thus became the source of E the customs and usages of the Roman people.

These actions of the law or soleman forms to enforce what the law itself prescribed more indifferandi ently, known as actus legitimi or legis actiones—in fact, the twelve tables were the theory of the law, the book chd of actions its practice. These curious forms were g locked up from the people until published by C. Flavius, and from him called the Flavian law. Subthe sequently Oelius Sextus collected in a book called of Tripartitorum libro, the text of the twelve tables, the interpretations connected with them, and the ancient and new actions of the law. This collection was known as the Oelian law. Next in order to the laws we have mentioned stood the New Laws, by which designation was understood all laws established under the emperors or the republic after the adoption of the twelve tables, including those made by the people, the senatus ccnsulti, and the constitutions.

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The laws made by the people were such as were passed by the centurius after a decree of the senate, and such as were enacted by the people, without the authority of a senatus consultum. The senatus consulta were decrees of the senate, sometimes rendered in the exercise of a republican authority, and sometimes a form under which were masked the worst tyrannies of the prince. The constitutions, properly so called, were the declarations of the emperors, made either by decree, edict or epistle. They exercised legislative, administrative or judicial powers. A decree was the determination of a matter in dispute between parties; the edict was a general law binding every one; and rescriptæ, which embraced epistles and subscriptions, were answers to public or private consultations. Then came what was known as the perpetual edict. This was prepared under the order of the Emperor Hadrian by Salvius Julianus. This emperor, or singular combination of the mind and qualities of a good and bad man, in one of his paroxysms of public virtue, became sensible of the imperfect state of the law, and provided for its reform in this celebrated edict.

He was fortunate in the assistancce of a man, termed with justice, one of the finest jurists ever produced in Rome, according to the authority of Justinian, the greatest reformer of his time, and the highest authority, the man most learned in the law, the most estimable, the most eloquent and most wise. The fragments of this splendid monument of juridical industry comes down to us in fifty books covering almost every ground of legal necessity, and were an elaborate condensation of all previous edicts of either utility or force. Then followed the public discussions, the interpretations and responses of jurists. The object of these seem

to be the application of the existing general rules of law to particular cases. These discussions and interpretations exercised a powerful influence in moulding the rigid principles of the law to circumstances of peculiar hardship.

The manner in which these consultations were had and the responses given is worthy of note. The most celebrated jurisconsults sat every morning upon a tribunal, placed in the vestibule of their houses, and responded not only to questions presented by suitors but gave explanations to those who sought instruction. They often pursued the same practice in public; and before the Temple of Apollo disputed questions on which they differed. If permitted to fly from the stern presence of the genius of the law to the arms of the alluring maid of song, we can here profitably quote the satire of Horace :

"When early clients thunder at his gate,
The barrister applauds the rustic's fate,"

to prove the custom of annoying jurisconsults early in the morning at Rome.

From a consideration of the various and intricate sources of the Roman law, it is apparent that the work of collecting, elaborating and applying it, was an effort of extraordinary usefulness, but still more extraordinary difficulty. It was, however, successfully achieved by Justinian. However historians may divide upon the question of Justinian's virtues and vices, or contest the integrity of that ambition which subdued Persia and delivered Italy from the Vandals and Huns, there can be no controversy as to the merits of his immortal codes of law. If his equestrian statue has thundered forth war and carnage from the Turkish cannon, into which it was melted down, a more virtuous and beneficial voice has issued from his body of the civil law, to instruct men in the science of jurisprudence, and establish them in the arts of peace and civilization. And the study of the Justinian code shed almost the first gleam over the dark ages and revived not only the jurisprudence, but the philosophy of Europe. The strong will and unusual opportunities of Justinian were needed to bring the Roman law into its existing shape, removing the involved language and useless difficulties.

