se-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 reversed, 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 duly consummated his
part in the transaction must, on the contrary, have stood in peculiar
favour; and nothing would seem more natural than to arm him with
stringent facilities for enforcing the completion of a proceeding
which, of strict right, ought never to have been extended or deferred.

Nexum, therefore, which originally signified a Conveyance of property,
came insensibly to denote a Contract also, and ultimately so constant
became the association between this word and the notion of a Contract,
that a special term, Mancipium or Mancipatio, had to be used for the
purpose of designating the true nexum or transaction in which the
property was really transferred. Contracts are therefore now severed
from Conveyances, and the first stage in their history is
accomplished, but still they are far enough from that epoch of their
development when the promise of the contractor has a higher sacredness
than the formalities with which it is coupled. In attempting to
indicate the character of the changes passed through in this interval,
it is nece