Apart from, or side by side with, the consideration of the classes of facts just enumerated as incidentally affecting the character and capacities of parties to obligations, the law itself provided different orders of specially qualified representative persons to act in the name or on the behalf of the original parties to an obligation, or gave its special sanction to a nomination (actual or presumed) of such representatives made by the parties themselves. Such representatives may thus be arranged under the two heads of :(1) OFFICIALLY AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVES. (2) PRIVATELY AUTHORIZED Representative.

1. To the former class belong :

(a) Heirs testamentary and on an intestacy; persons (whether creditors or not) placed in the position of an heir on condition of liberating slaves, and satisfying, as far as J. (iii. 12). L. possible, the other claims or inheritance; and 15, C. (vii. 2). trustees of insolvents, whether directly nominated by a magistrate for the purpose of at once selling the assets and satisfying all claims (curator bonorum distrahendorum) or creditors put in possession (bonorum cessio) by an imperial license, as an alternative to the condition of L. 8, C. (vii. allowing the debtor a delay of five years with 71), D. (xlii. the hope of thereby obtaining payment in full 3, 5). (quinquennales induciæ).

A special constitution of Justinian's for the first time allowed the creation of obligations of all sorts 13 J. (iii. 19). C. (iv. 11). which provided that the fulfilment of them, either in respect to rights or to duties, was to begin with the heir. It was the same emperor who, while recognizing the general principle that the heir presumably inherited all the L. 22, C. (vi. obligatory rights and duties of the deceased, enabled him to protect himself against personal liabilities not covered by the value of the estate. This he could do by making within three months or a year, according to the situation of the property, a duly authenticated statement (inventarium) of the assets of the deceased, and paying the creditors in the order in which they presented

20).

themselves. If the legatees were paid at the expense of creditors, the latter might recover against the former; but the heirs were exempt from all liability. Generally speaking, obligations arising out of offences or delicts were available in favour of the plaintiff's heir, with the exception of the somewhat peculiar one arising out of personal injuries (actio injuriarum), such as libels and disgraceful assaults, for which the penalty was fixed partly by the plaintiff and partly by the judge. But they were not available against the heir of the defendant. Even in the case of an obligation arising out of a contract where fraud was imputed, the obligation could only be turned to account against a defendant's heir in case proceeds of the fraud had come into his hands.

J. (iv. 4).

J. (iv. 12).

(b) Guardians and trustees in guardianship (tutores curatores) were, in fact, public officials, a main part of whose duties was, as will appear in a later chapter, the becoming parties to obligations to which the original and principal-though in some way incapacitated—parties were the young, the infirm, or the insane.

(c) All public bodies or corporations had special officials bearing various titles, who assumed the obligations which befel corporations, enforcing rights, performing duties, making payments, giving receipts, bringing, defending, or settling by arrangement, actions at law.

Thus, while it was the essential right of a corporation to have either a syndicus or an actor, the latter might be appointed only for a special transaction. He was usually a slave, and he might be required, on behalf of the body he represented, to accept a legacy, or to exact a security for the prevention of threatened injury (damni infecti), or for the payment of a judgment debt. In such cases the money was payable not to the actor, but to the general manager (administrator) of the affairs of the community, L. 10, D. (iii. who also had the right to settle matters in 4). L. 12, C. (ii. 4). course of litigation. The actor must be appointed in a legal way and with the proper formalities. It

was not enough that one purporting to be an actor did, in fact, represent a majority of the individual members of the corporation. It was said that "he interposed not on behalf of individual persons, but of the corporation or township as a whole."

L. 2, 3, D. (iii. 4).

2. To the class of privately authorized representatives belong those authorized (a) expressly, such as persons acting under a contract of mandate, paid agents, persons called to act on behalf of those in whose power they were when acting under explicit directions; and (b) implicitly, such as persons in another's power yet not acting under his explicit directions, either through dealings with the property of their father or master, or through the acquisition of the benefits of the obligations by the use of their own time and labour, invest him with advantageous rights of which he is as fully able to avail himself as if he had procured them by his own unassisted efforts. These rights are enforced by the several actions described in connection with the account of slaves' peculium, and known as quod jussu, de peculio, de in rem verso. By a like implied agency the husband represented husband and wife in managing the dotal estate, and partners represented one another.

