were men learned in the law, not lawyers, however, for Rome did not have professional lawyers, as we understand the term. These, so-called judges, selected and commissioned by the Consuls, discharged the functions of both judges and jurors. They were more like assessors, as understood by us. They were entitled to have the assistance of jurisconsults to sit and advise them; but not to vote in the finding of the verdict. The judges heard the testimony, listened to the arguments of the advocates and decided the issue by ballot. The verdict was delivered to the Praetor, and was not subject to review of any kind by him.

The Edicts of the successive Praetors, modified, shaped, altered, systematized and moulded by the greatest legal minds available, were, after many years, finally revised and consolidated under the direction of the Emperor, Hadrian, A.D. 129, by the most distinguished jurist of the time, Salvius Julianus. The revised Edicts or consolidation, afterwards known as the Edictum Perpetuum, being ratified by a Senatus Consultum, henceforth became enshrined in the statutory law. According to Gibbon,-" The Edictum Perpetuum became the invariable standard of Roman Civil Jurisprudence."

(4) The Codes.

The various Codes materially assisted in the development of the Roman law. No authoritative or systematic Code of the laws appeared, during the Republic. According to Cicero,-" The laws lay scattered and confused, in his time." It was allowed, for centuries, under Imperial rule, to remain in a shapeless and enormous mass, receiving constant accumulation, rendering confusion worse confounded." At length Gregorius, an eminent jurist, making a collection of standing authorities, published a Digest of the whole Rescripts from Hadrian to Diocletian, called the Gregorian Code. It obtained great popularity and became a standing authority in Rome. Theodosius

appointed a committee of eight civilians to reduce the Imperial Constitutions, from the time of Constantine, into a methodical compendium. This collection was published in six volumes. It became a standard work throughout the Empire, and was known as the Theodosian Code. After the lapse of a century appeared the immortal Code of Justinian. In it the Civil Law of Rome became crystallized into completeness.

In the year A.D. 527, Flavius Justinianus became the ruler of the Roman Empire of the East. He was one of the most enlightened Emperors that ever swayed the destinies of the Roman Empire of the East. He early conceived the idea of consolidating the laws extending over a period of more than twelve hundred years, the greatest reform ever contemplated in the history of jurisprudence. Its magnitude may be seen by the following extract from the pages of Gibbon :

"In the space of many centuries, the infinite variety of laws and legal opinions had filled many thousands of volumes, which no fortune could purchase and no capacity digest. Books could not easily be found; and the judges, poor in the midst of riches, were reduced to the exercise of their illiterate discretion."

In the second year of his reign, Justinian appointed ten jurisconsults, with the great Tribonian at their head, and directed him and his associates,

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To read and correct the books which had been written by authority upon the Roman law, and from them to extract a body of Jurisprudence, in which there should be no two laws contradictory or alike, and that the collection should be a substitute

upon the plan of the perpetual edict, and contain all that is worth having in the Roman Law for the preceding twelve hundred years, so that it might thereafter be regarded as the temple and sanctuary of Justice; and that the selections be made from the civilians, and the laws now in force, with such discretion and sagacity as to produce in the result a perfect and immortal work."

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They were further directed by the Emperor, retrench what was obsolete or objectionable, and make such changes as might appear to them to be necessary to adapt them to the existing state of society."

The compilation was four-fold, consisting of the Code, the Digest (in Latin) or the Pandects (in Greek), the Institutes and the Novellæ or Novels. The Code was divided into twelve books, containing 4,600 statutory enactments of the laws of Rome existing and in force at the time of the compilation. It was published A.D. 529.

The Digest or Pandects was a condensation of all the previous commentaries on the law, and extracts from the different Codes or works; also an abstract of the decisions of the Courts upon subjects which had been brought before them for adjudication. It was divided into fifty books, grouped in seven sections. It was published A.D. 533. Although ten years were allowed by the Emperor for its execution, yet it was completed in three years. Selections from over 2,000 treatises were compressed in one volume. In these extracts, it is said, over three millions of lines were condensed in one hundred and fifty thousand lines. More than one-third of the whole was from the pen of the famous Jurist, Ulpian.

