the case of church land, two) years' default could eject him. If rent and receipts were offered and not accepted, the tenant could seal them up and deposit them with the public authority and so be safe against eviction. If eventually the lord did not take them, the tenant could keep them, and pay no more rent till the landlord demanded it, and then be liable only for future rents. As regards improvements, in the absence of express stipulations, the tenant could not sell them to outsiders, until he had offered them to the lord at the price he could get from another, and two months had passed without the lord's accepting. Nor could he alienate the farm to any but suitable persons, i.e. such as were allowed generally to hold on this tenure. The lord had to give admission to the transferee and certify it by letter in his own hand or by declaration before the governor or other public authority, a fee of two per cent. of the price being demandable for such consent.
Edicts of the Emperors were not uncommon, which granted secure possession on some such terms to anyone who cultivated waste lands and was thus in a position to pay the tax upon them. If the lands had been deserted by the owner, he could claim them back only on paying the cultivator his expenses: after two years his right was gone.
Obligations. Besides rights which are good against all the world, such as ownership and other rights to particular things, rights good only against particular persons form a most important and perhaps the most notable part of Roman Law. Such are called obligations and arise either from contract or from delict (in English usually called "tort"). The detailed classification of these given in the Institutes is in many respects artificial and is not found in the other books of Justinian.
Contracts are voluntary agreements between two or more persons. The Romans required for an agreement which should be enforceable by law some clear basis or ground of obligation. There must be either a transfer of some thing from one of the parties to the other, or a strict form of words accompanying the agreement, or there must be agreed services of one party, usually of both. As the Romans said, the contract must be formed aut re aut verbis aut consensu. Otherwise it was a bare agreement (nudum pactum), and, though available for defence against a claim, it was not enforceable by suit, except so far as it set forth the details of one of the regular contracts and was concluded in close connexion therewith, or it reaffirmed, by a definite engagement to pay, an already existing debt of promiser's or another (pecunia constituta).
It may be convenient to treat first of the most general form. The contract made verbis was called "stipulation" and was made by oral procedure between the parties present at the same place. The matter and details of the agreement being stated, the party intending to acquire
