[Sidenote: Partiality of the law to women.] There were many legal qualifications designed to help women evade the strict letter of the law when this, if enforced absolutely, would work injustice. Ignorance of the law, if there was no criminal offence involving good morals, was particularly accepted in the case of women "on account of the weakness of the sex."[150] A typical instance of the growth of the desire to help women, protect them as much as possible, and stretch the laws in their favour, may be taken from the senatorial decree known as the Senatus Consultum Velleianum.[151] This was an order forbidding females to become sureties or defendants for any one in a contract. But at the end of the first century of our era the Senate voted that the law be emended to help women and to give them special privileges in every class of contract. "We must praise the farsightedness of that illustrious order," comments the great jurist Ulpian,[152] "because it brought aid to women on account of the weakness of the sex, exposed, as it is, to many mishaps of this sort." [Sidenote: Rights of women to inherit.] The rights of women to inherit under Roman law deserve some mention. Here again we may note a steady growth of justice. Some general examples will make this clearer, before I treat of the specific powers of inheritance. I.--In the year 169 B.C. the Tribune Quintus Voconius Saxa had a law passed which restricted greatly the rights of women to inherit.[153] According to Dio[154] no woman was, by this statute, permitted to receive more than 25,000 sesterces--1250 dollars. In the second century after Christ, this law had fallen into complete desuetude.[155] II.--By the Falcidian Law, passed in the latter part of the first century B.C., no citizen was allowed to divert more than three fourths of his estate from his natural heirs.[156] The Romans felt strongly against any man who disinherited his children without very good reason; the will of such a parent was called _inofficiosum_, "made without a proper feeling of duty," and the disinherited children had an action at law to recover their proper share.[157] A daughter was considered a natural heir no less than a son and had equal privileges in succession[158]; and so women were bound to receive some inheritance at least. III.--It is a sad commentary on Christian rulers that for many ages they allowed the crimes of the father to be visited upon his children and by their bills of attainder confiscated to the state the goods of condemned offenders. Now, the Roman law stated positively that "the crime or punishment of a father can inflict no stigma on his child."[159] So far as the goods of the father were concerned, the property of three kinds of criminals escheated to the crown: (1) those who committed suicide while under indictment for some crime,[160] (2) forgers,[161] (3) those guilty of high treason[162]. Yet it seems reasonable to doubt whether these laws were very often carried out