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CHAP. IX. obligation of the debtor for the unpaid purchase-money. We may still go forward, and picture to ourselves a proceeding wholly formal, in which nothing is handed over and nothing paid; we are brought at once to a transaction indicative of much higher commercial activity, an executory Contract of Sale.

If it be true that, both in the popular and in the professional view, a Contract was long regarded as an incomplete Conveyance, the truth has importance for many reasons. The speculations of the last century concerning mankind in a state of nature, are not unfairly summed up in the doctrine that "in the primitive society property was nothing, and obligation everything;" and it will now be seen that, if the proposition were revered, it would be nearer the reality. On the other hand, considered historically the primitive association of Conveyances and Contracts explains something which often strikes the scholar and jurist as singularly enigmatical, I mean the extraordinary and uniform severity of very ancient systems of law to debtors, and the extravagant powers which they lodge with creditors. When once we understand that the nexum was artificially prolonged to give time to the debtor, we can better comprehend his position in the eye of the public and of the law. His indebtedness was doubtless regarded as an anomaly, and suspense of payment in general as an artifice and a distortion of strict rule. The person who had