is almost universally created by it. When we in English have occasion,
in mentioning a contract, to connect it for convenience' sake with one
of the parties--for example, if we wished to speak generally of a
contractor--it is always the _promisor_ at whom our words are
pointing. But the general language of Roman law takes a different
turn; it always regards the contract, if we may so speak, from the
point of view of the _promisee_; in speaking of a party to a contract,
it is always the Stipulator, the person who asks the question, who is
primarily alluded to. But the serviceableness of the stipulation is
most vividly illustrated by referring to the actual examples in the
pages of the Latin comic dramatists. If the entire scenes are read
down in which these passages occur (ex. gra. Plautus, _Pseudolus_, Act
I. sc. i; Act IV. sc. 6; _Trinummus_, Act V. sc. 2), it will be
perceived how effectually the attention of the person meditating the
promise must have been arrested by the question, and how ample was the
opportunity for withdrawal from an improvident undertaking.

In the Literal or Written Contract, the formal act, by which an
Obligation was superinduced on the Convention, was an entry of the sum
due, where it could be specifically ascertained, on the debit side of
a ledger. The explanation of this Contract turns on a point of Roman
domestic manners, the systematic character and exceeding regularity of
bookkeeping in ancient times. There are several minor difficulties of
old Roman law, as, for example, the nature of the Slave's Peculium,
which are only cleared up when we recollect that a Roman household
consisted of a number of persons strictly accountable to its head, and
that every single item of domestic receipt and expenditure, after
being entered in waste books, was transferred at stated periods to a
general household ledger. There are some obscurities, however, in the
descriptions we have received of the Literal Contract, the fact being
that the habit of keeping books ceased to be universal in later times,
and the expression "Literal Contract" came to signify a form of
engagement entirely different from that originally understood. We are
not, therefore, in a position to say, with respect to the primitive
Literal Contract, whether the obligation was created by a simple entry
on the part of the creditor, or whether the consent of the debtor or a
corresponding entry in his own books was necessary to give it legal