5. By marriage. 6. By judgment. 7. By gift or grant. 8. By contract. 9. By bankruptcy. 10. By testament. 11. By administration.

A property in chattels may be acquired by occupancy: the original method of acquiring any property at all, but which has since been restrained by the laws of society, in order to maintain peace and harmony among mankind. For this purpose, gifts, contracts, testaments, and administrations have been introduced; in order to transfer and continue that property in things personal, which has once been acquired by the owner. And, where such things are found without any other owner, they for the most part belong to the sovereign by prerogative; except in some few instances, wherein the original right of occupancy is still permitted to subsist.

1. Thus, firstly, anybody may seize to his own use such goods as belong to an alien enemy. But this must be restrained to such captors as are authorized by the state, and to such goods as are brought into this country by an alien enemy, after a declaration of war, without a safe-conduct or passport. For where a foreigner is resident in England, and afterwards a war breaks out between his country and ours, his goods are not liable to be seized. If an enemy take the goods of an English merchant, which are afterwards retaken by another subject, the former owner lost his property therein, and it was vested in the second taker, unless they were retaken the same day, and the owner before sunset put in his claim of property. This was the law of nations, as understood by Grotius, even with regard to captures made at sea, which were held to be the property of the captors after a possession of twenty-four hours. Modern authorities, however, required that, before the property could be changed, the goods must have been brought into port, and continued a night in a place of safe custody, so that all hopes of recovering them were lost. And now, in order to vest the property in the captors, a sentence of condemnation is deemed necessary.

2. Secondly, whatever movables are found upon the surface of the earth, or in the sea, and are unclaimed by any owner, are supposed to be abandoned by the last proprietor; and, as such,

return into the common stock, and belong, as in a state of nature, to the first occupant, unless they fall within the description of waifs, wreck, or hidden treasures; which are vested in the crown.

3. Again, light, air, and water, can only be appropriated by occupancy. If I have an ancient window, overlooking my neighbour's ground, he may not erect any blind to obstruct the light: but if I build my house close to his wall, which darkens it, I cannot compel him to demolish his wall: for there the first occupancy is rather in him than in me. So, if my neighbour makes a tanyard, which renders less salubrious the air of my house, the law will furnish me with a remedy; but, if he is first in possession of the air, and I fix my habitation near him, the nuisance is of my own seeking, and may continue.

4. With regard to animals feræ naturæ, when a man has seized them, they become while living his qualified, or, if dead, his absolute property: so that to steal them is sometimes a criminal offence, sometimes only a civil injury. The restrictions upon this right, relate to royal fish, and game. But the animals not so reserved, are still liable to be appropriated by any one upon their own territories; in the same manner as they might have taken game itself, till these civil prohibitions were issued: there being in nature no distinction between one species of wild animals and another, between the right of acquiring property in a hare or a squirrel, in a partridge or a butterfly.

5. To occupancy also must be referred the personal property in corn growing on the ground, or other emblements, by a possessor of the land who has sown it; which emblements are distinct from the real estate in the land, and subject to many of the incidents attending personal chattels.

6. Property from accession is also grounded on occupancy. By the Roman law, if any corporeal substance received afterwards an accession by natural or by artificial means, as by the growth of vegetables, the pregnancy of animals, or the conversion of wood or metal into vessels and utensils, the original owner was entitled to the property under such its state of improvement; but if the thing itself, by such operation, was changed into a

different species, as by making wine, oil, or bread, out of another's grapes, olives, or wheat, it belonged to the new operator; who was only to make a satisfaction to the former proprietor for the materials which he had so converted. These doctrines are adopted by Bracton, and have since been confirmed by the courts.

