PRESCRIPTION. 



PRESSURE. 



728 



seisin or possession hath been within threescore years next before such 

 prescription made." This statute prevented any claim being made by 

 prescription unless there had been seisin or possession within sixty 

 years ; but it still allowed the commencement of the enjoyment at any 

 time within legal memory before the sixty years to be proved. The 

 Act, 3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 100, directs that "the respective periods of 

 years thereinbefore mentioned shall be deemed to be the period next 

 before * some suit or action wherein the claim or matter to which such 

 period may relate shall be brought into question" ( 4) ; but it only 

 excludes proof of commencement of enjoyment, and it only gives the 

 absolute right, when the several periods of years, reckoning backwards 

 from the time of some suit or action wherein the matter is brought 

 in question, are completed ; and it neither excludes the proof nor 

 gives the absolute right if there has been an interruption, within the 

 meaning of this statute, which has been submitted to or acquiesced 

 in "for one year after the party interrupted shall have had notice 

 thereof, and of the person making or authorising the same." In these 

 cases, if there has been seisin or possession of the ancestor or pre- 

 decessor within sixty years, the statute of Henry VIII. will still apply, 

 and evidence of the commencement of enjoyment within legal memory 

 may still be given. 



The Acts here enumerated do not apply to a claim " of a manor, a 

 court leet, a liberty, separate jurisdiction, treasure trove, wreck, waifs, 

 ami "ther forfeitures, fair, market, fishery, toll, park, forest, chace, or 

 any privilege legally known as a franchise, as well as anything per- 

 _ to those rights which come under the description of dignities 

 nr offices." (Mr. Hewlett's ' Reply, &c., to certain Evidence before the 

 Select Committee of the House of Commons on Records, February, 



The term prescription is derived from the Roman law, but the 

 ng of the term in the Roman law is different. Blackstone says 

 (ii, c. 17, note f), " This title of prescription was well known in the 

 Roman law by the name of usucapio (' Dig.,' 41, tit. 3, s. 3), so called 

 because a man that gains a title by prescription may be said nut rcm 

 eajiere." This remark is not correct. Usucapio in the Roman law was 

 founded solely on possession as such [POSSESSION], and it applied only 

 to " corporeal things : " ' by the laws of the Twelve Tables usm-apiou 

 of moveable things was complete in one year ; and of land and houses 

 in two years." (Uaius, ii. 42.) " To usucapion was afterwards added, 

 as a supplement, the longi temporis pncscriptio, that is, an exceptio 

 (plea) against the ' rei vindicatio,' the conditions of which were nearly 

 j in the case of usucapion." (Savigny, ' Das Recht des 

 ,' p. C.) The term prMcriptiq was properly applied to that 

 which a plaintiff (actor) prefixed (prscscripsit) to the formula by whirh 

 he made his demand against a defendant, for the purpose of limiting 

 or qualifying his demand. It seems afterwards to have been used as 

 equivalent to exceptio or plea. 



' un (ii., c. 22) treats of ownership acquired "sine titulo et tra- 

 , et per usucaptionem, s. per longatn contintiam et pacificam 

 poiwesifioiieiii ; " but he adds that no time was legally fixed as necessary 

 to make the title perfect, and it depended on the discretion of the 

 et. It appears, then, that the, rule as to the time of prescription 

 C'.imnencing from the 1st of Richard I. (A.D. 1189) was not established 

 at the time when Bracton wrote, which wa.-t in the reign of Hemy III. 

 Bracton observes that " longa possessio," an above defined by him, 

 " sicut jus ]nrit jus i><>.-sidendi et tollit actionem vero domino petenti;" 

 or the atu :ii i gives in course of time the right to possess. 



.] In the same chapter he treats of the mode of acquiring 

 " pomesrio r. lis, sicut possessio juris, viz. alicujus servitutis 



per paiientiam <|iie tr.diitur ad consensum, et longum usum et paci- 

 ticum." lirauton then makes no distinction between a thing corporeal 

 ar.d incorjK>real as to the mode of acquiring right by possession and 

 long usage, nor >! 'lie word prescription. 



nyns, Pracri/,tii> H . Vincr's At,riJ : /,,< nt ; Starkie, Law / /.'./- 



. ii., p. 255, Mr. KBIT'S ed.) 



