PRESCRIPTION, in Scotch law, has a much wider operation than in either the civil law or the law of England, supplying the place, as it does, of the statute of limitations in the latter system. In Scots law, and according to the long prescription, titles may be had to heritable property through a series of consecutive titles, extending over a period of forty years. But this positive prescription must be accompanied by negative prescription, to afford it free operation. By negative prescription is meant the absence of any effort on the part of one who may have a competing title to put his claim in force. This negative prescription will of itself destroy a claim by one party in cases where it cannot be directly said there is relative possession on the part of the other, independently of the existence of any positive prescription. The act creating this prescription says generally regarding obligations, "the party to whom the obligation is made that has interest therein, shall follow the said obligation within the space of forty years, and take document thereupon. And if he does not, it shall be prescribed, and be of no avail, the said forty years being run, and unpursued by the party." Prescription is counted from the day when fulfilment of the obligation became exigible, and it is effectual in all cases of debt, bonds, provisions in marriage-contracts, &c. Prescription can only be interrupted by the act of the person against whose claim it is running. Suspension of prescription takes place during minority; and so if the person having a claim have been twenty years a minor, he cannot lose his claim by negative prescription in less
than sixty years. A similar suspension takes place in all cases where the creditor is physically disabled from acting. The short prescription, or, more properly speaking, limitation, is an exclusion on the ordinary means of proving the obligation. The triennial prescription, or the limitation of the existence of an obligation to three years, runs on most debts contracted in ordinary business without a written obligation. A prescription of five years takes place in all bargains concerning moveables or sums of money which may be proved by witnesses, such as contracts of sale, letting and hiring, &c. Holograph writings, or those of which the whole is written by the grantor, if not attested by witnesses, prescribe in twenty years. Actions on the ground of the transactions between tutor and curator, on either side, prescribe in ten years after the expiration of the guardianship; and the operation of certain cautionary obligations is limited to seven years; while bills of exchange and promissory-notes prescribe as items of debt in six years. (Hill Burton's Manual of Scots Law.)