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the losers by the interior administration of that monarch. In his efforts to consolidate his power he had made, or winked at, sweeping transfers of real and personal estate to his supporters from those who were disaffected to his cause. Now everyone was called on to take his own again wherever he could find it, without being troubled to make out his claim in conformity with the niceties of legal practice, it being conceded that there might have been an indefinite loss or destruction of instruments of title during the general upset. Lands and cattle, houses and movables, were to revert to their original owners; slaves of both sexes, who had obtained or assumed their freedom in the laxity of the times, were to return to the hand of their masters; and even the marriage tie was declared to be a nullity if contracted under the altered social conditions. Thus, husbands and wives who relapsed into servitude could be repudiated by their hymeneal partners; and even nuns, who had tasted of matrimony, had the option of re-entering their convents. On the other hand, Justinian did not encroach on the liberty of his new subjects by depriving them of advantages which they had formerly enjoyed; for instance, the provincial Rectors were to be chosen locally by the prelates of the Church from among the Italians themselves; and the salaries customarily paid at Rome for the promotion of liberal studies, literature, rhetoric, law, and physic, were to be continued to the professors. He also invited the Roman senators to visit him at the Byzantine Court whenever it pleased them to do so; and enacted that travellers might pass without let or hindrance between Italy and the rest of the Empire. The usual formulas as to the efficient collection of the taxes and against fiscal oppression were, of course, prominently expressed in this Constitution; and in this de-