Note 28 — BOOK V. CONCERNING BUSINESS TRANSACTIONS.

The irresponsible, and more than despotic authority vested by the Roman laws in the father over the son, was thoroughly repugnant to the Visigothic conception of justice and freedom, which had been transmitted through many generations of barbarian ancestors. The Roman father not only possessed the power of life and death over his children, but had the undisputed right to sell them into slavery. The parental and filial relation was hedged about with such restrictions that it was almost impossible to sever it during life. By the law of the Twelve Tables a son could not be free, unless he had been sold as a slave and manumitted, three times. His reduction to a condition of servitude carried with it many civil disabilities which could never be removed. The independence of a son of his father’s control rendered his inheritance of the parental estate impossible. These oppressive regulations were either greatly modified, or entirely abrogated, by the more equitable policy of Visigothic legislation. In the case of female children also, under the latter system, principles more consonant with ideas of justice prevailed. The emancipation of the sex from arbitrary restraint also made great progress, when it is remembered that a woman, no matter what her age or position, was always considered by the Romans to be in a condition of tutelage.—[Ed.]