r influence on first principles. It gave to the bodies of
custom which were formed throughout Europe far fewer express rules
than did the Roman law, but then it seems to have communicated a bias
to professional opinion on a surprising number of fundamental points,
and the tendencies thus produced progressively gained strength as each
system was developed. One of the dispositions it produced was a
disrelish for Prescriptions; but I do not know that this prejudice
would have operated as powerfully as it has done, if it had not fallen
in with the doctrine of the scholastic jurists of the realist sect,
who taught that, whatever turn actual legislation might take, a
_right_, how long soever neglected, was in point of fact
indestructible. The remains of this state of feeling still exist.
Wherever the philosophy of law is earnestly discussed, questions
respecting the speculative basis of Prescription are always hotly
disputed; and it is still a point of the greatest interest in France
and Germany, whether a person who has been out of possession for a
series of years is deprived of his ownership as a penalty for his
neglect, or loses it through the summary interposition of the law in
its desire to have a _finis litium_. But no such scruples troubled the
mind of early Roman society. Their ancient usages directly took away
the ownership of everybody who had been out of possession, under
certain circumstances, during one or two years. What was the exact
tenor of the rule of Usucapion in its earliest shape, it is not easy
to say; but, taken with the limitations which we find attending it in
the books, it was a most useful security against the mischiefs of a
too cumbrous system of conveyance. In order to have the benefit of
Usucapion, it was necessary that the adverse possession should have
begun in good faith, that is, with belief on the part of the possessor
that he was lawfully acquiring the property, and it was farther
required that the commodity should have been transferred to him by
some mode of alienation which, however unequal to conferring a
complete title in the particular case, was at least recognised by the
law. In the case therefore of a Mancipation, however slovenly the
performance might have been, yet if it had been carried so far as to
involve a Tradition or Delivery, the vice of the title would be cured
by Usucapion in two years at most. I know nothing in the practice of
the Romans which testifies so strongly to thei