The prevailing tendency of the code was to secure to each man his lawful property, and to arm him with the means of protection. Yet it must be remarked as a strange inconsistency, in the midst of this anxiety to erect safeguards around property, that fraudulent debtors were granted a direct escape from liability to consequences. It was enacted, that if one man lent money to another, and the latter denied the loan, the ordeal should not apply; the oath of the defendant being deemed a sufficient release from the debt. This law was the more unaccountable in a country where the legal interest of money was forty per cent.,--a circumstance calculated to increase the motives to dishonesty. Another enactment makes a distinction between the Varangians and Slavs, which illustrates the fact that the latter had always been more advanced in civilisation than the former. By this enactment, a Koblegian or a Varangian was compelled to take an oath where such a test was required, but a Slavonian was exempted. It would therefore appear, if the conclusion may be safely ventured upon, that judicial combats, which formed the final appeal when a defendant in a cause acquitted himself in the first instance by a solemn oath, were not adopted amongst the Slavs, who were satisfied with a public examination of facts, and an adjudication, without the sacred or the physical test. It is sufficient, however, for the great uses of historical inquiry, to know that a difference so remarkable between two branches of the people was recognised and confirmed by law.