of one tribe by another, otherwise the conquering tribe would of course
keep its own customs, as the Spartans did among the conquered people of
Laconia. Now it appears likely that these conditions were exactly
fulfilled by the primaeval settlements on the hills of Rome. The hills
are either escarped by nature or capable of easy escarpment, and seem
originally to have been little separate fortresses, by the union of
which the city was ultimately formed. That there were tribal differences
among the inhabitants of the different hills is a belief to which all
traditions and all the evidence of institutions point, whether we
suppose the difference to have been great or not and whatever special
theory we may form as to the origin of the Roman people. If the germ of
law, as distinguished from custom, was brought into existence in this
manner, it would be fostered and expanded by the legislative exigencies
of the political and social concordat between the two orders, and also
by those arising out of the adjustment of relations with other races in
the course of conquest and colonization.

Roman law had also, in common with Roman morality, the advantage of
being comparatively free from the perverting influences of tribal
superstition. [Footnote: From religious perversion Roman law was
eminently free: but it could not be free from perverting influences of a
social kind; so that we ought to be cautious, for instance, in borrowing
law on any subject concerning the relations between the sexes from the
corrupt society of the Roman Empire.] Roman morality was in the main a
rational rule of duty, the shortcomings and aberrations of which arose
not from superstition, but from narrowness of perception, peculiarity of
sphere, and the bias of national circumstance. The auguries, which were
so often used for the purposes of political obstruction or intrigue,
fall under the head rather of trickery than of superstition.