As stated in the Preface, the purpose of this book is a comparison of some of the leading rules and institutions of Roman law and English law. This is in no way new. Apart from earlier work, Professor Pringsheim, some years ago, dealt with the matter at Cambridge. Professor Schulz's Principles of Roman Law contains much on the topic. But these writers are mainly concerned with striking resemblances which they find. Dean Roscoe Pound, however, in his brilliant Spirit of the Common Law, is concerned to point out differences between the Roman conceptions and ours. In fact, however, his comparison is in the main not between the common law and the law of the Romans but between the common law and the law of the Civilians. The central notion of the developed Romanist system, he says, is to secure and effectuate the will. The Romanist thinks in terms of willed transactions, the common lawyer in terms of legal relations. But this ‘Willenstheorie’ is not Roman. It was developed by the nineteenth-century Pandectists, under the influence of Kant, who makes it clear that he is not dealing with any actual system of law. For the view that the Romanist thinks in terms of willed transactions rather than of relations Dean Pound gives terminological evidence, but it would not be difficult to find evidence of the same character for the contrary proposition.