The expression _persona_ in law is derived from the fact that a foreigner could not appear in court. It is a mask: another had to represent him. That the _peregrinus_ afterwards could himself sue and be sued, and that a special _prætor peregrinus_ was appointed, was not done on account of the vast amount of business, but for political reasons. The patricians themselves would not have possessed such great moneyed resources: yet the foreigners who came to Rome had to commit themselves to their patronage, the same as the clients, for which, of course, the patrician was paid a commission. Now and then perhaps the patricians may have done business on their own account. Taken in this point of view, it was not after all such a sordid usury as is generally presumed. The patricians and plebeians had quite different civil rights, as they had come together out of different states: the twelve tables, besides settling the political groundwork, first introduced one uniform civil law. Among our (German) forefathers also, there was not a geographical, but a personal distinction of rights. In Italy, the homebred population down to the twelfth century had Roman, whilst the German had Lombard and Salic law; but when the old municipalities were abolished and the elements of society were in the process of amalgamation, people first began to issue their decrees in common, they weaned themselves more and more from the old native institutions, and thus by degrees arose the statute law of the Italian towns, such as every city possesses. The patricians had a liberal law of debt, the plebeians a strict one; they had it also among themselves, but to them it only became dangerous as far as it was between them and the patricians. As soon as it is possible to run into debt, the number of small proprietors decreases from century to century. If we compare the division of the land at Tivoli in the fifteenth century with the present one, we see that at that time there were fifty times more owners of the soil than there are now.