wing a series of
transactions between the same parties, nothing more than the epoch is of
importance. As the material is arranged by epochs, there can be no
question in this regard. If any evolution of process or any reference to
former transactions is involved, so that the date is important, it is
given.

A collection of legal documents may be studied in a variety of ways.

Perhaps the least productive plan is to ransack them for illustrations of
a theory, or a particular point. When the theory is already well known, as
in the case of Roman or mediaeval law, such a procedure is justifiable, but
when the theory has to be made out, it is wellnigh inexcusable. Some
valuable monographs have followed this method, but they can hardly expect
to give permanent results. For comparative purposes our material is so
new, and so little worked, that it is sheer waste of time to seek for
parallels elsewhere until everything is clearly made out to which
parallels are to be sought. The whole bulk of material must be read
through and classified. Until this is done, some important point may
easily be overlooked.

The first attempts at classification will be provisional. A certain amount
of overlapping is sure to occur. For example, slave sales obviously form a
provisional group. But slaves were sold along with lands or houses. Shall
these sales be taken into the group? The sales of lands may be another
group. To which group shall we assign the sale of a piece of land and the
slaves attached to it? To answer that question we may examine the sales of
slaves and the sales of lands to see if either group has peculiarities,
the recurrence of which in a sale of land and slaves might decide. But we
soon find that a slave was sold exactly like a piece of land or any
chattel. The only exception is that certain guarantees are expected with
the slave, which differ from those demanded with a piece of land. On the
whole, then, the chief group will be "sales," with subdivisions according
to the class of property used. Hence we cannot assume that there was
already present to legal consciousness a difference between real and
personal property, or in any other sense that a slave was a person. He was
a chattel.

The classification which will be adopted is not one that will suit modern
legal ideas. It depends on the form of document alone. If two documents
have the same type of formula, they will be grouped together. A future
revision will, no doubt, a