On What Is Just Regarding the Alienation of Property of Minors

For frequently, that which lacks effect is said not to exist. For example, that which is owed for a future day, although it is owed even before the day, as in §. 2. I. de V. O. Institute of Obligations. Yet Ulpianus asserts in l. 41. ff. eôd. that it is clearly not owed. Conversely, regarding the Præjudicium Tertij prejudice to a third party, so that this person is held with effect, the Civil Laws have not reprobated the natural obligation in a ward; but they left all its effects safe, since in the third party the favor that was fighting for the ward ceases, and therefore so does the very disposition of the law. The matter will become clearer by a single example: Thus if a ward has accepted a loan of 10 and has given a surety to the creditor for greater security, the ward, with regard to his own prejudice—that is, so that he himself can be sued with effect, or that other effects of the natural obligation can have a place—is clearly not said to be naturally obligated. But with regard to the prejudice of the surety, he is held as naturally obligated, to this end, that the surety can be sued, who otherwise would not be held himself if the principal obligation did not subsist. arg. l. 178. ff. de R. I. Digest on rules of law

TH. XVI.

We therefore wonder why the most excellent Lord