People who sell goods are by and large interested in obtaining payment of the price for them.

The law provides various methods. Most legal systems find little difficulty with the case where the buyer is in possession of the goods but refuses to pay for them.

In an essay to celebrate Professor Stein’s first forty years or so of contributions to the study of Roman law and the Roman law tradition, it seems not inappropriate to discuss some problems arising in the con­tract of sale; to deal with Roman and Scots law side by side; and to consider a question where the application of a regula iuris may help to explain why things were done in one way in Rome but in quite another in Edinburgh.^[363]

This essay has little to say about the all sums retention of title clauses which are so prominent in commerce (and litigation) today. Since it deals with the law before the Sale of Goods Act 1893, it is in a sense concerned with the prehistory of those clauses. It is concerned with the various ways in which a seller could attempt to ensure that he was paid the price for his goods in Roman law; and the differences between those ways and the ways adopted by Scottish practice. It attempts to do no more than show how some routes were followed, while others, which might have been thought promising, were closed off.