Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 10.djvu/441

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THE PLEDGE-IDEA, 415 yet force a resort to it. Nor was there, apparently, any accounting for the profits. 5. Slavic Law.i From etymology and the use of the pledge-terms we get nothing. It is clear, however, that the forfeit-idea prevailed, in the late mediaeval law, as against the pledgee, — i. e. if the res perished, he recovered nothing from the pledgor ;2 and the transition-stage of an agreement to the contrary is represented.^ The pledgee's duty to restore the surplus has been reached* (here, as in Ger- manic law, preceding the pledgor's deficit-liability), though the stage of absolute forfeiture had clearly preceded.^ There was originally an unlimited right of redemption, even after a default and an ensuing sale by the pledgee to a third person ;^ but by agreement this right could be cut off.^ Collaterally with this, how- ever (as in Germanic law) seems to have existed a legal proceed- ing for the cut-off; for in the Baltic provinces the pledgee sells after judicial permission ;^ and by means of this machinery, at a later time, the clause of forfeiture (and also the evasion by sale-for- repurchase) is struck at,^ but the data are too confused to suggest anything definite. The pledgee appears in the beginning as not accounting for the fruits of reality ;^^ whether the later stage was reached does not appear. 6. Mohammedan Law.^^ The risk was on the pledgee, in the Hanefite system, but in that later stage in which its loss leaves the pledgee remediless up to the 1 The wealth of the sources, in comparison with the available data, is enormous ; for besides the Southern non-Russian Slavs, and the as yet purely customary law of many Russian tribes, there are four distinct groups of law in which early custom and modern legislation maybe traced in a continuous stream, — Russia proper, Poland, the Baltic provinces (Lithuania, etc.), and Finland. References : 1835, Macieiowski, Slavische Rechtsgeschichte, tr. by Buss, ist ed. ; 1877, Lehr, Elements du droit civil russe. 2 M., § 272 ; Lehr, 336, 345, 382 ; if a pledged animal died, the pledgor need pay only one half, and the pledgee exonerated himself by returning the skin : L., 329. « L., 336, 382. * lb. 6 M., § 272. 6 lb. 7 lb. » L., 382. » L., 330, 382; M., § 272. 10 L., 382. 11 The same paucity of translated sources here hampers us, though there are four great bodies of Mohammedan customs still in force, — the Hanefite in Turkey, the Malekite in North Africa, the Shafite in the East Indies, and the Imamite in Persia and Northern India, — each with its Coke upon Littleton and many lesser commenta- tors. The first three are sects of Sunnite, the last af the Shiite, branches, which divide the followers of Mohammed. References: 1875, Baillie, Digest of Moohummedan Law, Part I (Futawa Alum-