s obligations,
and discharged the gifts of friendship or liberality, which his last
will had bequeathed under the name of legacies. But as the imprudence or
prodigality of a dying man might exhaust the inheritance, and leave
only risk and labor to his successor, he was empowered to retain the
Falcidian portion; to deduct, before the payment of the legacies, a
clear fourth for his own emolument. A reasonable time was allowed to
examine the proportion between the debts and the estate, to decide
whether he should accept or refuse the testament; and if he used the
benefit of an inventory, the demands of the creditors could not exceed
the valuation of the effects. The last will of a citizen might be
altered during his life, or rescinded after his death: the persons whom
he named might die before him, or reject the inheritance, or be exposed
to some legal disqualification. In the contemplation of these events,
he was permitted to substitute second and third heirs, to replace each
other according to the order of the testament; and the incapacity of
a madman or an infant to bequeath his property might be supplied by a
similar substitution. [154] But the power of the testator expired with
the acceptance of the testament: each Roman of mature age and discretion
acquired the absolute dominion of his inheritance, and the simplicity of
the civil law was never clouded by the long and intricate entails which
confine the happiness and freedom of unborn generations.

[Footnote 150: That succession was the rule, testament the exception,
is proved by Taylor, (Elements of Civil Law, p. 519-527,) a learned,
rambling, spirited writer. In the iid and iiid books, the method of
the Institutes is doubtless preposterous; and the Chancellor Daguesseau
(Oeuvres, tom. i. p. 275) wishes his countryman Domat in the place of
Tribonian. Yet covenants before successions is not surely the natural
order of civil laws.]

[Footnote 151: Prior examples of testaments are perhaps fabulous. At
Athens a childless father only could make a will, (Plutarch, in Solone,
tom. i. p. 164. See Isaeus and Jones.)]

[Footnote 152: The testament of Augustus is specified by Suetonius, (in
August, c. 101, in Neron. c. 4,) who may be studied as a code of Roman
antiquities. Plutarch (Opuscul. tom. ii. p. 976) is surprised. The
language of Ulpian (Fragment. tit. xx. p. 627, edit. Schulting) is
almost too exclusive--solum in usu est.]

[Footnote 153: Justinian (Novell. cxv. No