property is denied to articles which exactly resemble them in
being objects of enjoyment and subjects of right. But to these
influences, which exert peculiar force in a subject-matter so stable
as that of law, are afterwards added others more consistent with
progress in enlightenment and in the conceptions of general
expediency. Courts and lawyers become at last alive to the
inconvenience of the embarrassing formalities required for the
transfer, recovery, or devolution of the favoured commodities, and
grow unwilling to fetter the newer descriptions of property with the
technical trammels which characterised the infancy of law. Hence
arises a disposition to keep these last on a lower grade in the
arrangements of Jurisprudence, and to permit their transfer by simpler
processes than those which, in archaic conveyances, serve as
stumbling-blocks to good faith and stepping-stones to fraud. We are
perhaps in some danger of underrating the inconveniences of the
ancient modes of transfer. Our instruments of conveyance are written,
so that their language, well pondered by the professional draftsman,
is rarely defective in accuracy. But an ancient conveyance was not
written, but _acted_. Gestures and words took the place of written
technical phraseology, and any formula mispronounced, or symbolical
act omitted, would have vitiated the proceeding as fatally as a
material mistake in stating the uses or setting out the remainders
would, two hundred years ago, have vitiated an English deed. Indeed,
the mischiefs of the archaic ceremonial are even thus only half
stated. So long as elaborate conveyances, written or acted, are
required for the alienation of _land_ alone, the chances of mistake
are not considerable in the transfer of a description of property
which is seldom got rid of with much precipitation. But the higher
class of property in the ancient world comprised not only land but
several of the commonest and several of the most valuable moveables.
When once the wheels of society had begun to move quickly, there must
have been immense inconvenience in demanding a highly intricate form
of transfer for a horse or an ox, or for the most costly chattel of
the old world--the Slave. Such commodities must have been constantly
and even ordinarily conveyed with incomplete forms, and held,
therefore, under imperfect titles.

The Res Mancipi of old Roman law were land--in historical times, land
on Italian soil,--slaves and beasts of bu