48 ON THE PROBABLE ORIGIN 
only slowly yielded to the necessity which the 
more complicated relations of their new state of 
society produced, for the appointment of per- 
manent judges, and the delegation of the power 
of decision to ajury. Every freeman, that is 
originally every possessor of land, was therefore 
also an Ariman (Ehrenmann) or bonus homo.* 
But this state of things could not be permanent; 
among the freemen themselves distinctions of 
property and consequently of station and sup- 
posed fitness for office gradually arose, and the 
name, which had included all, was limited in its 
application to those whom the prejudice of 
mankind in favour of the possessors of wealth 
regarded as exclusively ‘respectable people.’ 
Such has been in other languages the process 
by which names descriptive of moral quality 
have been appropriated to a certain class in so- 
ciety. Such a class would form itself especially 
in the cities, and by the hereditary transmission 
of property would tend to hereditary aristocracy. 
Freedom was no doubt essential to the charac- 
ter of a bonus homo, and the property, which 
was not less so, was commonly property in land; 
but, after the rise of the cities to opulence, it is 
clear that the amount rather than the source of 
wealth was the circumstances on which the ap- 
* Savigny conjectures with some probability that Goth?, Gott, is 
the same word as good. 