7. But in the case of confusion of goods, where those of two persons are so intermixed, that the several portions can be no longer distinguished, our law partly agrees with, and partly differs from, the civil. If the intermixture be by consent, in both laws the proprietors have an interest in common, in proportion to their shares. But if one wilfully intermixes his money, corn, or hay, with that of another man, without his knowledge, or casts gold in like manner into another's meltingpot or crucible, the civil law, though it gives the property of the whole to him who has not interfered, yet allows a satisfaction to the other for what he has so improvidently lost. Our law, to guard against fraud, gives the entire property, without any account, to him whose original dominion is invaded without his own consent.

8. There is another species of property, which, being grounded on labour and invention, is properly reducible to the head of occupancy; viz. the right which an author has in his own original compositions: so that no other person, without his leave, may publish or make profit of the copies. The law on this subject is entirely statutory. The copyright in books is for forty-two years, or for the life of the author and seven years following, whichever may be the longer; and facilities are given for its preservation, by the establishment of a public register of copyrights, at the Hall of the Stationers' Company in London. The copyright of engravings and of sculpture is provided for by other statutes; while conventions for the mutual protection of such copyrights have been entered into with France, Prussia, Belgium, Spain, and other powers. Copyright has also been granted to designs for articles of manufacture for nine months, a year, or three years, according to the nature of the manufacture; provided they are registered in the mode provided by the different statutes; and trade marks are also afforded special protection by means of a registry.

Our early sovereigns assumed the right of granting to favoured subjects the monopoly, or sole right, of selling and dealing in particular commodities. This prerogative was carried to a most injurious length in the reign of Elizabeth, and led to the Statute of Monopolies, 21 Jac. I. c. 3; which, while declaring the illegality of such grants in general, contained an exception in favour of new and original inventions; and enacted that the declaration against the monopolies should not extend to letterspatent and grants of privilege for the term of fourteen years or under, for the sole working of any manner of new manufactures within the realm, to the true and first inventor thereof, provided such manufactures were not in use by others at the time of granting the letters-patent. Upon this exception, which, to a certain extent, recognizes the prerogative, the modern law of patents for inventions may be considered to rest. It has been the subject of considerable but hitherto unsatisfactory legislation. For experience has shown that no sooner is a patent granted than every species of ingenuity is at once exerted to obtain the advantages of the invention in another way; so that the patentee has usually, from the outset, either to defend his patent from attack, or resort to an endless variety of actions, in order to assert his right against a host of depredators.

9. Ships constitute personal property of very great importance, and subject to very special laws. They have, from time immemorial, assed by bill of sale, or grant in writing, and not as in the case of most other chattels, by simple delivery of possession; but the statute law further imposes the necessity of registration, in order to complete this title. Mortgages must in like manner be entered in the register; the priority of entry therein, when there are several mortgagees, and not the date of the mortgages themselves, determining absolutely the priority of right.

CHAPTER XXIV.

OF TITLE BY PREROGATIVE, AND CUSTOM.

II. A PROPERTY in personal chattels may be acquired by the royal prerogative: whereby a right may accrue either to the crown itself, or to such as claim under the title of the crown.

Such, firstly, are all tributes, taxes, and customs, whether inherent in the crown, or created by authority of parliament. In these the sovereign 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. And in these several methods of acquiring property by prerogative, there is this peculiar quality, that the crown cannot have a joint property with any person in one entire chattel; but where the titles of the crown and a subject concur, the sovereign shall have the whole in like manner as the crown cannot, either by grant or contract, become a joint-tenant of a chattel real with another person, but by such grant or contract shall become entitled to the whole in severalty.

This doctrine has no place in other instances of title by prerogative, as in 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 sovereign from any former owner, but are originally inherent in the crown by law.

There is also prerogative copyright in certain books, vested in the crown upon different reasons. As 1. The right of promulgating all acts of state and government; hence the exclusive privilege of printing all acts of parliament, proclamations and orders of council. 2. As head of the church, the right to publish all liturgies, and books of divine service. 3. The right, by purchase, to the copies of such law-books, grammars, and other compositions, as were compiled or translated at the expense of the crown; and upon these two last principles, the exclusive right of printing the translation of the Bible. Both the Bible and the statutes may however be printed by others than