I'KKSCKI I-T10N has, by the law of Scotland, a much wider opera- 

 tion than either by the civil law or the law of England, supplying 

 ice of the Statute of Limitations in the latter system. It not 

 enily protects individuals from adverse proceedings which other parties 

 mi^ht h.ive conducted if the lapse of time had not taken place, but it 

 i i! instance* creates a positive title to property. The prescription 

 by which a ri^-ht of property can be established is that of forty years 

 a peri> I from the Praerripti<) quadrayinla anmirum of the 



0. Whatever adverse right is not cut off by the other special 

 iptions of shorter periods, is destroyed by the I'mij preacriptinii. 

 It may be paid generally to preclude the right of exacting per- 

 formance of auy 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 

 ; i'.rty 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 possessors title this is called negative pre- 



* Richards r. Fry, 7 A. & E. G98. 



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 " bear 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 triennial, 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. 



PRESENTATION. [BENEFICE.] 



PRESENTATION TO A LIVING. [ADVOWSON.] 



PRESENTMENT. [JuBT.] 



PRESENTMENT OF A BILL OR NOTE. [BILL OP 

 EXCHANGE.] 



PRESS, HYDRAULIC. [HYDRAULICS.] 



PRESS, PRINTING. [PiiiNTixo.] 



PRESSURE. To explain the use of this term in mechanics, we 

 must remember its previous and common use. When we attempt to 

 move matter, or when we sustain a weight, the effect is accompanied 

 by a perception which is called pressure. The sense of touch is nothing 

 but this perception ; contact without pressure is not touch, and there 

 are even weights too small to give the sense of touch. A small feather 

 supported on the open palm is not felt, though it would fall to the 

 ground if the palm were removed. 



The word pressure is soon iudissolubly connected with the notion of 

 motion caused or prevented. Let the obstacle which is pressed 

 suddenly break, and the hand which pressed must follow, unless the 

 person who presses can take an instantaneous warning to cease bin 

 effort. Hence, whenever we see motion caused, prevented, or altered, 

 we are apt to carry with us the notion that pressure is exerted. The 

 weight in the scale of a balance is said to press the scale ; not that we 

 suppose the scale to have muscles to be acted upon, and nerves to cany 

 news of the action to a living brain, but that we see a counteraction of 

 the known tendency of the weight to fall, and know that if the 

 counteraction were the work of a human agent, that agent would be 

 conscious of the perception of pressure. Hence everything fitted to 

 produce the sensation of pressure, such as a weight, the elasticity of a 

 spring, &c., comes to be called a pressure, and the word loses its 

 meaning of a perception conveyed, and takes that of an agent proper 

 to produce that perception if the human being were situated so as to 

 receive it. 



This consideration is not unimportant, for a latent confusion between 

 pressure as a perception and pressure as a cause proper to produce that 

 perception has prevented many from a clear understanding of the New- 

 tonian doctrine of gravitation, has caused some to reject it altogether, 

 and has made one or two write books against it. We have in mechanics 

 the word FOBCK, which really means nothing but the cause of motion 

 produced , altered, or prevented ; but this word force having been used in 

 two distinct senses, namely, both in the sense of pressure and in that 

 of acceleration produced by pressure, it is sometimes necessary to have 

 recourse to the word preaure instead of force where precision of lan- 

 guage is required. The motion of the planets id continually altered : 

 there must be a producing cause of that alteration, a force, an agent 

 proper to produce the sensation of pressure in a human being who 

 should interfere with it, if such a thing could be ; or, in common 

 language, a pressure. If it is found that the laws of alteration in a 

 planet's motion are such that the pressure must always be directed 

 towards the sun, and if we thence say that the sun attracts the planet, 

 or pulls the planet towards it (pull and pressure being the same terms, 

 or at least only differing in their original meaning by this, that a pull 

 is made towards the agent, and a pressure from him), a person who 

 thus learns the notion of attraction may, without absolutely attributing 

 consciousness to the sun, obtain a rather mysterious notion of attraction 

 from something remaining of the original sense of the word pull or 

 pressure. This it is of course desirable that he should get rid of ; but 

 if, from failing to do so, he should be inclined to doubt of what is 

 called attraction, he would do well to remember that by the same 

 rule he should deny that a weight placed in the scale of a balance 



