contemplated together, that we never hear of any conveyance, without at once receiving the ideas as well of the grantor as the grantee.

The methods therefore of acquiring on the one hand, and of losing on the other, a title to estates in things real, are reduced by our law to two; descent, where the title is vested in a man by the single operation of law: and purchase, where the title is vested in him by his own act or agreement. (a) (1)

Descent, or hereditary succession, is the title whereby a man on the death of nis ancestor acquires his estate by right of representation, as his heir at law. An heir, therefore, is he upon whom the law casts the estate immediately on the death of the ancestor and an estate, so descending to the heir, is in law called the inheritance. (2)

The doctrine of descents, or law of inheritances in fee-simple, is a point of the highest importance; and is indeed the principal object of the laws of real property in England. All the rules relating to purchases, whereby the legal course of descents is broken and altered, perpetually refer to this settled law of inheritance, as a datum or first principle universally known, and upon which their subsequent limitations are to work. Thus a gift in tail, or to a man and the heirs of his body, is a limitation that cannot be perfectly understood without a previous knowledge of the law of descents in fee-simple. One may well perceive that this is an estate confined in its descent to such heirs only of the donee, as have sprung or shall spring from his body; but who those heirs are

(a) Co. Litt. 1.

two or more persons may occupy successively, and if they are in privity with each other-as in the case of grantor and grantee, or ancestor and heir-the latter is entitled to have the benefit of the possession of the one to whose right he has succeeded.

(1) [Purchase in law is used in contradistinction to descent, and is any other mode of acquiring real property, viz.: by a man's own act and agreement, by devise, and by every species of gift, or grant; and as the land taken by purchase has very different inheritable qualities from land taken by descent, the distinction is important. See post, pages 241, 243.

Mr. Hargrave in his note to Co. Litt. 18, b, distinguishes, perhaps too astutely, a title by escheat both from a purchase and from a descent. Upon similar reasoning a further division might be made in favor of title by prerogative, as where the crown takes land conveyed to an alien, &c.; but purchase is generally understood to be any acquisition otherwise than by descent.] The statute 3 and 4 Wm. IV, c. 106, enacts that the word "purchaser" in that act shall mean the person who last acquired land otherwise than by descent, or than by escheat, partition or inclosure, by the effect of which the land shall become part of, or descendible with, other land acquired by descent.

(2) [The statute of 3 and 4 Wm. IV, c. 106, for the amendment of the law of inheritance, enacts, that in every case descent shall be traced from the purchaser, but the last owner shall be considered to be the purchaser, unless it shall be proved that he inherited the land. It is also enacted, that an heir who is entitled under a will shall take as devisee, and not by descent and a limitation in any assurance to the grantor and his heirs shall create an estate by purchase but if any person acquires lands by purchase, under a limitation to the heirs, or the heirs of the body, of any of his ancestors, such land shall descend, and the descent shall be traced as if the ancestor named in such limitation had been the purchaser of the land. It is further enacted, that no brother or sister shall be considered to inherit immediately from his or her brother or sister, but shall trace descent through their common parent; and every lineal ancestor may be heir to any of his issue, in preference to collateral persons claiming through him; the male line to be preferred throughout in tracing descents; but, in case of the failure of male paternal ancestors of the person from whom the descent is to be traced upwards, and of their descendants, the mother of his more remote male paternal ancestor, or her descendants, shall be the heir or heirs of such person, in preference to a less remote paternal ancestor; and the mother of his more remote male maternal ancestor, and her descendants, shall be heir or heirs, in preference to the mother of a less remote male maternal ancestor. And it is further enacted, that any person related to the person from whom the descent is to be traced by the half blood shall be capable of being his heir, and shall stand next in order of inheritance after any relation of the same degree of the whole blood, and his issue, where the common ancestor shall be a male, and next after the common ancestor where such common ancestor shall be a female: and after the death of a person attainted his descendants may inherit. The act does not extend to any descent which took place before the 1st of January, 1834, nor to any assurance executed before the said date, or the will of any person who died before the said date, which assurance or will contains any limitation or gift to the heir or heirs of any person under which the person or persons answering the description of heir would have been entitled to an estate by purchase if this act had not been made; but such limitation or gift shall take effect, whether the person named as ancestor was or was not living on the said 1st day of January, 1834.] 465

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whether all his children both male and female, or the male only, and (among the males) whether the eldest, youngest, or other son alone, or all the sons together, shall be his heirs; this is a point that we must result back to the standing law of descents in fee-simple to be informed of.

