Definition and Citations:
In Roman law. Cession of goods. A surrender, relinquishment, or assignment of all his property and effects made by an insolvent debtor for the benefit of his creditors. The effect of this voluntary action on the debtor’s part was to secure him against imprisonment or any bodily punishment, and from infamy, and to cancel his debts to the extent of the property” ceded. It much resembled our voluntary bankruptcy or assignment for creditors. The term is commonly employed iu modern continental jurisprudence to designate a bankrupt’s assignment of property to be distributed among his creditors, and is used in the same sense by some English and American writers, but here rather as a convenient than as a strictly technical term. See 2 Bl. Comm. 473; 1 Kent, Comm. 247, 422; Ersk. Inst 4, 3, 26.