The compilations of Justinian were known as the Institutes, the Pandicts, the Code, and the Novels. The Institutes were designed as rudiments of the law, or as an introduction to the Pandicts. The Code was a compilation into one Code from those of Gregorius, Hermogenianus and Theodosius and contained decisions of Justinian himself upon unsettled questions of law. The Novels was a term applied to the new constitutions, which consisted of a collection prepared two years after the promulgation

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of the Pandicts. The Pandicts or Digest constitute the greatest of the collections we have mentioned. It is the fruit of researches into two thousand volumes, embracing three millions of articles of law. After three years of severe labor it was completed, fifteen coadjutors assisting in its preparation, and was pro. mulgated in the year 533 of the Christian era. The plan was marked out by Justinian himself, in the order of the perpetual edict; it was divided into fifty books, broken into titles. Under each title was placed the fragments of ancient jurisconsults, considered pertinent to the subject treated; and these so modified or extended as to conform to the necessities of the times. It has been said that the language of the Pandicts is so pure that the Roman language might be fairly deduced from it, were all

other Roman writers lost.

The invasion of Italy by the barbarians was the beginning of a dark period, during which the laws of Justinian were almost wholly obscured. In 867 Bascilius of Macedon, with a mean jealousy of Justinian's fame, and in the hope of shading forever his immortal system, published a new code of laws, and these continued to be interpreted and annotated upon until the original works of Justinian were entirely obscured. The authority of the completion of Basilius, corrected and added to by his son Leon, existed until the taking of Constantinople by the Turks. At the time of the restoration of the empire of the west, by Charlerestoration of the empire of the west, by Charlemagne, nothing remained of the noble system of laws prepared by Justinian except a few fragments. But in 1136 an entire copy of the Pandicts was recovered at Amalfi in Italy. Lotharius the Second, in the war undertaken in favor of Innocent against Roger, Count of Sicily, who sought to elevate Peter of Leon, had received valuable succours from Pisa.

The people of the latter, valuing more highly the conquests of the mind than the usual military rewards, demanded for their recompense this copy of the Pandicts. It was given and religiously preserved until 1446, when, in a contest with the Florentines, it was taken and conveyed triumphantly to Florence, where it still remains a wonderful relic of the sixth century.

From this period the study of the civil law began to be pursued with enthusiasm in the west, spreading every where over Italy and France. Then the beauty and harmony of the system began to be displayed in the institutions of all Europe. It governed all Italy, spread itself to Holland, Asia and Africa, and became the favorite scheme of law for Germany, Portugal and Spain. In France it was the basis of nearly all her judicial authority, and the boasted common law of England, but emanates from the obscured, but still generous and overflowing fountains of Roman jurisprudence. In

Blackstone and other English law, writers may be seen occasionally shed the gleams of this Roman jurisprudence, and its brilliant radiations may be traced to almost every settled doctrine of the law distinguishing the present times.

It will not be considered necessary to argue the usefulness of simplicity in any code of laws Their perfection consists in their simplicity. If by a superabundance of the phrases and terms in which laws are involved, anything is left uncertain, that uncertainty must be controlled by the arbitrary decision of the judge. Human laws should leave nothing for the judge arbitrarily to construe or supply. The terseness and conciseness necessary to avoid these evils were wonderfully displayed in the Roman laws. These qualities were most apparent in the law of the twelve tables. "Go immediately with him who cites you before the judge," would in our day be a mandate filling an octavo page. Compare the provisions of that law which forbids usury with the extensive regulations of modern statutes. "Let him who takes more than one per cent interest for money loaned, be condemned to four times the sum lent."

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The present age has not done justice to the Roman law. The tendency has been continually to reject it in favor of an exclusive system a system not of principles but of precedents. The lawyer

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spends his time in investigating analogies of circumstances, while perhaps constantly deviating from the line of truth. His mind instead of expanding upon the broad surface of science is prone to a comparison of parallel cases. His library is filled with books of reports and a few elementary works.

The number of cases, not the weight of principle, moves the scale of justice.

