Vif-Gage

In Fr.

In old English law. A vivum vadium or living pledge, as distinguished from a mortgage or dead pledge. Properly, an estate given as security for a debt, the debt to be satisfied out of the rents, issues, and profits.

Live pledge; the antithesis of mortgage or dead pledge. Strictly, it applied to a transfer of productive property to a creditor as security for a debt, upon terms that the rents, issues, and profits of the property should go to discharge the debt. See Vadium. Vigilantlbus et non dormientibus, jura subvenlunt. Those who are vigilant, not those who sleep, the laws relieve; legal remedies are for the active and vigilant. It is upon this principle that statutes are enacted for the limitation of actions; " not so much, however, with a view to assisting the vigilant, as to discouraging those who sleep on their rights, by preventing their setting up stale demands, to the injuiy and annoyance of those who are apparently in the The maxim is sometimes applied to the contract of sale, as expressing the principle in support of which the maxim caveat emptor is quoted, that purchasers must exercise proper vigilance and caution. But the more common application is to enforce the doctrine that a party who is entitled to a remedy at law must be active and vigilant in its prosecution. If he neglect for a long and unreasonable time to ask the assistance of the law, it will be refused him, both as a punishment of his neglect, and on the principle of limiting litigation.