The express representative character, imparted by a mandate-which could not be undertaken for a pecuniary consideration, though the agent might derive other kinds of advantages from his intervention-extended either to some single matter or to all the concerns of the principal (procurator omnium bonorum). The single transaction might be the bringing or defending of an action in the principal's enforced absence, or the mere formal completion of contracts, or the collection of debts, or the exaction, by use of the proper forms, of the different sorts of security.

The liabilities to which a person exposed himself by interfering with the affairs of another, as well as the rights to which his interference, if bond fide, might entitle him, belong to the class of obligations into which one of the parties, at least, enters in an impliedly and, as it were

accidentally, representative character (actio negotiorum gestorum).

Similarly, a person incurred obligatory liabilities through injuries of certain special kinds committed by persons in his power, resident on his premises, or in his temporary or permanent employ. Such injuries are comprised in the list of quasi-delicts, the essence of most of which was that the owner of the premises, house, room, ship, tavern, or hostelry, through the medium of which the injury was wrought, was in no way personally and morally accountable for the injuries committed, and indeed was probably ignorant of the fact of their commission; while his sons living with him, his slaves or free persons in his permanent or temporary employ, involved him, by their careless acts or omission, in the necessity of giving compensation to innocent and injured strangers, and so made him party to an obligation he could in no way have. foreseen.

§ 3-Extinction of obligations.

An obligation, as existing between two parties, was extinguished by any mode which either terminated every legal relationship which bound them together or which substituted a new legal relationship for the existing one. The mere addition of a supplementary obligation, as by adding a new party (adstipulatio), was no extinction; but the taking up or absorption of an old obligation into a new and more comprehensive one,-as where, owing to insolvency, or death, or the institution of a trustee in guardianship, or lunacy (curatela), a single debt was treated as part of an aggregate whole or universitas juris,—is such an extinction.

The modes of extinction of obligations may be classed as falling under one or other of the following heads :(1) Fulfilment (solutio).

(2) Release (acceptilatio).

(3) Set-off and mutual adjustment of accounts (compensatio).

(4) Renewal (novatio).

(5) Amicable adjustment of litigated claims (transactio). (6) Reference to an arbitration (compromissum).

(7) Transfer (cessio nominum).

(8) Bankruptcy (cessio bonorum, curatela).

(9) Merger (confusio).

(10) Judicial process or decree, oath, and prescription.

(1) FULFILMENT (solutio).

The natural and normal mode of extinguishing an obligation is by precisely satisfying all the rights, and performing all the duties, which it strictly comprises. Where the obligation is an alternative one, an actual choice has to be made between two or more objects or modes of fulfilment. Where things are only generically described, they have to be specifically or individually selected, as, for instance, "a bushel of corn" generally has to be reduced to the definite shape of a particular bushel, or "a quarter in value of the wine in my cellar" to be converted into a numerically estimated quantity of bottles described as belonging to different vintages or as bearing various brands and stamps. Where, again, suspensive conditions may be interposed, interest may have to be calculated and added to the debt, or discount to be subtracted by reason of premature payment, or deductions to be made for counter expenses, for advances, or in respect of losses through the delay or negligence of the person in favour of whom the obligation is to be performed. The obligation is only fulfilled when all the acts of this kind are done, the calculations and adjustments made, the conditions satisfied and the residuary payments accomplished, which the express or presumed agreement of the parties contemplated; or which ordinary custom, as applicable to that particular class of transactions and sanctioned by law, imports into their agreement; or which, as in the case of the penal damages for injurious offences committed more or less intentionally (delicta and quasi-delicta), positive law peremptorily announces to be the sole necessary and sufficient mode of fulfilling the obliga