This was unquestionably a marvelous development: "In public law, the extension, step by step, through many a civil commotion, of the full rights of citizenship from the narrow circle of a few score of favored families to the entire sphere of the free subjects of the empire; in private law, the equal communication among various classes of the rights of property and dominion over the national soil; the abolition of territorial privileges; the readjustment, by gradual and peaceful manipulation, of the cadastral map of the empire; the relaxation, by slow and experimental process, of the patriarchal authority of the head of the family; of the father over the son, whom at first he might punish, sell, or slay; of the husband over the wife, whom at first he received from her parents as the spoil of his own spear, and ruled as the chattel he had plundered;[399] of the master over the slave, absolute at first, final and irresponsible to law, custom, or conscience; the gradual replacement of the strictly national and tribal ideas on these subjects by views of right, justice, and virtue to mankind in general; the slow but constant growth of principles of natural and universal law, and their application, searchingly and thoroughly, to every subject of jurisprudence, and to all the dealings of man with man."[400] This vast Roman Empire combined all the elements of civilization characteristic of former periods. The philosopher, the lawyer, and the statesman were united in the person of her great men, as Cicero and Cato, and sometimes also the warrior, as in the case of the first of the Cæsars. The days of the Roman Republic present the most brilliant social and political epoch in the history of the ancient world. The life of a Roman citizen was emphatically a public life. The love of country was carried to the highest pitch, and was paramount to every other consideration. The laws and jurisprudence of Ancient Rome have furnished models for the whole civilized world. "The world-wide elastic system of jurisprudence by which the great Roman Empire, with all its boundless variety of races, creeds, and manners, was for ages harmoniously and equitably governed; which was accepted and ratified as an eternal possession by the same empire when it became Christian; and has been proved to satisfy the principles of law and justice announced by a religion which alone proclaimed the unity and equality of man;... finally, a jurisprudence which has been incorporated into the particular legal systems of, I suppose, every modern nation in Christendom," marks a high degree of civilization, and justifies us in regarding Roman civilization as representing the _manhood_ of our race.