Rome had spent herself in building up the external, visible framework on which European civilization was to hang; and this fact, observable in the word-relics of her military and political exploits, is observable still more intimately in the character and history of that great institution, our common law. Dignified vocables like _justice_, _jurisdiction_, _jurisprudence_, speak for themselves the lasting influence of the great Roman conception of ‘jus’—that abstract ideal of the relation between one free human being and another in so far as it is expressed in their actions. It is not that in any sense we took over the Roman system; lawyers as well as poets are keen to insist that we built up our own. But as freedom slowly broadened down from precedent to precedent, there was always before the early English kings and judges a sort of pattern—more than that, a vital principle which had outlived one body and was waiting to be clothed with another. It was the spirit of Roman law living on in her language. A whole chapter might be written on the numerous English words whose meanings can be traced back to the usages of Roman law. Take, for instance, the word _person_. Derived, probably, from an Etruscan word meaning an actor’s mask, _person_ was used by the Roman legislators to describe a man’s personal rights and duties, which were defined according to his position in life. Its present meaning of an individual human being is largely due to the theologians who hit upon it when they were looking for some term that would enable them to assert the trinity of Godhead without admitting more than one “substance”. When we remember for how long a time Latin continued to be the universal written language of educated Europe,[14] the language of history and philosophy as well as of theology, we can imagine how the subtle flavour of this word’s former meaning clung to its syllables through all their ecclesiastical soarings and was ready, as soon as it came to English earth, to assist the brains of our early lawyers in their task of imagining and thus creating that fortunate legal abstraction, the British subject. ‘Obligatio’ in early Latin meant merely the physical binding of someone to something; but in the Roman law of that date a defaulting debtor was literally bound and delivered a prisoner into the hands of his creditor. Thus, when a little later on this crude practice was abandoned, ‘obligatio’ came to mean the duty to pay—a duty which the creditor could now only enforce against his debtor’s property; and in this way the general meaning of our word _obligation_ was developed. Similarly, retaliation came to us from the Latin ‘Lex Talionis’, the latter word being associated with ‘talis’ (such or same) and implying a punishment that fits the crime; while _advocate_, _capital_,[15] _chattel_,[15] _classical_, _contract_, _emancipate_, _formula_, _heir_, _peculiar_, _prejudice_, _private_, _property_,