560 Rev. Mr Williams on one Source of the 



sion of ideas is perhaps possible, from the close connection be- 

 tween landed property and mortgages. But assuredly its liabi- 

 lity to be mortgaged, could not in an early age have been the 

 accident most likely to strike the sense, and to induce men to 

 name land after it. "What among the Sabine hills, and in a half 

 pastoral state, could have given a better idea of a farm than to 

 call it fromPraeda, flocks and herds, Praedium their grazing ground, 

 just as we to this day call a mountain farm a sheep-walk f 



From Praedium (on the same principle as from Pretium, in- 

 terpres-pretis, a broker, a price-settler between two foreign mer- 

 chants) came Praes, Praedis, " the possessor of a praedium, or of 

 Praedia, secondarily, " one who could give good security, heritable 

 security as it is called in Scotland." Asconius, in his commen- 

 tary on Cicero's speech against Verres, 1 has the two following 

 passages : — " Bona Praedia, dicuntur bona, satisdationibus obnoxia, 

 sive sint in mancipiis sive in pecunia numerata ; Praedia vero do- 

 mus, agri." " Praedia sunt res ipsae, Praedes homines, id est fide- 

 jussores, quorum res bona Praedia dicuntur," of which this ap- 

 pears to be the translation : — " Bona praedia (two terms as usual 

 in Roman law formularies, put together without a conjunction, as 

 patres conscripti, &c.) are called the goods liable to be seized by 

 creditors, whether they consist of saleable property or of ready 

 money, but Praedia are house, lands." " Praedia are the things them- 

 selves, Praedes the men who have given security, whose property is 

 called by one name, Bona-praedia," i. e. what we call property per- 

 sonal and real. Vendere Praedem was what is still called by lawyers 

 to " sell up a man," that is to sell all his property. In ancient times, 

 under the cruel law of Rome, the man himself might have been 

 liable to sale. The Roman etymologers have written much non- 

 sense on this word, but not so much as emendators have compelled 

 them to write. Varro says it comes from Praesto est, which has 

 been changed into an adverbial Praes, as if there had been any 



1 Orat. adver. Lib. iii, 54, 