The chief facts mitigating against the use of the civil law, is the political evils with which its origin was associated. The fact that amidst the defects of the Roman government such a system could be perfected, is a pleasing evidence of the decided independence of her judicial department. Many evils, therefore, attracted to the civil law, were evils, not of the system, but of the arbitrary blending of several departments of government in the same person. In modern times, we recognize a just distinction between the several departments of government. From ancient history, it is difficult to trace in clear lines the boundary or capacity of these. Science has been applied with happy success to the structure of society; and we recognize a simple and useful division of its powers into executive, legislative and judicial. Indeed, the most valuable conquest of government, in modern times, is the separation of these into distinct and independent departments; for the principle of liberty is resistance. In the original organization of the

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Roman government this blending together of the several departments of society in one person, and the consequent arbitrary exercise of their functions was dr productive not only of many of the social evils of former times, but was one reason why a system of laws, correct in principle, might have been improperly administrated. We cannot, therefore, insufficiently admire the superior wisdom and justice eS RY which separated the principles which regulate the judicial functions of the State or prince, from mere political prerogations, and establish them upon the firm basis of natural justice. This was done by Justinian, and in the Roman jurisprudence we find the longest known history of any set of human institutions, and from its commencement to its close, it was progressively modi. fied for the better, or for what the authors of the modification conceived to be the better. Proceeding upon the ground of human experience, their whole system of law begins and ends in a series of practical judgments, declaring the just relations daily arising out of the conflicting interests of a vigorous and mighty people, and exceptional value is given to these judgments for all nations and for all time, as having their origin and cultivation, not in the arbitrary decisions of irresponsible rulers, but in the labored opinions of successive jurists elucidating, age after age, universal principles on which to determine all manner of private and public rights. Jurisprudence, like oratory, was closely linked with the State and with the forum and encouraged by favor and renown among the Roman people. To this science, therefore, the noblest devoted their talents and their time; and many, who have spent their prime in the more active service of the commonwealth, benefited their countrymen by their legal advice, at a period of life, when, to the technical skill of the lawyer they added the enlarged wisdom of the statesman.

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CORPORATIONS Where several corporations transferred their entire property and business to a new corporation, which accepted the same subject to an agreement between the members of the original corporations that payment for the transfer should be made by an issuance of stock of the new company to the several original incorporators, respectfully, in exchange for the old stock held by each, an original stockholder could sue the new company to compel it to issue to him the number of its shares conceded to be his proportion. (Anthony v. American Glucose Co. [N. Y.], 41 N. E. Rep. 23.)

CONSOLIDATION -NEW STOCK.

CORPORATIONS -IDENTITY OF STOCKHOLDERS. The fact that the stockholders in two corporations are the same, or that one corporation exercises a control over the other, through ownership of its stock, or through the identity of the stockholders, such corporations being separately organized under distinct charters, does not make either the agent of the other, nor merge them into one, so as to make a contract of one corporations binding upon the other. (Richmond & I. Const. Co. v. Richmond, [N., I. & B. R. Co., U. S. C. C. of App.], 68 Fed. Rep. 105.

CORPORATIONS-TRANSFERS OF STOCK-NOTICE. The statutes of Connecticut provide (Gen. St. § 1924) that no pledge of stock of a corporation organized under the laws of that State shall be effectual except as against the pledgor or his executors or administrators, unless it is consumated by an actual transfer of the stock, or a copy of the power of attorney to transfer is filed with the officers of the corporation: Held, that the purpose of this statute is to protect persons dealing upon the faith of the apparent ownership of the stock in ignorance of the pledge, and accordingly actual notice thereof is equivalent to a transfer on the books, or the filing of the power of attorney. (Hotchkiss & Upson Co. v. Union Nat. Bank, [U. S. C. C. of App.], 68 Fed. Rep. 76.

