r aspects and stations of life, and agriculture as well as the
government of the state began to become enterprises of capitalists.
The preservation and increase of wealth quite formed a part of public
and private morality. "A widow's estate may diminish;" Cato wrote in
the practical instructions which he composed for his son, "a man must
increase his means, and he is deserving of praise and full of a divine
spirit, whose account-books at his death show that he has gained more
than he has inherited." Wherever, therefore, there was giving and
counter-giving, every transaction although concluded without any sort
of formality was held as valid, and in case of necessity the right of
action was accorded to the party aggrieved if not by the law, at any
rate by mercantile custom and judicial usage;(24) but the promise of a
gift without due form was null alike in legal theory and in practice.
In Rome, Polybius tells us, nobody gives to any one unless he must do
so, and no one pays a penny before it falls due, even among near
relatives. The very legislation yielded to this mercantile morality,
which regarded all giving away without recompense as squandering; the
giving of presents and bequests and the undertaking of sureties were
subjected to restriction at this period by decree of the burgesses,
and heritages, if they did not fall to the nearest relatives, were at
least taxed. In the closest connection with such views mercantile
punctuality, honour, and respectability pervaded the whole of Roman
life. Every ordinary man was morally bound to keep an account-book of
his income and expenditure--in every well-arranged house, accordingly,
there was a separate account-chamber (-tablinum-)--and every one took
care that he should not leave the world without having made his will:
it was one of the three matters in his life which Cato declares that
he regretted, that he had been a single day without a testament.
Those household books were universally by Roman usage admitted as
valid evidence in a court of justice, nearly in the same way as we
admit the evidence of a merchant's ledger. The word of a man of
unstained repute was admissible not merely against himself, but also
in his own favour; nothing was more common than to settle differences
between persons of integrity by means of an oath demanded by the one
party and taken by the other--a mode of settlement which was reckoned
valid even in law; and a traditional rule enjoined the ju