CHAPTER XXIV. OF THINGS PERSONAL. things per. tate little re times. UNDER the name of things personal are included all sorts of What are things movable, which may attend a man's person wherever he sonal. goes; and, therefore, being only the objects of the law while they remain within the limits of its 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 favorites 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 Personal es entertained a very low and contemptuous opinion of all per- garded in sonal estate, which they regarded as only a transient commod- former ity. 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 ancient 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 law, of all a man's goods and chattels, for misbehaviors 385 | and inadvertencies that at present hardly seem to deserve so severe a punishment. Our ancient 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 Mirror 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 its quantity, and, of course, its value, we have learned to conceive different ideas of it. 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, Our 'Chattels include cer in things immovable. frequently drawn from the rules which they found already established by the Roman law, wherever those rules appear to be well grounded 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 ancient usages, and a certain feodal tincture, which is still to be found in some branches of personal property. But things personal, by our law, do not only include things tain estates movable, but also something more; the whole of which is comprehended under the general name of chattels, which, Sir Edward Coke says,a is a French word signifying goods. The appellation is, in truth, derived from the technical Latin wora catalla, which primarily signified only beasts of husbandry, or (as we still call them) cattle, but in its secondary 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 [386] chattels. And it is in this latter, more extended, negative sense that our law adopts it; the idea of goods, or movables only, being not sufficiently comprehensive to take in every thing that the law considers as a chattel interest. For since, as the commentator on the coustumierd 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. Two kinds Chattels, therefore, are distributed by the law into two kinds, of chattels, chattels real and chattels personal. 1. Chattels real. 1. Chattels real, saith Sir Edward Coke,f are such as concern, or savor of, the realty; as, terms for years of land, wardship in chivalry (while the military tenures subsisted), the next presentation to a church, estates by statute-merchant, statutestaple, elegit, or the like; of all which we have already spoken. And these are called real chattels, as being interests issuing out of, or annexed to, real estates; of which they have one quality, viz., immobility, which denominates them real; but want the other, viz., a sufficient legal indeterminate duration; and this want it is that constitutes them chattels. The utmost period for which they can last is fixed and determinate, either a 1 Inst., 118. b Dufresne, ii., 409. d Il conviendroit quil fust non mouuable et de duree a tousiours.-Fol. 107, a. e So, too, in the Norman law, Cateux sont meubles et immeubles; si comme vrais meubles sont qui transporter se for such a space of time certain, or till such a particular sum of money be raised out of such a particular income; so that they are not equal in the eye of the law to the lowest estate of freehold, a lease for another's life; their tenants were considered upon feodal principles, as merely bailiffs or farmers, and the tenant of the freehold might at any time have destroyed their interest, till the reign of Henry VIII. A freehold, which alone is a real estate, and seems (as has been said) to answer to the fief in Normandy, is conveyed by corporeal investiture and livery of seizin; which gives the tenant so strong a hold [387 | of the land, that it never after can be wrested from him during his life but by his own act of voluntary transfer or of forfeiture, or else by the happening of some future contingency, as in estates pour autre vie, and the determinable freeholds mentioned in a former chapter. And even these, being of an uncertain duration, may, by possibility, last for the owner's life; for the law will not presuppose the contingency to happen before it actually does, and till then the estate is, to all intents and purposes, a life estate, and therefore a freehold interest. On the other hand, a chattel interest in lands, which the Normans put in opposition to fief, and we to freehold, is conveyed by no seizin or corporeal investiture, but the possession is gained by the mere entry of the tenant himself, and it will certainly expire at a time prefixed and determined, if not sooner. Thus a lease for years must necessarily fail at the end and completion of the term; the next presentation to a church is satisfied and gone the instant it comes into possession, that is, by the first avoidance and presentation to the living; the conditional estates by statutes and elegit are determined as soon as the debt is paid; and so guardianships in chivalry expired, of course, the moment that the heir came of age. And if there be any other chattel real, it will be found to correspond with the rest in this essential quality, that its duration is limited to a time certain, beyond which it can not subsist.1 personal. 2. Chattels personal are, properly and strictly speaking, 2. Chatter things movable, which may be annexed to or attendant on the person of the owner, and carried about with him from one part of the world to another. Such are animals, househola stuff, money, jewels, corn, garments, and every thing else that See page 142. (1) It is a rule of the law of England, in common with that of most other nations, that the title by succession to personal property, wherever it is situated, shall be determined by the law of the domicile of the deceased owner. (1 H. Bl., 670; 5 Ves., 750; 5 B. & Cr., 451; 1 Hagg., 474, 498; 8 Sim., 310.) But it has been denied by a justly-esteemed VOL. II.-G G b Page 120. writer that this rule extends to chattels Id., 740.) The point appears to be 465 can properly be put in motion, and transferred from place to place. And of this kind of chattels it is that we are principally to speak in the remainder of this book; having been unavoidably led to consider the nature of chattels real, and their incidents, in the former chapters which were employed upon [388] real estates: that kind of property being of a mongrel, amphibious nature, originally endowed with one only of the characteristics of each species of things; the immobility of things real, and the precarious duration of things personal. The subject divided. Chattel interests being thus distinguished and distributed, it will be proper to consider, first, the nature of that property, or dominion, to which they are liable; which must be principally, nay, solely, referred to personal chattels; and, secondly, the title to that property, or how it may be lost or acquired. Of each of these in its order. 466. CHAPTER XXV. OF PROPERTY IN THINGS PERSONAL. sonal PROPERTY, in chattels personal, may be either in possession, Property in things perwhich is where a man hath not only the right to enjoy, but some consid hath the actual enjoyment of the thing, or else it is in action, ered, 1st, as where a man hath only a bare right, without any occupation or tity of inter enjoyment. And of these the former, or property in possession, est. is divided into two sorts, an absolute and a qualified property. to the quan sion, abso I. First, then, of property in possession absolute; which is I. In posses where a man hath, solely and exclusively, the right, and also late properthe occupation, of any movable chattels, so that they can not be ty. transferred from him, or cease to be his, without his own act or default. Such may be all inanimate things, as goods, plate, money, jewels, implements of war, garments, and the like! such, also, may be all vegetable productions, as the fruit or other parts of a plant, when severed from the body of it; or the whole plant itself, when severed from the ground; none of which can be moved out of the owner's possession without his own act or consent, or, at least, without doing him an injury, which it is the business of the law to prevent or remedy. Of these, therefore, there remains little to be said. animals. either domi But with regard to animals, which have in themselves a prin- Property m ciple and power of motion, and (unless particularly confined) can convey themselves from one part of the world to another, there is a great difference made with respect to their several [390] classes, not only in our law, but in the law of nature and of all civilized nations. They are distinguished into such as are domi- Animals are tæ and such as are feræ naturæ; some being of a tame and to or feræ others of a wild disposition. In such as are of a nature tame naturæ. and domestic (as horses, kine, sheep, poultry, and the like), a man may have as absolute a property as in any inanimate beings; because these continue perpetually in his occupation, and will not stray from his house or person, unless by accident or fraudulent enticement, in either of which cases the owner does not lose his property,a in which our law agrees with the laws of France and Holland. The stealing, or forcible abduction of such property as this, is also felony; for these are things of intrinsic value, serving for the food of man, or else for the uses a 2 Mod., 319. Vin., in Inst., 1. 2, tit. 1, § 15. |