the machine or article, as to be intelligible to every artist conversant in the same trade or manufactory.

Or the invention must be so described that the public may, at the end of fourteen years, have the use of it in as cheap and beneficial a manner as the patentee himself uses it. Hence if the specification be in any part materially false, defective, obscure, or give directions which tend to mislead the public, the patent is against law and cannot be sup. ported. The specifications are preserved in an office for public inspection. Some patents, in very valuable manufactures, have been declared void, on account of the designed obscurity of the specification. Bull. N. P. 76. 1 T. R. 602.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SEVENTH.

OF TITLE BY PREROGATIVE AND

FORFEITURE.

A SECOND method of acquiring property in personal

chattels is by the king's prerogative: whereby a right may accrue either to the crown itself, or to such as claim under the title of the crown, as by the king's grant, or by prescription, which supposes an ancient grant.

SUCH in the first place are all tributes, taxes, and customs, whether constitutionally inherent in the crown, as flowers of the prerogative and branches of the census regalis or ancient royal revenue, or whether they be occasionally created by authority of parliament; of both which species of revenue we treated largely in the former volume. In these the king acquires and the subject loses a property, the instant they become due: if paid, they are a chose in possession; if unpaid, a chose in action. Hither also may be referred all forfeitures, fines, and amercements due to the king, which accrue by virtue of his ancient prerogative, or by particular modern statutes: which revenues created by statute do always assimilate, or take the same nature, with the ancient revenues; and may therefore be looked upon as arising from a kind of artificial or secondary prerogative. And, in either case, the owner of the thing forfeited, and the person fined or amerced, lose and part with the property of the forfeiture, fine, or amercement, the instant the king or his grantee acquires it.

In these several methods of acquiring property by prerogative there is also this peculiar quality, that the king cannot have a joint property with any person in one entire chattel, or such a one as is not capable of division or separation; but where the titles of the king and a subject concur, the king shall have the whole: in like manner as the king cannot, either by grant or contract, become a joint-tenant of a chattel real with another persona; but by such grant or contract shall become entitled to the whole in severalty. Thus, if a horse be given to the king and a private person, the king shall have the sole property: if a bond be made to the king and a subject, the king shall have the whole penalty; the debt or duty being one single chattel; and so, if two persons have the property of a horse between them, or have a joint debt owing them on bond, and one of them assigns his part to the king, or is attainted, whereby his moiety is forfeited to the crown; the king shall have the entire horse, and entire debt. For, as it is not consistent with the dignity of the crown to be partner with a subject, so neither does the king ever lose his right in any instance; but where they interfere, his is always preferred to that of another persond: from which too principles it is a necessary consequence, that the innocent though unfortunate partner must lose his share in both the debt and the horse, or in any other chattel in the same circumstances (1).

a See pag. 184.

b Fitzh. Abr. t. dette. 38. Plowd. 243.

c Cro. Eliz. 263. Plowd. 323. Finch. Law.

178. 10 Mod. 245.

d Co. Litt. 30.

(1) If a joint-tenant of any chattel interest commits suicide, the right to the whole chattel becomes vested in the king. This was decided after much solemn and subtle argument in 3 Eliz. The case is reported by Plowd. 262. Eng. ed. Sir James Hales, a judge of the common pleas, and his wife were joint-tenants of a term for years; sir James drowned himself, and was found felo de se; and it was held that the term did not survive to the wife, but that sir James's interest was forfeited to the king by the felony, and that it consequently drew the wife's interest

THIS doctrine has no opportunity to take place in certain other instances of title by prerogative, that remain to be men. tioned; as the chattels thereby vested are originally and solely vested in the crown, without any transfer or derivative assignment either by deed or law from any former proprietor. Such is the acquisition of property in wreck, in treasuretrove, in waifs, in estrays, in royal fish, in swans, and the like; which are not transferred to the sove [410] reign from any former owner, but are originally inhe

rent in him by the rules of law, and are derived to particular subjects, as royal franchises, by his bounty. These are ascribed to him, partly upon the particular reasons mentioned in the eighth chapter of the former book; and partly upon the general principle of their being bona vacantia, and therefore vested in the king, as well to preserve the peace of the public, as in trust to employ them for the safety and ornament of the commonwealth.

along with it. The argument of lord chief justice Dyer is remarkably curious: "The felony (says he) is attributed to the act; which act is "always done by a living man, and in his lifetime, as my brother "Brown said; for he said sir James Hales was dead; and how came "he to his death? It may be answered, by drowning; and who "drowned him? sir James Hales; and when did he drown him? in his "lifetime. So that sir James Hales being alive, caused sir James "Hales to die; and the act of the living man was the death of the dead man. And then for this offence it is reasonable to punish the living "man who committed the offence, and not the dead man. But how

can he be said to be punished alive, when the punishment comes " after his death? Sir, this can be done no other way but by divesting "out of him, from the time of the act done in his lifetime, which was "the cause of his death, the title and property of those things which "he had in his lifetime."

This must have been a case of notoriety in the time of Shakespeare; and it is not improbable that he intended to ridicule this legal logic by the reasoning of the grave-digger in Hamlet upon the drowning of Ophelia. See Sir J. Hawkins's note in Stephens's edition.

THERE is also a kind of prerogative copyright subsisting in certain books, which is held to be vested in the crown upon different reasons. Thus, 1. The king, as the executive magistrate, has the right of promulging to the people all acts of state and government. This gives him the exclusive privilege of printing, at his own press, or that of his grantees, all acts of parliament, proclamations, and orders of council. 2. As supreme head of the church, he hath a right to the publication of all liturgies and books of divine service. 3. He is also said to have a right by purchase to the copies of such law books, grammars, and other compositions, as were com piled or translated at the expense of the crown. And upon these two last principles, combined, the exclusive right of printing the translation of the bible is founded.

THERE still remains another species of prerogative property, founded upon a very different principle from any that have been mentioned before; the property of such animals ferae naturae, as are known by the denomination of game, with the right of pursuing, taking, and destroying them: [411] which is vested in the king alone, and from him derived to such of his subjects as have received the grants of a chase, a park, a free warren, or free fishery. This may lead us into an inquiry concerning the original of these franchises, or royalties, on which we touched a little in a former chapterf: the right itself being an incorporeal hereditament, though the fruits and profits of it are of a personal nature.

In the first place then we have already shewn, and indeed it cannot be denied, that by the law of nature every man, from the prince to the peasant, has an equal right of pur suing, and taking to his own use, all such creatures as are ferae naturae, and therefore the property of nobody, but liable to be seized by the first occupant. And so it was held by the imperial law, even so late as Justinian's time: "ferae " igitur bestiae, et volucres, et omnia animalia quae mari, cælo, "et terra nascuntur, simul atque ab aliquo capta fuerint, jure f pag. 38, 39.