law could not be discussed in such an assembly. They would have been little attended to, and still less understood. The citizens, ever watchful for the public welfare, in which each individual was concerned, were careless of private regulations from which they could not perceive that they were to derive any immediate benefit. On the other hand, the magistrates, from whom the propositions of new laws originated, could only serve the purposes of private ambition by courting the favour of the multitude; and that favour was not to be obtained but by rendering them such services as they could appreciate. Accordingly the jurisprudence of republican Rome teems with regulations for the redress of public grievances; the rights of the people are its unvarying theme; its constant object is the preservation and the amendment of the constitution: but such is its neglect of private law that, among upwards of three hundred enactments collected by modern authors, scarcely more than twelve are to be found relating to it. Not that private law was so totally neglected as this almost incredible disproportion seems to imply; but it flowed in another channel. The deficiencies of the positive legislature in this particular were supplied from other sources, less regular but See Berriat St. Prix. Hist. du droit Romain. p. 30. perhaps better adapted to the purpose. The priesthood, the magistracy, the jurisconsults, had the means of filling up those chasms, which the comitia necessarily left in the national jurisprudence; and, complicated as the constitution of the legislative body itself may appear, it was much less so than the combination of indirect powers, employed to compensate for its insufficiency. PONTIFICAL LAW. Quod sequitur verò non solùm ad religionem pertinet, sed etiàm ad civitatis statum, ut sine iis, qui sacris publicè præsint, religioni privatæ satisfacere non possint. Continet enim reipublicæ consilio, et auctoritate optimatium, semper populum indigere. (Cicero de Legibus. Lib. 11. cap. 12.) PONTIFICAL LAW. CHAP. III. Importance of the priesthood in Rome-Policy of the national religion-Jurisdiction of the pontiffs-Dies fasti and nefasti— Jus Civile Flavianum-Jus Elianum-Account of the actiones legum-Ebutian and Julian laws-Decline of the actionesChange of the national religion. Of all the numerous privileges which the original constitution of Rome had reserved to the Patricians, there was not one more important than the exclusive right of being eligible to the offices of the priesthood. Among a people ignorant and unenlightened as were the founders of the state, religion and government are ever so closely connected, that the care of both necessarily devolves on the same persons. The men, who are too ignorant to comprehend, or too indocile to obey, the most salutary laws enforced by beings of their own |