r was of old sufficient to constitute a
Stipulation, but only a question and answer couched in technical
phraseology specially appropriated to the particular occasion.

But although it is essential for the proper appreciation of the
history of contract-law that the Stipulation should be understood to
have been looked upon as a solemn form before it was recognised as a
useful security, it would be wrong on the other hand to shut our eyes
to its real usefulness. The Verbal Contract, though it had lost much
of its ancient importance, survived to the latest period of Roman
jurisprudence; and we may take it for granted that no institution of
Roman law had so extended a longevity unless it served some practical
advantage. I observe in an English writer some expressions of surprise
that the Romans even of the earliest times were content with so meagre
a protection against haste and irreflection. But on examining the
Stipulation closely, and remembering that we have to do with a state
of society in which written evidence was not easily procurable, I
think we must admit that this Question and Answer, had it been
expressly devised to answer the purpose which it served, would have
been justly designated a highly ingenious expedient. It was the
_promisee_ who, in the character of stipulator, put all the terms of
the contract into the form of a question, and the answer was given by
the _promisor_. "Do you promise that you will deliver me such and such
a slave, at such and such a place, on such and such a day?" "I do
promise." Now, if we reflect for a moment, we shall see that this
obligation to put the promise interrogatively inverts the natural
position of the parties, and, by effectually breaking the tenor of the
conversation, prevents the attention from gliding over a dangerous
pledge. With us, a verbal promise is, generally speaking, to be
gathered exclusively from the words of the promisor. In old Roman law,
another step was absolutely required; it was necessary for the
promisee, after the agreement had been made, to sum up all its terms
in a solemn interrogation; and it was of this interrogation, of
course, and of the assent to it, that proof had to be given at the
trial--_not_ of the promise, which was not in itself binding. How
great a difference this seemingly insignificant peculiarity may make
in the phraseology of contract-law is speedily realised by the
beginner in Roman jurisprudence, one of whose first stumbling-blocks