trader, who secretes himself, or does certain other acts, tending to defraud his creditors.*

Who shall be such a trader, or what acts are sufficient to denominate him a bankrupt, with the several connected consequences resulting from that unhappy situation, will be better considered in a subsequent chapter; when we shall endeavour more fully to explain it's nature, as it most immediately relates to personal goods and chattels. I shall only here observe the manner in which the property of lands and tenements are transferred, upon the supposition that the owner of them is clearly and indisputably a bankrupt, and that a commission of bankrupt is awarded and issued against him.

By the statute 13 Eliz. c. 7. the commissioners for that purpose, when a man is declared a bankrupt, shall have full power to dispose of all his lands and tenements, which he had in his own right at the time when he became a bankrupt, or which shall descend or come to him at any time afterwards, before his debts are satisfied or agreed for; and all lands and tenements which were purchased by him jointly with his wife or children to his own use (or such interest therein as [286] he may lawfully part with), or purchased with any other person upon secret trust for his own use; and to cause them to be appraised to their full value, and to sell the same by deed indented and inrolled, or divide them proportionably among the creditors.

This statute expressly included not only free, but customary and copyhold, lands: but did not extend to estates-tail, farther than for the bankrupt's life; nor to equities of redemption on a mortgaged estate, wherein the bankrupt has no legal interest, but only an equitable reversion. Whereupon the statute 21 Jac. I. c. 19. enacts, that the commissioners shall be impowered to sell or 4 Previously, "The statute expressly includes." *-* Quoted, 2 Nott & McC. 243; 5 Hill, 342, 348,

convey, by deed indented and inrolled, any lands or tenements of the bankrupt, wherein he shall be seised of an estate-tail in possession, remainder, or reversion, unless the remainder or reversion thereof shall be in the crown; and that such sale shall be good against all such issues in tail, remaindermen, and reversioners, whom the bankrupt himself might have barred by a common recovery, or other means: and that all equities of redemption upon mortgaged estates, shall be at the disposal of the commissioners; for they shall have power to redeem the same, as the bankrupt himself might have done, and after redemption to sell them. And also, by this and a former act, all fraudulent conveyances to defeat the intent of these statutes are declared void; but that no purchasor bona fide, for a good or valuable consideration, shall be affected by the bankrupt laws, unless the commission be sued forth within five years after the act of bankruptcy committed.

By virtue of these statutes a bankrupt may lose all his real estates; which may at once be transferred by his commissioners to their assignees, without his participation or consent.

NOTE OF THE AMERICAN EDITOR TO CHAPTER XVIII. (54) Of title by forfeiture, page 267.

The English doctrine of forfeiture of lands to the state for crime or corruption of blood is generally if not universally done away with in this country. (3 Washburn on Real Property, 47; 4 Kent, 425; 3 Greenleaf's Cruise, 398, n.; U. S. Const. art. 3, 3.) Forfeiture of land by illegal alienation is repealed by implication at least, and may even be regarded as obsolete. Of the other cases of forfeiture enumerated by Blackstone one only seems to be still recognized by our laws. Statutes usually provide that a guardian, tenant, joint tenant, or tenant in common is not only liable for waste in treble

b 1 Jac. I. c. 15.

damages, but that when such damages amount to two thirds the value of his interest, the reversioner may have judgment of forfeiture and eviction. But the power of forfeiture seems to be only a single application of the broader power discussed in recent books under the title of the police power, which is itself only a branch of the power of eminent domain in the wider sense of the words, though to be carefully distinguished from the power of taking private property for public use (eminent domain in narrower sense) inasmuch as the police power is not dependent in its exercise upon the payment of compensation. It is the power which every government possesses to regulate the use of all private property, so as to prevent each citizen from making his own a means of injury to his neighbor or to the whole community. When this is done by tak ing away the property as a punishment for misuse, it is a case of forfeiture: when restrictions are imposed in advance upon its use, or when infractions of ordinary private rights become necessary to the public welfare, such cases are included under the general term of "police power." (Cooley's Constitutional Limitations, ch. 16, pp. 472-597; Sedgwick's Statutory and Constitutional Law, 2d ed. pp. 434-441; Dillon on Municipal Corporations.) The power belongs to the states of the Union and cannot be assumed by the federal government. (U. S. v. De Witt, 9 Wall. 41; License Cases, 5 How. 504; Passenger Cases, 7 How. 283; License Tax Cases, 5 Wall. 471.) See remarks on this subject by Judge Cooley, Constitutional Limitations, p. 574.

A military commander may under circumstances of necessity take the private property of the citizen with out being liable personally, in which case the owner must look to the government for compensation. The necessity must be actual and urgent; and its existence is for the jury to determine. (Holmes v. Sheridan, 1 Dill. 351, citing, Mitchell v. Harmony, 13 How. 115, 135;

Williams v. Wickerman, 44 Mo. 484.) Police regulations of this character are uniformly held legal and binding, because they are for the general benefit, and do not proceed to the length of impairing any private right in the proper sense of that term. The sovereign power in a community may prescribe the manner of exercising individual rights over property. They may prohibit the erection of wooden buildings, the keeping of gun-powder and other dangerous combustibles for sale within the city in greater than specified quantities, fix market places and regulate the times when they shall be open, and prohibit the sale of market produce at other places; and, on the same principles and for the same reasons, may establish and regulate wharves and landings, regulate the anchorage of all boats, rafts, or other vessels landing within its limits, and as a necessary incident to this power, may prohibit the landing of such boats and rafts at any other places than are prescribed in the ordinances or by-laws made for that purpose. The powers rest upon the implied right and duty of the supreme power to protect all by statutory regulations, so that, on the whole, the benefit of all is promoted. (Vanderbilt v. Adams, 7 Cowen, 349; Bertholf v. O'Rielly, 74 N. Y. 519; 30 Am. Rep. 323; also in 18 Am Law Reg. 111; Commonw. v. Alger, 7 Cush. 84; State v. Paul, 5 R. I. 185.)

CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH.

OF TITLE BY ALIENATION. [See note 55, page 464.]

*The most usual and universal method of acquiring a title to real estates is that of alienation, conveyance, or purchase in it's limited sense: under which may be comprized any method wherein estates are voluntarily resigned by one man, and accepted by another: whether that be effected by sale, gift, marriage settlement, devise, or other transmission of property by the mutual consent of the parties.*

This means of taking estates, by alienation, is not of equal antiquity in the law of England with that of taking them by descent. For we may remember that, by the feodal law, a pure and genuine feud could not be transferred from one feudatory to another without the consent of the lord; lest thereby a feeble or suspicious tenant might have been substituted and imposed upon him to perform the feodal services, instead of one on whose abilities and fidelity he could depend. Neither could the feudatory then subject the land to his debts; for, if he might, the feodal restraint of alienation would have been easily frustrated, and evaded. And, as he could not aliene it in his lifetime, so neither could he by will defeat the succession, by devising his feud to another family; nor even alter the course of it, by imposing particular limitations, or prescribing an unusual path of descent. Nor, in short, could he aliene the estate, even with the consent of the lord, unless he had also obtained the consent of his own next apparent, or a See pag. 57.

b Feud. l. 1. t. 27.

**Quoted, 12 Me. 48; 28 Am. Dec. 151; 26 Cal. 103. Cited, 29 Me. 295. Ref. to chapter, 24 N. H. 558; 57 Am. Dec. 302,