PRESCRIPTION has, by the law of Scotland, a much wider opera tion than either by the civil law or the law of England, supplying the place of the Statute of Limitations in the latter system. it not only protects individuals from adverse proceedings which other parties might have conducted if the lapse of time had not taken place, but it in some instances creates a positive title to property. The prescription by which a right of property can be established is that of forty years— a period borrowed from the I'racsrriptio quadraginta annorunt of the Romans. Whatever adverse right is not cut off by the other special prescriptions of shorter periods, is destroyed by the long prescription. It may be said generally to preclude the right of exacting of any claim, as to which no judicial attempt has been made to exact performance for forty years from the time when it was exigible. To create a title to real property, the long prescrip tion must be both positive and negative. The party holding the property must, by himself or those through whom he holds, have been forty years in unchallenged possession of the property on a title ostensibly valid—this is called positive prescription ; and the claimant and those whom he represents must have been forty years without an ostensible title, and must, by not judicially attacking it, have tacitly acquiesced in the possessor's title—this is called negative pre scription. An action raised in a competent court interupts the long prescription. It is usually stated in the Scottish law-books that it is interrupted by the minority of any person who could challenge the opposing right ; but it would be more correct to apply in this case the phraseology of the French lawyers, who say it suspends pre scription, as the years of minority are merely not counted in making up the period of forty years, while, when there is a judicial interrup tion, a new period of forty years commences to run. When the
prescription applies to a pecuniary obligation, payment of interest or an acknowledgment of the obligation will interrupt it.
The other and shorter prescriptions cut off particular descriptions of claims or methods of supporting them. By the vicennial or twenty years' prescription, holograph writings, not attested with the usual solemnities of Scottish writs, cease to " hear faith in judgment," An obligation of cautionary or suretyship is limited to seven years. Bills of exchange and promissory notes cease to have force after six years ; but the debts which they represent, if they do represent debts, may be proved by other means. The quinquennial prescription cuts off all right of action, after the lapse of five years, on bargains prov able by witnesses. It also protects agricultural tenants from a demand for rent after they have been five years removed from the land to which the demand applies. The trienuial, or three years' prescrip tion, is very important. It cuts off claims on account of goods or services, the three years running from the date of the last item of the account ; and also claims for wages, each year's wages running a separate prescription, and ceasing to be exigible, if not pursued for, in the lapse of three years from the time when it became due, such claims being then only provable by the writing or oath, that is, admissive on oath of the defendant.