L A W. 
560 
ciple was enlarged to frequent practice and pernicious 
abufe. Paffions, intereft, or caprice, fuggefted daily mo¬ 
tives for the diflolution of marriage ; a word, a Agn, a 
menage, a letter, the mandate of a freedman, declared 
the reparation ; the molt tender of human connections 
was degraded to a tranfient fociety of profit or pleafure. 
According to the various conditions of life, both fexes 
alternately felt the difgrace and injury; an inconftant 
fpouf'e transferred her wealth to a new family, abandoning 
a numerous, perhaps.a fpurious, progeny to the paternal 
authority and care of her late huiband ; a beautiful vir¬ 
gin might be difmifled to the world, old, indigent, and 
friendlefs ; but the reluctance of the Romans, when they 
were preffed to marriage by Augustus, fufficiently marks, 
that the prevailing inllitutions were leaft favourable to 
the males. A fpecious theory is confuted by this free 
and perfect experiment, which demonftrates, that the li¬ 
berty of divorce does not contribute to happinefs and vir¬ 
tue. The facility of reparation would deltroy all mutual 
confidence, and inflame every trifling difpute ; the minute 
difference between ahufband and a ltranger, which might 
foeafily be removed, might ft ill more ealily be forgotten ; 
and the matron, who in five years can fubmit to the em¬ 
braces of eight hufbands, muit ceafe to reverence the chaf- 
tity of her own perfon. 
■ - ■ - Sic. fiunt ofto mariti 
Quinque per autumnos. Juvenal, Sat. vi. 20. 
A rapid fucceflion, which may yet be credible, as well as 
the non conj'ulum namero, fed maritorum, annos fuos computanl, 
of Seneca de Beneficiis, iii. 16. Jerome faw at Rome a 
triumphant hufband bury his twenty-firft wife, who had 
interred twenty-two of his lefs fturdy predecefl'ors. But 
the ten hufbands in a month of the poet Martial, is an 
extravagant hyperbole; ( 1 . vi. epigram 7.)’’ Gibbon. 
ch. xliv. 
In giving an unlimited extent to the exercife of pater¬ 
nal power, the decemvirs were juftifted by the law of their 
founder, and examples in their hiftory. The abfolute 
power of life and death over children was not peculiar to 
the Roman father. In various countries and in different 
climates, the civilized being and the lavage, the well-re¬ 
gulated Rate and the tribe without laws, written or un¬ 
written, have alike exercifed an unlimited power over 
their families. But the chain that bound the Roman child, 
though the f'on of the free, was ttronger than even that 
of the (lave, and could only be broken by a triple eman¬ 
cipation, which fo far only was peculiar to Rome. If the 
child was fold by his father and obtained his freedom from 
his matter, he again fell under the parent’s power; if 
again fold and again free, he returned a fecond time to 
his original fubfervience ; and not until after a third fide 
and a third manumiflion, did he obtain his complete li¬ 
berty, and freedom from paternal authority. Even to the 
time of Juftinian, the mode allowed by the Tables of ma¬ 
numitting a child, continued the only one in ufe. The 
ceremonies of weighing the money, and delivering over 
the child to the ptirchafer, were fcrupuloufly adhered to; 
on the third fide, the father declared that he fold his fion 
upon the confidence that the purchafer would reftore him 
to him ; which done, the father emancipated him. But, 
whilft by. this aft he acquired his freedom, he loft at the 
fame time every expeftant right in the inheritance of an 
inteftate father ; his children hitherto born to him conti¬ 
nued in the power of their grandfather, though a Angle 
manumiflion was fufficient to liberate any one of them, 
or a daughter. The liberty and the life, if the term may 
be ufed, thus acquired, was again liable to forfeiture for 
impiety to the parent; and every perfon was at liberty to 
flay the irreverent foil who had dared to ftrike the author 
of his days, a crime which the founder of Rome left it 
not in the power of parental affeftion to forgive. 