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sissippi, and whose estate has been judicially administered there, such action of the court is wholly unauthorized by law, and its decree can be impeached collaterally. (Fletcher v. McArthur, [U. S. C. C. of App.], 68 Fed. Rep. 65).

DEATH BY WRONGFUL ACT-DAMAGES.- Where a

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GARNISHMENT

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INTERPLEADER.

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minor is killed, leaving him surviving, a mother, but no father, it is not necessary for her, in order to recover substantial damages for his death, to prove pecuniary loss since she is entitled to his earnings, and therefore pecuniary loss will be presumed (Bradley v. Sattler [Ill.], 41 N. E. Rep. 171.) EQUITY creditor sued in attachment and garnished a fund in the hands of a trustee. While this suit was pending, a third person filed a bill in another court to compel the trustee to turn such fund over to him, and the trustee thereupon filed a cross-bill of interpleader. Held, that the court had no jurisdiction. either of the bill or the cross-bill, the remedy at law in the garnishment proceedings being adequate and the court of law having first acquired jurisdiction. (Newman v. Commercial Nat. Bank of Peoria [Ill.], 41 N. E. Rep. 156.)

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JURISDICTION

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FEDERAL

FEDERAL COURTS QUESTION. If it appears from the plaintiff's complaint that in any aspect which the case may assume, the right of recovery, so far as it tnrns upon the construction of such statutes, is not merely a colorable claim, but rests on a reasonable foundation, a federal question is involved which is adequate to confer jurisdiction, although the right of recovery is also predicated on other grounds not involving federal questions, and although the case is ultimately decided upon grounds not involving the determination of any federal question. (St. Paul, M. & M. Ry. Co. v. St. Paul & N. P. R. Co. [U. S. C. C. of App.], 68 Fed. Rep. 2.)

COLLATERAL ATTACK

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JUDGMENT COURT. When a petition for administration has been presented to a parish court in Louisiana, containing a representation of all facts necessary to confer jurisdiction to grant administration to the public administrator and decree the sale of property to pay debts, and such court, having power to inquire into the facts, and in the regular exercise of its jurisdiction, has made a decree granting administration and directing a sale, such decree cannot be questioned collaterally, either on the ground that the succession was not vacant, but had been assumed by the heirs by a tacit acceptance, or that the decedent died in another parish, or that there were no debts, or that no notice of the proceedings was given to the parties interested. (Garrett v. Boeing [U. S. C. C. of App,], 58 Fed. Rep.

51.

WAIVER

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MECHANIC'S LIEN CURITY. It seems that, while the right to a mechanic's lien may be waived by the acceptance of a contract to pay for the work in securities whose existence is inconsistent with the existence of a lien, such waiver is only conditional upon the actual performance of the contract, and if is is not performed, the right to the lien continues. (Central Trust Co. v. Richmond, N. I. & B. R. Co. [U. S. C. C. of App.], 68 Fed. Rep. 90.)

MUTUAL BENEFIT INSURANCE APPLICATION.Where, by the terms of a certificate of insurance, issued by a mutual benefit association, the applica tion and medical examination are made a part of the contract, and in such application it is stipulated

that the statements made therein and answers made to the medical examiner are to be deemed warranties, untrue statements in such application and untrue answers made to the medical examiner in answer to questions propounded, constitute a breach of the warranty, and avoid the contract. (Knudson v. Grand Council of Northwestern Legion of Honor [S. Dak.], 63 N. W. Rep. 911.)

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shown to have been used there before delivery to the railway company: Held, that, as to all rolling stock acquired after the recording of the mortgage, the lien of the mortgage attached immediately upon its delivery to the company in W. county, or upon its coming within that county, and before any lien could attach in favor of the landlord under the Iowa statute (McClain's Code, § 3192), giving a landlord a lien for rent on any personal property of the tenant used on the premises during the term. (Manhattan Trust Co. v. Sioux City & N. Ry. Co. Trust Co. of North America [U. C. C. C., Iowa], 68 Fed. Rep. 72.)

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