The Institutes, or the third great work of Justinian, was a summary or commentary for the use of the magistrates or students for a general knowledge of the principles of the Roman law. They were written under the general supervision of Tribonian. It was published A.D. 533, and received the form of law, at the same time as the Pandects. It has been called the best commentary ever published on any law.

The fourth work, the Novellæ or Novels, was an appendix or supplement, containing, in addition to various laws omitted through oversight in the Code or Digest, laws made by the Emperor himself.

Gibbon pays the following tribute to the consummate wisdom and excellence of Justinian's great work:

"The vain titles of the victories of Justinian are crumbled into dust, but the name of the legislator is inscribed on a fair and everlasting monument. Under his reign, and by his care, the civil jurisprudence of Rome was digested in the immortal works of the Code, the Pandects and the Institutes."

The following commendation is from the pen of that able American Commentator, Chancellor Kent:-

"The history of the venerable system of the Civil Law is peculiarly interesting. It was created and gradually matured, on the banks of the Tiber, by the successive wisdom of Roman Statesmen, Magistrates and Sages: and after governing the greatest people in the ancient world, for the space of thirteen or fourteen centuries, and undergoing extraordinary vicissitudes, after the fall of the Western Empire, it was revised and studied, in Modern Europe, on account of the variety and excellence of its general principles. It is now taught and obeyed in France, Spain, Germany, Holland and Scotland; and on the banks of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence. The grand destinies of Rome are not yet accomplished. She reigns throughout the world by her reason, after having ceased to reign by her authority."

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Three of England's greatest Chief Justices were ardent admirers of the Roman Civil Law. Sir Matthew Hale is said to have studied with care and to have greatly admired the Code, Pandects and InstiHe said:" The true grounds and reason of law were so well delivered in the Digest and Institutes, that a man could never well understand law as a science without resorting to the Roman Law for information."

The great Lord Chief Justice Mansfield, the founder of the Commercial Law of England, based the principles of his decisions upon the praetorian element in the Code and Pandects of Justinian. He believed with that great Roman Jurist, Ulpian :That justice is a constant and uniform disposition of mind to render to every one his rights."

Lord Chief Justice Holt

said: The principles of our law are borrowed from the Civil law of Rome."

In 1802 Napoleon, when First Consul, conceived the idea of a Code of Law for France. He, in furtherance thereof, appointed a commission of eminent jurists to frame one, and instructed them to take the Code of Justinian as the basis upon which it should be formulated. It is said he supervised the work as it progressed, offering valuable suggestions on many points. The Code Napoleon, published in 1807, has been pronounced an admirable work. The system of taxation

was fair and made to bear on all classes alike. He abolished primogeniture. It proved a boon of inestimable value to France. "I shall go down to posterity (said he with just pride) with the Code in my hand."

The Civil Code of the Province of Quebec, brought into force on August 1st, 1866, just before Confederation, is based upon the Customs of Paris and the Code Napoleon.

The question naturally arises, why England has been so slow to adopt the admirable features of the Roman Civil law. The answer is obvious,-simply because of the introduction of the barbarous system of feudalism by William the Conqueror, in the eleventh century. Under its withering blight women lost their legal identity on marriage. Her personal property in possession became absolutely the husband's. She could not sell or pass by will her own separate real estate. The anomalous legal status and deprivation of her just rights were continued for many centuries, with occasional concessions, until Parliament passed the Married Women's Property Acts, 1870 and 1882. The blight of the feudal system still casts its baneful shadows upon large tracts of land withdrawn from cultivation by the titled aristocracy. England still clings. to primogeniture.

All, who are familiar with the history of Rome, know how bitter and prolonged was the struggle between the Patricians and Plebeians to share in the public domain. The heroic deeds of the Gracchi form one of the most interesting chapters in the history of the Agrarian wars of the Republic. Right eventually triumphed over might. A free land system became one of the notable victories of the Roman State.

A striking feature of the influence of Roman Civil law and Roman Canon law is seen in the case of testamentary causes, and in the matter of intestate estates, regarding the disposition of personal property, under the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts. How it