nucleus
of the code contains no trace of a Will. Whatever testamentary law
exists, has been taken from Roman jurisprudence. Similarly, the
rudimentary Testament which (as I am informed) the Rabbinical Jewish
law provides for, has been attributed to contact with the Romans. The
only form of testament, not belonging to a Roman or Hellenic society,
which can reasonably be supposed indigenous, is that recognised by the
usages of the province of Bengal; and the testament of Bengal is only
a rudimentary Will.

The evidence, however, such as it is, seems to point to the conclusion
that Testaments are at first only allowed to take effect on failure of
the persons entitled to have the inheritance by right of blood genuine
or fictitious. Thus, when Athenian citizens were empowered for the
first time by the Laws of Solon to execute Testaments, they were
forbidden to disinherit their direct male descendants. So, too, the
Will of Bengal is only permitted to govern the succession so far as it
is consistent with certain overriding claims of the family. Again, the
original institutions of the Jews having provided nowhere for the
privileges of Testatorship, the later Rabbinical jurisprudence, which
pretends to supply the _casus omissi_ of the Mosaic law, allows the
Power of Testation to attach when all the kindred entitled under the
Mosaic system to succeed have failed or are undiscoverable. The
limitations by which the ancient German codes hedge in the
testamentary jurisprudence which has been incorporated with them are
also significant, and point in the same direction. It is the
peculiarity of most of these German laws, in the only shape in which
we know them, that, besides the _allod_ or domain of each household,
they recognise several subordinate kinds or orders of property, each
of which probably represents a separate transfusion of Roman
principles into the primitive body of Teutonic usage. The primitive
German or allodial property is strictly reserved to the kindred. Not
only is it incapable of being disposed of by testament but it is
scarcely capable of being alienated by conveyance _inter vivos_. The
ancient German law, like the Hindoo jurisprudence, makes the male
children co-proprietors with their father, and the endowment of the
family cannot be parted with except by the consent of all its members.
But the other sorts of property, of more modern origin and lower
dignity than the allodial possessions, are much more easily a