owner who would defraud his creditors by an intended manu-
mission attempts in vain to manumit, the act being made of no
effect by the lex Aelia Sentia. 1 A master, however, who is
insolvent may institute one of his slaves heir in his will, confer-
ring freedom on him at the same time, so that he may become
free and his sole and necessary heir, provided no one else takes
as heir under the will, either because no one else was instituted
at all, or because the person instituted for some reason or other
does not take the inheritance. And this was a judicious provision
of the lex Aelia Sentia, for it was most desirable that persons
in embarrassed circumstances, who could get no other heir,
should have a slave as necessary heir to satisfy their creditors'
claims, or that at least (if he did not do this) the creditors might
sell the estate in the slave's name, so as to save the memory of
the deceased from disrepute. 2 The law is the same if a slave
be instituted heir without liberty being expressly given him, this
being enacted by our constitution in all cases, and not merely
where the master is insolvent; so that in accordance with the
modern spirit of humanity, institution will be equivalent to a gift
of liberty; for it is unlikely, in spite of the omission of the grant
of freedom, that one should have wished the person whom one
has chosen as one's heir to remain a slave, so that one should
have no heir at all. 3 If a person is insolvent at the time of a
manumission, or becomes so by the manumission itself, this is
manumission in fraud of creditors. It is, however, now settled
law, that the gift of liberty is not avoided unless the intention of
the manumitter was fraudulent, even though his property is in
fact insufficient to meet his creditors' claims; for men often hope
and believe that they are better off than they really are. Con-
sequently, we understand a gift of liberty to be avoided only