A citizen could only forfeit his rights by apparent dereliction, and such dereliction of a valuable interest could not easily be presumed.  Yet, according to the Twelve Tables, a prescription of one year for movables, and of two years for immovables, abolished the claim of the ancient master, if the actual possessor had acquired them by a fair transaction from the person whom he believed to be the lawful proprietor.[32] Such conscientious injustice, without any mixture of fraud or force could seldom injure the members of a small republic; but the various periods of three, of ten, or of twenty years, determined by Justinian, are more suitable to the latitude of a great empire.  It is only in the term of prescription that the distinction of real and personal fortune has been remarked by the civilians; and their general idea of property is that of simple, uniform, and absolute dominion.  The subordinate exceptions of use, of usufruct, of servitudes, imposed for the benefit of a neighbor on lands and houses, are abundantly explained by the professors of jurisprudence.  The claims of property, as far as they are altered by the mixture, the division, or the transformation of substances, are investigated with metaphysical subtlety by the same civilians.

The personal title of the first proprietor must be determined by his death:  but the possession, without any appearance of change, is peaceably continued in his children, the associates of his toil and the partners of his wealth.  This natural inheritance has been protected by the legislators of every climate and age, and the father is encouraged to persevere in slow and distant improvements, by the tender hope that a long posterity will enjoy the fruits of his labor.  The principle of hereditary succession is universal; but the order has been variously established by convenience or caprice, by the spirit of national institutions, or by some partial example which was originally decided by fraud or violence.  The jurisprudence of the Romans appears to have deviated from the equality of nature much less than the Jewish, the Athenian, or the English institutions.  On the death of a citizen all his descendants, unless they were already freed from his paternal power, were called to the inheritance of his possessions.  The insolent prerogative of primogeniture was unknown; the two sexes were placed on a just level; all the sons and daughters were entitled to an equal portion of the patrimonial estate; and if any of the sons had been intercepted by a premature death, his person was represented and his share was divided by his surviving children.