t simply serve as the index
of the presence or assent of the signatory, but were literally
fastenings which had to be broken before the writing could be
inspected.

The Edictal Law would therefore enforce the dispositions of a
Testator, when, instead of being symbolised through the forms of
mancipation, they were simply evidenced by the seals of seven
witnesses. But it may be laid down as a general proposition, that the
principal qualities of Roman property were incommunicable except
through processes which were supposed to be coeval with the origin of
the Civil Law. The Praetor therefore could not confer an _Inheritance_
on anybody. He could not place the Heir or Co-heirs in that very
relation in which the Testator had himself stood to his own rights and
obligations. All he could do was to confer on the person designated as
Heir the practical enjoyment of the property bequeathed, and to give
the force of legal acquittances to his payments of the Testator's
debts. When he exerted his powers to these ends, the Praetor was
technically said to communicate the _Bonorum Possessio_. The Heir
specially inducted under these circumstances, or _Bonorum Possessor_,
had every proprietary privilege of the Heir by the Civil Law. He took
the profits and he could alienate, but then, for all his remedies for
redress against wrong, he must go, as we should phrase it, not to the
Common Law, but to the Equity side of the Praetorian Court. No great
chance of error would be incurred by describing him as having an
_equitable_ estate in the inheritance; but then, to secure ourselves
against being deluded by the analogy, we must always recollect that in
one year the _Bonorum Possessio_ was operated upon a principle of
Roman Law known as Usucapion, and the Possessor became Quiritarian
owner of all the property comprised in the inheritance.

We know too little of the older law of Civil Process to be able to
strike the balance of advantage and disadvantage between the different
classes of remedies supplied by the Praetorian Tribunal. It is certain,
however, that, in spite of its many defects, the Mancipatory Testament
by which the _universitas juris_ devolved at once and unimpaired was
never entirely superseded by the new Will; and at a period less
bigoted to antiquarian forms, and perhaps not quite alive to their
significance, all the ingenuity of the Jurisconsults seems to have
been expended on the improvement of the more venerable instrument.