ples to
its true history. It was classed among the "natural" modes of
acquisition, both because it was generally practised among the Italian
tribes, and because it was a process which attained its object by the
simplest mechanism. If the expressions of the jurisconsults be
pressed, they undoubtedly imply that Tradition, which belongs to the
Law Natural, is more ancient than Mancipation, which is an institution
of Civil Society; and this, I need not say, is the exact reverse of
the truth.

The distinction between Res Mancipi and Res Nec Mancipi is the type of
a class of distinctions to which civilisation is much indebted,
distinctions which run through the whole mass of commodities, placing
a few of them in a class by themselves, and relegating the others to a
lower category. The inferior kinds of property are first, from disdain
and disregard, released from the perplexed ceremonies in which
primitive law delights, and thus afterwards, in another state of
intellectual progress, the simple methods of transfer and recovery
which have been allowed to come into use serve as a model which
condemns by its convenience and simplicity the cumbrous solemnities
inherited from ancient days. But, in some societies, the trammels in
which Property is tied up are much too complicated and stringent to be
relaxed in so easy a manner. Whenever male children have been born to
a Hindoo, the law of India, as I have stated, gives them all an
interest in his property, and makes their consent a necessary
condition of its alienation. In the same spirit, the general usage of
the old Germanic peoples--it is remarkable that the Anglo-Saxon
customs seem to have been an exception--forbade alienations without
the consent of the male children; and the primitive law of the
Sclavonians even prohibited them altogether. It is evident that such
impediments as these cannot be overcome by a distinction between kinds
of property, inasmuch as the difficulty extends to commodities of all
sorts; and accordingly, Ancient Law, when once launched on a course of
improvement, encounters them with a distinction of another character,
a distinction classifying property, not according to its nature but
according to its origin. In India, where there are traces of both
systems of classification, the one which we are considering is
exemplified in the difference which Hindoo law establishes between
Inheritances and Acquisitions. The inherited property of the father is
shared