tected every man's estate
and effects with unrelenting rigour as well from the thief and
the injurer, as from the unauthorized possessor and the insolvent
debtor.

Guardianship

Protection was in like manner provided for the estate of persons
not capable of bearing arms and therefore not capable of protecting
their own property, such as minors and lunatics, and above all
for that of women; in these cases the nearest heirs were called to
undertake the guardianship.

Law of Inheritance

After a man's death his property fell to the nearest heirs: in the
division all who were equal in proximity of relationship--women
included--shared alike, and the widow along with her children was
admitted to her proportional share. A dispensation from the legal
order of succession could only be granted by the assembly of the
people; previous to which the consent of the priests had to be
obtained on account of the ritual obligations attaching to succession.
Such dispensations appear nevertheless to have become at an early
period very frequent. In the event of a dispensation not being
procured, the want of it might be in some measure remedied by
means of the completely free control which every one had over his
property during his lifetime. His whole property was transferred
to a friend, who distributed it after death according to the wishes
of the deceased.

Manumission

Manumission was unknown to the law of very early times. The owner
might indeed refrain from exercising his proprietary rights; but
this did not cancel the existing impossibility of master and slave
coming under mutual obligations; still less did it enable the slave
to acquire, in relation to the community, the rights of a guest
or of a burgess. Accordingly manumission must have been at first
simply -de facto-, not -de jure-; and the master cannot have been
debarred from the possibility of again at pleasure treating the
freedman as a slave. But there was a departure from this principle
in cases where the master came under obligation not merely towards
the slave, but towards the community, to leave him in possession
of freedom. There was no special legal form, however, for thus
binding the master--the best proof that there was at first no
such thing as a manumission,--but those methods were employed for
this object which the law otherwise presented, testament, action,
or census. If the master had either declared his slave free when
executing his