Among the Romans, the _libertini_, or freedmen, were formerly distinguished by a threefold division [Just. Inst. lib. 1. tit. 5.]. They sometimes obtained what was called the greater liberty, thereby becoming _Roman citizens_. To this privilege, those who were enfranchised by testament, by the census, or by the vindicta, appear to have been alone admitted: sometimes they obtained the lesser liberty only, and became _Latins_; whose condition is thus described by Justinian. "They never enjoyed the right of succession [to estates].--For although they led the lives of free men, yet with their last breath they lost both their lives and liberties; for their possessions, like the goods of slaves, were detained by the manumittor [Harris's Inst. lib. 3. tit. 8.]." Sometimes they obtained only the inferior liberty, being called _dedititii_: such were slaves who had been condemned as criminals, and afterwards obtained manumission through the indulgence of their masters: their conditions was equalled with that of conquered revolters, whom the Romans called, in reproach, _dedititii, quia se suaque omnia dediderunt_: but all these distinctions were abolished by Justinian [Inst. lib. 1. tit. 5. s. 3.], by whom all freed men in general were made citizens of Rome, without regard to the form of manumission.--In England, the presenting the villein with _free arms_, seems to have been the symbol of his restoration to all the rights which a feudatory was entitled to. With us, we have seen that emancipation does not confer the rights of citizenship on the person emancipated; on the contrary, both he and his posterity, of the same complexion with himself, must always labour under many civil incapacities. If he is absolved from personal restraint, or corporal punishment, by a master, yet the laws restrain his actions in many instances, where there is none upon a free white man. If he can maintain a suit, he cannot be a witness, a juror, or a judge in any controversy between one of his own complexion and a white person. If he can acquire property in lands, he cannot exercise the right of suffrage, which such a property would confer on his former master; much less can he assist in making those laws by which he is bound. Yet, even under these disabilities, his present condition bears an enviable pre-eminence over his former state. Possessing the liberty of loco-motion, which was formerly denied him, it is in his choice to submit to that civil inferiority, inseparably attached to his condition in this country, or seek some more favourable climate, where all distinctions between men are either totally abolished, or less regarded than in this.