-understood
Roman rules, and that it was the foreign ingredient which enabled them
to coalesce with a Roman jurisprudence that had already receded
somewhat from the comparative finish which it had acquired under the
Western Emperors.

But, though all this must be allowed, there are several considerations
which render it unlikely that the feudal form of ownership was
directly suggested by the Roman duplication of domainial rights. The
distinction between legal and equitable property strikes one as a
subtlety little likely to be appreciated by barbarians; and, moreover,
it can scarcely be understood unless Courts of Law are contemplated in
regular operation. But the strongest reason against this theory is the
existence in Roman Law of a form of property--a creation of Equity, it
is true--which supplies a much simpler explanation of the transition
from one set of ideas to the other. This is the Emphyteusis, upon
which the Fief of the middle ages has often been fathered, though
without much knowledge of the exact share which it had in bringing
feudal ownership into the world. The truth is that the Emphyteusis,
not probably as yet known by its Greek designation, marks one stage in
a current of ideas which led ultimately to feudalism. The first
mention in Roman history of estates larger than could be farmed by a
Paterfamilias, with his household of sons and slaves, occurs when we
come to the holdings of the Roman patricians. These great proprietors
appear to have had no idea of any system of farming by free tenants.
Their _latifundia_ seem to have been universally cultivated by
slave-gangs, under bailiffs who were themselves slaves or freedmen;
and the only organisation attempted appears to have consisted in
dividing the inferior slaves into small bodies, and making them the
_peculium_ of the better and trustier sort, who thus acquired a kind
of interest in the efficiency of their labour. This system was,
however, especially disadvantageous to one class of estated
proprietors, the Municipalities. Functionaries in Italy were changed
with the rapidity which often surprises us in the administration of
Rome herself; so that the superintendence of a large landed domain by
an Italian corporation must have been excessively imperfect.
Accordingly, we are told that with the municipalities began the
practice of letting out _agri vectigules_, that is, of leasing land
for a perpetuity to a free tenant, at a fixed rent, and under certain