That notion we owe chiefly to the ancient
Romans, and it took them several centuries to comprehend the idea and
put it into practice. We owe them a debt of gratitude for it. The
custom of regulating business and politics and the affairs of life
generally by voluntary but binding agreements is something without
which we moderns would not think life worth living. It was after the
Roman world--that is to say, Christendom, for in the Middle Ages the
two terms were synonymous--had become thoroughly familiar with the
idea of contract, that the practice grew up of granting written
charters to towns, or monasteries, or other corporate bodies. The
charter of a mediaeval town was a kind of written contract by which
the town obtained certain specified immunities or privileges from the
sovereign or from a great feudal lord, in exchange for some specified
service which often took the form of a money payment. It was common
enough for a town to buy liberty for hard cash, just as a man might
buy a farm. The word _charter_ originally meant simply a paper or
written document, and it was often applied to deeds for the transfer
of real estate. In contracts of such importance papers or parchment
documents were drawn up and carefully preserved as irrefragable
evidences of the transaction.
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