of successors in their turn; the
Unemancipated children, the nearest class of Agnatic kindred, and the
Gentiles. Between these three orders, the Praetor interpolates various
classes of relatives, of whom the Civil Law took no notice whatever.
Ultimately, the combination of the Edict and of the Civil Law forms a
table of succession not materially different from that which has
descended to the generality of modern codes.

The point for recollection is that there must anciently have been a
time at which the rules of the Civil Law determined the scheme of
Intestate Succession exclusively, and at which the arrangements of the
Edict were non-existent, or not consistently carried out. We cannot
doubt that, in its infancy, the Praetorian jurisprudence had to contend
with formidable obstructions, and it is more than probable that, long
after popular sentiment and legal opinion had acquiesced in it, the
modifications which it periodically introduced were governed by no
certain principles, and fluctuated with the varying bias of successive
magistrates. The rules of Intestate Succession, which the Romans must
at this period have practised, account, I think--and more than
account--for that vehement distaste for an Intestacy to which Roman
society during so many ages remained constant. The order of succession
was this: on the death of a citizen, having no will or no valid will,
his Unemancipated children became his Heirs. His _emancipated_ sons
had no share in the inheritance. If he left no direct descendants
living at his death, the nearest grade of the Agnatic kindred
succeeded, but no part of the inheritance was given to any relative
united (however closely) with the dead man through female descents.
All the other branches of the family were excluded, and the
inheritance escheated to the _Gentiles_, or entire body of Roman
citizens bearing the same name with the deceased. So that on failing
to execute an operative Testament, a Roman of the era under
examination left his emancipated children absolutely without
provision, while, on the assumption that he died childless, there was
imminent risk that his possessions would escape from the family
altogether, and devolve on a number of persons with whom he was merely
connected by the sacerdotal fiction that assumed all members of the
same _gens_ to be descended from a common ancestor. The prospect of
such an issue is in itself a nearly sufficient explanation of the
popular sentiment; bu