Note 50 — BOOK X. CONCERNING PARTITION, LIMITATION, AND BOUNDARIES.

The intricate questions relating to the leasing, conveyance, descent, and forfeiture of real property are, as has been seen, elaborated and set forth with great skill and learning in the Visigothic Code. Not a single chapter treating of this subject is designated Antiqua, to indicate that it is derived from the Civil Law. And this is the more remarkable when the nomadic origin and barbarous customs of the not remote ancestors of those who enacted these important regulations, are considered. A nation of shepherds and marauders could not be supposed to be familiar with the tenures, contracts, transfers, boundaries, and torts, by which the title to landed estates is either acquired or lost; yet the Visigoths framed their laws with due consideration for the principles of equity, and the general welfare of all classes of freeborn citizens. In many respects their laws were superior to those of the Romans. Only two years by the Twelve Tables, and twenty under the Code of Justinian, were necessary to create a prescriptive right to the ownership of land. Under the Roman jurisprudence, until the population became debased by servile and barbarian marriages, no foreigner could legally hold or convey real-property. The Visigothic Code, on the other hand, carefully guarded the rights of the subject race, and prevented them from being prejudiced by the fraud or oppression of their rulers. The inferior classes under the Republic and the Empire, were practically serfs, living in a condition of abject villenage; those of corresponding station subject to the domination of the Visigoths, were often thrifty tenants of indulgent landlords, or, at the worst, were bound by exacting contracts which they had entered into of their own free will. The extreme solicitude manifested for the protection of the rights of all parties, where the title to real-property is concerned, is disclosed by the manifold precautions enjoined, and the stringent rules to be observed, in determining the existence of adverse possession. A contract for the rental of land, which would be valid in any of our courts, could easily be drawn from the laws of the Code relating to leaseholds.—[Ed.]