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It existed, indeed, in ancient Rome, and was comprehended under the general term of stellionate, from stelio, a little subtle serpent, common in Italy.

Thus a too artful fraud causes the aggravating crime called stellionate, and a cheat becomes a forger when he has the cunning to sap the very foundations of our security in written documents.

This sale is really a stellionate and an extortion; but by the legal fiction of the right of property, this same sale, severely punished, we know not why, in other cases, is a source of profit and value to the proprietor.