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took place, this change Avas certainly not brought about 

 by the mere arbitrary will of the Emperors, but by the 

 equity of the Pr;Btors and the wisdom of the Jurispru- 

 dentes. 



In the first period of Roman jurisprudence public law 

 entirely ruled the private. This public law, as jus sacrum, 

 still bore the religious and moral character, by which all 

 the eastern nations, and even Greece, confounded reli- 

 gion, law, and morality. The Twelve Tables were the 

 first attempt to give to private law an independent posi- 

 tion, and free it from the fetters of the jus sacrum. The 

 political history of Rome goes, of course, hand in hand 

 with her legal history. By the increase of political 

 power, which the plebeians obtained gradually through 

 the increase of their number by the enlargement of the 

 town, the/«ts gentium pushed the narrow and inconvenient 

 jus civile out of many legal relations. It Avas tlm jus hono- 

 rarium, that is to say, the power of the Prastors, which 

 first wrought a fundamental change in the principles of 

 the private law. The Praetor protected, as far as his 

 power went, the Roman citizen from the rigorous conse- 

 quences of the civil law, and prevented the realization of 

 the maxim " fiat justitia, pereat mundusT But amongst all 

 sources from which Roman private jurisprudence derived 

 its life and its greatness, the " interp^etatio prudentimi'' is 

 the most important ; and if we have to point out one 

 source as pre-eminent, we cannot but say, that not the 

 will of the Emperors, but the wisdom of the great 

 lawyers has moulded the private jurisprudence of Rome. 

 One glance at the great Justinian collection will convince 

 us how far more important the sentences of Papinian, 

 Ulpian, Paulus, Gajus, Modestinus, &c., have been than 

 all the constitutions of the Emperors. 



Nothing shews so much the spirit by which the gradual 

 development of the Roman laws was animated as the 

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