fons entitled to hold them: we have examined the tenures, both antient and modern, whereby thofe eftates have been, and are now, holden: and have distinguished the object of all these inquiries, namely, things real, into the corporeal or substantial, and incorporeal or ideal kind; and have thus confidered the rights of real property in every light wherein they are contemplated by the laws of England. A system of laws, that differs much from every other system, except thofe of the fame feodal origin, in it's notions and regulations of landed eftates; and which therefore could in this particular be very feldom compared with any other.

THE fubject, which has thus employed our attention, is of very extensive ufe, and of as extenfive variety. And yet, I am afraid, it has afforded the ftudent lefs amusement and pleasure in the pursuit, than the matters difcuffed in the preceding volume. To fay the truth, the vaft alterations which the doctrine of real property has undergone from the conqueft to the prefent time; the infinite determinations upon points that continually arise, and which have been heaped one upon another for a courfe of feven centuries, without any order or method; and the multiplicity of acts of parliament which [ 383 】 have amended, or sometimes only altered, the common law : these causes have made the study of this branch of our national jurisprudence a little perplexed and intricate. It hath been my endeavour principally to select such parts of it, as were of the most general ufe, where the principles were the most fimple, the reasons of them the most obvious, and the practice the leaft embarraffed. Yet I cannot prefume that I have always been thoroughly intelligible to fuch of my readers, as were before strangers even to the very terms of art, which I have been obliged to make ufe of: though, whenever thofe have firft occurred, I have generally attempted a fhort explication of their meaning. These are indeed the more numerous, on account of the different languages, which our law has at different periods been taught to speak; the diffi culty arifing from which will infenfibly diminish by use and

familiar

familiar acquaintance. And therefore I fhall clofe this branch of our inquiries with the words of fir Edward Coke : " albeit the ftudent fhall not at any one day, do what he can, "reach to the full meaning of all that is here laid down, yet * let him no waydiscourage himself but proceed; for on fome "other day, in fome other place," (or perhaps upon a fecond perufal of the fame) "his doubts will be probably removed."

y Proeme to 1 Inft.

LORD CHIEF JUSTICE HOLT.

Engraved by PAudinol · from an Original Picture in the Possession of the Eart of Märdweck

Published as the Act directs Feb w 1793 by T. Cadell, Strand.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FOURTH.

OF THINGS PERSONAL.

UND

:

NDER the name of things perfonal are included all forts of things moveable, which may attend a man's perfon wherever he goes; and therefore, being only the ob jects of the law while they remain within the limits of it's jurisdiction, and being alfo of a perishable quality, are not esteemed of fo high a nature, nor paid so much regard to by the law, as things that are in their nature more permanent and immoveable, as lands, and houses, and the profits iffuing thereout. Thefe being conftantly within the reach, and under the protection of the law, were the principal favourites of our first legiflators who took all imaginable care in afcertaining the rights, and directing the difpofition, of fuch property as they imagined to be lasting, and which would answer to pofterity the trouble and pains that their ancestors employed about them but at the fame time entertained a very low and contemptuous opinion of all personal eftate, which they regarded as only a tranfient commodity. The amount of ie indeed was comparatively very trifling, during the scarcity of money and the ignorance of luxurious refinements, which prevailed in the feodal ages. Hence it was, that a'tax of the fifteenth, tenth, or sometimes a much larger proportion, of all the moveables of the subject, was frequently laid without fcruple, and is mentioned with much unconcern by our antient hiftorians, though now it would justly alarm our opulent merchants and stockholders. And hence likewife may be derived the frequent forfeitures inflicted by the common

law,