vanced and matured codes that,
wherever servitude is sanctioned, the Slave has uniformly greater
advantages under systems which preserve some memento of his earlier
condition than under those which have adopted some other theory of his
civil degradation. The point of view from which jurisprudence regards
the Slave is always of great importance to him. The Roman law was
arrested in its growing tendency to look upon him more and more as an
article of property by the theory of the Law of Nature; and hence it
is that, wherever servitude is sanctioned by institutions which have
been deeply affected by Roman jurisprudence, the servile condition is
never intolerably wretched. There is a great deal of evidence that in
those American States which have taken the highly Romanised code of
Louisiana as the basis of their jurisprudence, the lot and prospects
of the negro-population are better in many material respects than
under institutions founded on the English Common Law, which, as
recently interpreted, has no true place for the Slave, and can only
therefore regard him as a chattel.

We have now examined all parts of the ancient Law of Persons which
fall within the scope of this treatise, and the result of the inquiry
is, I trust, to give additional definiteness and precision to our view
of the infancy of jurisprudence. The Civil laws of States first make
their appearance as the Themistes of a patriarchal sovereign, and we
can now see that these Themistes are probably only a developed form of
the irresponsible commands which, in a still earlier condition of the
race, the head of each isolated household may have addressed to his
wives, his children, and his slaves. But, even after the State has
been organised, the laws have still an extremely limited application.
Whether they retain their primitive character as Themistes, or whether
they advance to the condition of Customs or Codified Texts, they are
binding not on individuals, but on Families. Ancient jurisprudence, if
a perhaps deceptive comparison may be employed, may be likened to
International Law, filling nothing, as it were, excepting the
interstices between the great groups which are the atoms of society.
In a community so situated, the legislation of assemblies and the
jurisdiction of Courts reaches only to the heads of families, and to
every other individual the rule of conduct is the law of his home, of
which his Parent is the legislator. But the sphere of civil law, sm