No law of the Tables is preferved relative to adoption, 
nor is any certain mention made of it in Roman hiftory 
prior to the period of the Tables; yet it might form a 
part of the latter, as a refcript of Gordian lays, that none 
can be adopted but through thofe who, according to the 
jus civile (a term often ufed for the ancient law) have the 
legis aflio. Adoption was either before the pretor or the 
people; and either arrogative, as where the adopted had 
no natural father, in which cafe the parties mutually alked 
each other if they were willing, the one to be the father, 
the other to become the fon, and the affent confirmed it; 
or adoptive, where one father bellowed his fon upon an¬ 
other. The adopted was entitled to all the rights and 
fubjefted to all the difabilities of a natural fon, and, as to 
his natural family, became wholly a ftranger to it. In 
the time of Ulpian he i'ucceeded as a confanguineus, and 
even as an agnatus, in his fiftitious family. Women could 
not adopt, becaufe they could have no heirs. The 
power of the father extended beyond the grave in the 
right of nominating guardians, or even abfoluteiy be¬ 
queathing by will his family to a ftranger. Though the 
father had the power of thus appointing a guardian to his 
children, and of enfranchifing them himfelf; nothing in 
the Tables tells us what was the age of puberty fixed by 
the law for fions upon the anceltor’s deceafe. Until ma¬ 
jority, the neareft male kinfman on the father’s lide be¬ 
came the guardian in cafe of inteftacy. A cuftom, if not 
a law, is preferved, which regulates the care of Angle wo¬ 
men ; if no guardian had been appointed to them by the 
father, they continued until marriage to be the wards of 
their brothers, or neareft male relations on the father’s 
fide. The care of lunatics and fpendthrifts, whom the 
decemvirs very properly confidered to be in equal degree 
of mental imbecility, was all'o provided for ; and, if no 
keeper had been appointed to them, the care and manage¬ 
ment of their perfons and eftates was confided to their 
neareft paternal kindred and family. 
The power of making a will would feem to refult as a 
confequence from that of abfolute parental authority, and 
as fuch to have been always the cuftom of Rome, and not 
the confequence of any enabling law of the Tables de¬ 
rived from Solon. By the ancient law it would appear, 
that all who were not under the power of a father might 
make a will. Numa decreed one only exception in fa¬ 
vour of the veftal, who was priviledged to do fo even in 
the parent’s life-time; other females, if twelve years of 
age, and not in the father’s power, might alfo make tefta- 
mentary difpofitions with the authority of their guardians. 
If a father had not the means of depriving his fon of a 
fhare of his inheritance, his vengeance might be eafily 
eluded ; the youth had only to go a few miles to reach 
the borders of the Roman territory, from whence he might 
at any time return on the death of his father, to claim 
his (hare in the inheritance, unlefs he apprehended the 
public judgment of his fellow-citizens. The Tables 
therefore gave the father the right of dilpofing of ail his 
properly in whatever manner he thought proper. Tefta- 
ments were of three kinds ; that per as et libram was in 
the nature of a fale of the fucceflion, publilhed with all 
the formalities of completing a regular contraft. The 
money of the purchafer was weighed ; and the tranfaftion 
attefted by feven witnefi'es, including the man who weigh¬ 
ed the money and the purchafer. This mode was proba¬ 
bly invented to 1 apply the difficulty that muft almoft ge¬ 
nerally have occurred in making a will according to the 
other two forms ; and, like the mode of fale of a child, 
was in all likelihood fiftitious, and upon a confidence that 
could not be fo well explained by writing. Of the other 
two, one was comitiis calatis, when all the people were 
called together in time of peace by a herald, and the will 
was then attefted by the whole Roman people; the other 
in procinElu, or in the field in time ot war. The former, 
from the infrequency of peace, could feldom be ufed ; the 
latter was inconvenient; both had fallen into defuetude 
by the time of Ulpian ; and the teftament per as et libram. 
alone then remained ; the latter mode had alfo become 
nearly extinft in the time of Juftinian by the introduction 
of two more recent forms. The truft repofed by a will 
muft 
