CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FOURTH. OF THINGS PERSONAL. *Under the name of things personal are included all sorts of things movable, which may attend a man's person wherever he goes* [see note 75, page 593]; and therefore, being only the objects of the law while they remain within the limits of it's jurisdiction, and being also of a perishable quality, are not esteemed of so high a nature, nor paid so much regard to by the law, as things that are in their nature more permanent and immovable, as lands, and houses, and the profits issuing thereout. These being constantly within the reach, and under the protection of the law, were the principal favourites of our first legislators: who took all imaginable care in ascertaining the rights, and directing the disposition, of such property as they imagined to be lasting, and which would answer to posterity the trouble and pains that their ancestors employed about them; but at the same time entertained a very low and contemptuous opinion of all personal estate, which they regarded only as a transient commodity. The amount of it 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 movables of the subject, was frequently laid without scruple, and is mentioned with much unconcern by our antient historians, though now it would justly alarm our opulent merchants and stockholders. And hence likewise may be derived the frequent forfeitures inflicted by the common [385] law, of all a man's goods and chattels, for **Quoted, 19 Conn. 246. Cited, 5 Marsh. J. J. 480; 22 Am. Dec. 60; 5 Mason, 362. misbehaviours and inadvertencies that at present hardly seem to deserve so severe a punishment. Our antient law books, which are founded upon the feodal provisions, do not therefore often condescend to regulate this species of property. There is not a chapter in Britton or the mirroir, that can fairly be referred to this head; and the little that is to be found in Glanvil, Bracton, and Fleta, seems principally borrowed from the civilians. But of later years, since the introduction and extension of trade and commerce, which are entirely occupied in this species of property, and have greatly augmented it's quantity and of course it's value, we have learned to conceive different ideas of it. Our courts now regard a man's personalty in a light nearly, if not quite, equal to his realty: and have adopted a more enlarged and less technical mode of considering the one than the other; * frequently drawn from the rules which they found already established by the Roman law, wherever those rules appeared to be wellgrounded and apposite to the case in question, but principally from reason and convenience, adapted to the circumstances of the times; preserving withal a due regard to antient usages, and a certain feodal tincturę, which is still to be found in some branches of personal property. But things personal, by our law, do not only include things movable, but also something more: the whole of which is comprehended under the general name of chattels,8† which, sir Edward Coke says is a French word signifying goods. The appellation is in truth derived from the technical Latin word, catalla; which primarily signified only beasts of husbandry, or (as we still call them) cattle, but in it's secondary a 1 Inst. 118. 8 Prior editions have here, "catalla." **Quoted, 19 Pa. St. 255. Cited, Hayw. (N. C.) 227. +-+ Quoted, 19 Conn. 246; 5 Marsh. J. J. 480; 22 Am. Dec. 60; 14 Ill. 258. Cited, 14 Ill. 2 BLACKST.-50. ite-merchant, statute-staple, elegit, or which we have already spoken. And 1 real chattels, as being interests issuing ed to real estates: of which they have immobility, which denominates them the other, viz. a sufficient, legal, indetern: and this want it is, that constitutes The utmost period for which they can 1 determinate, either for such a space of till such a particular sum of money be ch a particular income; so that they are e eye of the law to the lowest estate of se for another's life: their tenants were on feodal principles, as merely bailiffs nd the tenant of the freehold might at destroyed their interest, till the reign I. A freehold, which alone is a real ems (as has been said) to answer to the ndy, is conveyed by corporal investiture ry of seisin;t which gives the tenant so of the land, that it never after can be him during his life, but by his own act, transfer or of forfeiture; or else by the some future contingency, as in estates , and the determinable freeholds menrmer chapter. And even these, being of duration, may by possibility last for the for the law will not presuppose the conhappen before it actually does, and till ate is to all intents and purposes a life herefore a freehold, interest. On the other tel interest in lands, which the Normans sition to fief, and we to freehold, is conpag. 141, 142. h pag. 121. Wend. 676. Cited, 95 U. S. 251; 20 Wend. 420; 13 N. Y. sense was applied to all movables in general. In the grand coustumier of Normandy a chattel is described as a mere movable, but at the same time it is set in opposition to a fief or feud: so that not only goods, but whatever was not a feud, were accounted chattels. And fit is in this latter, more 8 [386] extended, negative sense, that our law adopts it; the idea of goods, or movables only, being not sufficiently comprehensive to take in everything that the law considers as a chattel interest.† For since, as the commentator on the coustumier1 observes, there are two requisites to make a fief or heritage, duration as to time, and immobility with regard to place; whatever wants either of these qualities is not, according to the Normans, an heritage or fief; or, according to us, is not a real estate: the consequence of which in both laws is, that it must be a personal estate, or chattel.? Chattels therefore are distributed by law into two kinds; chattels real, and chattels personal.e 1. Chattels real, saith sir Edward Coke,' are such as concern, or savour of, the realty; as terms for years of land, wardships in chivalry (while the military tenures subsisted) the next presentation to a church, b Dufresne. II. 409. C c. 87. d Il conviendroit quil sust non mouuable, et de duree a tousiours. fol. 107. a. e So too, in the Norman law, Cateux sont meubles et immeubles: sicomme vrais meubles sont qui transporter se peuvent, et ensuivir le corps; immeubles sont choses qui ne peuvent ensuivir le corps, niestre transportees, et tout ce qui n'est point en heritage. LL. Will. Nothi, c. 4. apud. Dufresne. II. 409. f 1 Inst. 118. 8 Previously, "And this is true, if understood of the Norman dialect; for in the grand coustumier, we find the word chattels used and." 8 Previously, "I apprehend, in the same large." **Quoted, 19 Ill. 584. t-t Quoted, 19 Conn. 246. Clted, 2 Watts, 64; 42 N. H. 451; 40 N. H. - Quoted, 14 Ill. 258; 95 U. S. 251. |