creditor should not be allowed to assert his tortious conversion _of the check, though the effect of such a ruling is to fix upon the creditor a bargain which he never made. The case of sending the check by mail is essen tially the same as that just discussed, in that the creditor is given the power in fact to take the check without making an agreement with the debtor, though forbidden to exercise such power. THE following classification of labor in Roman Law is given by Sir John Macdonnell in an article on the "Classification of Forms and Contracts of Labor" in the cur rent issue of the Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation : Many of them are based on the Roman law. The bulk of the work performed in modern times by laborers and artisans was in ancient Rome done by slaves, who were let out by their masters. Their opera; or friictus, were viewed in much the same light as the produce of machines, tools, hands, etc., let out to hire. Labor by freed men was common; and it was often an implied term of emancipation that the slave should perform certain services for his former master. In the Digest are references to some of the problems vhich now occupy our Courts. But, for the most part, Roman lawyers dealt with questions as to work and labor which are now of little importance. The texts re lating to the rights and duties of masters as to wages and hours of work are brief, few, and imperfect. In Roman law the hiring of land and the law of master and servant are alike treated under the head of locatiocondtictio. Contracts for the labor and ser vice of freemen for reward fell under the sub-divisions—locatio-condnctio opcranim and opcris. As the landlord was the locator of a farm and the lessee the conductor, so the servant was the locator opcranim, and the master the conductor operarum. If a work man had to do something in respect of goods or chattels supplied to him—c. g., if he had to weave materials into cloth—he was called conductor open's, and the owner of the mate
rials was locator operis. Another pe culiarity of Roman law arising from the prevalence of slave labor was the distinction between opera1 illib erales and opera liberales; the former being the subject-matter of a contract locatio-con dnctio operarum, the latter not. According to Roman law—and the same is true of some modern codes—the contract of work and la bor was treated as locatio-conductio or mandatum, according as the service was menial, mechanical, or intellectual, remunerated or gratuitous. IN an article in the Laid Magazine and Revim.1 for May on 'The Right of the Subject to Personal Liberty in English Law, S. P. J. Merlin has this to say concerning villein age and slavery: Early in the reign of George III., there arose cases which drew much attention to the status of negro slaves in this country. The history of the various forms of servi tude prevalent at different periods in our history is rather, obscure. One of the many effects of the Conquest was to improve the condition of the Saxon thaws. Until the Norman period the lot of this class was prac tically the lot of slavery, but hereafter the Normans, by totally disregarding the de grees of English dependence, raised the theows to a common level with the general body of villeins. During the Middle Ages vil leinage gradually fell into desuetude, but was not finally and legally abolished until the decision in the aforementioned case of Pigg v. Caley. Traffic in English slaves in England was at an early date discounte nanced by the Church. Owing chiefly to the benign influence of the Church, slavery as an institution gradually became obsolete in English law, though it was never abolished by any statute. In fact, the decision in the case of the negro Somersett was grounded more on policy than on express enactment. The essence of Lord Mansfield's famous judgment in Somersett's Case is, "that the state of slavery is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive
