children or his slaves. But the condition of the slave was far
more advantageous, since he regained by the first manumission his
alienated freedom: the son was again restored to his unnatural father;
he might be condemned to servitude a second and a third time, and it was
not till after the third sale and deliverance that he was enfranchised
from the domestic power which had been so repeatedly abused. According
to his discretion, a father might chastise the real or imaginary faults
of his children by stripes, by imprisonment, by exile, by sending them
to the country to work in chains among the meanest of his servants. The
majesty of a parent was armed with the power of life and death; and the
examples of such bloody executions, which were sometimes praised and
never punished, may be traced in the annals of Rome beyond the times of
Pompey and Augustus. Neither age nor rank, nor the consular office, nor
the honors of a triumph could exempt the most illustrious citizen from
the bonds of filial subjection: his own descendants were included in the
family of their common ancestor; and the claims of adoption were not
less sacred or less rigorous than those of nature. Without fear, though
not without danger of abuse, the Roman legislators had reposed an
unbounded confidence in the sentiments of paternal love, and the
oppression was tempered by the assurance that each generation must
succeed in its turn to the awful dignity of parent and master.

The first limitation of paternal power is ascribed to the justice and
humanity of Numa, and the maid who, with _his_ father's consent, had
espoused a freeman, was protected from the disgrace of becoming the wife
of a slave. In the first ages, when the city was pressed and often
famished by her Latin and Tuscan neighbors, the sale of children might
be a frequent practice; but as a Roman could not legally purchase the
liberty of his fellow-citizen, the market must gradually fail, and the
trade would be destroyed by the conquests of the republic. An imperfect
right of property was at length communicated to sons; and the threefold
distinction of _profectitious_, _adventitious_, and _professional_ was
ascertained by the jurisprudence of the _Code_ and _Pandects_. Of all
that proceeded from the father, he imparted only the use, and reserved
the absolute dominion; yet if his goods were sold, the filial portion
was excepted by a favorable interpretation from the demands of the
creditors. In what