*In order therefore to treat a matter of this universal consequence [ *202] the more clearly, I shall endeavour to lay aside such matters as will only tend to breed embarrassment and confusion in our inquiries, and shall confine myself entirely to this one object. I shall therefore decline considering at present who are, and who are not, capable of being heirs; reserving that for the chapter of escheats. I shall also pass over the frequent division of descents into those by custom, statute. and common law: for descents by particular custom, as to all the sons in gavelkind, and to the youngest in boroughEnglish, have already been often (b) hinted at, and may also be incidentally touched upon again; but will not make a separate consideration by themselves, in a system so general as the present: and descents by statute, or fees-tail per formam doni, in pursuance of the statute of Westminster the second, have also been already (c) copiously handled; and it has been seen that the descent in tail is restrained and regulated according to the words of the original donation, and does not entirely pursue the common law doctrine of inheritance; which, and which only, it will now be our business to explain. (3)

And, as this depends not a little on the nature of kindred, and the several degrees of consanguinity, it will be previously necessary to state, as briefly as possible, the true notion of this kindred or alliance in blood. (d)

Consanguinity, or kindred, is defined by the writers on these subjects to be "vinculum personarum ab eodem stipite descendentium:" the connexion or relation of persons descended from the same stock or common ancestor. This consanguinity is either lineal, or collateral.

*Lineal consanguinity is that which subsists between persons, of [*203] whom one is descended in a direct line from the other, as between John Stiles (the propositus in the table of consanguinity) and his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and so upwards in the direct ascending line; or between John Stiles and his son, grandson, great-grandson, and so downwards in the direct descending line. Every generation, in this lineal direct consanguinity, constitutes a different degree, reckoning either upwards or downwards: the father of John Stiles is related to him in the first degree, and so likewise is his son; his grandsire and grandson in the second; his great-grandsire and great-grandson in the third. This is the only natural way of reckoning the degrees in the direct line, and therefore universally obtains, as well in the civil, (e) and canon, (f) as in the common law. (g)

The doctrine of lineal consanguinity is sufficiently plain and obvious; but it is at the first view astonishing to consider the number of lineal ancestors which every man has, within no very great number of degrees; and so many different bloods (h) is a man said to contain in his veins, as he hath lineal ancestors. Of these he hath two in the first ascending degree, his own parents; he hath four in the second, the parents of his father and the parents of his mother; he hath eight in the third, the parents of his two grandfathers and two grandmothers; and by the same rule of progression, he hath an hundred and twenty-eight in

(c) See page 112, &c.

(b) See Book I, pages 74, 75. Book II. pages 83, 85. (d) For a fuller explanation of the doctrine of consanguinity, and the consequences resulting from a right apprehension of its nature, see an essay on collateral consanguinity. (Law tracts, Oxon. 1762 8vo., or 1771, 4to.) (e) Ff. 38, 10, 10. (f) Decretal. l. 4, tit. 14. (g) Co. Litt. 23. (h) Ibid. 12.

(3) [The devolution of an estate tail is of a very different nature from a descent in feesimple at common law; in the former the heir of the original purchaser or donee in tail succeeds; in the latter the succession devolved upon the heir of the person last seized; and consequently the rule excluding the half blood, and the effect of a possessio fratris had no application to a descent in tail: 8 T. R. 211; and, until 8 Hen. VIII, c. 28, each taker was so far con sidered to take as a purchaser under the original gift, per formam doni, that his claim was not hindered by the attainder and corruption of the blood of his ancestor. 3 Rep. 10; 8 id. 165, a; Cro. Eliz. 28.]

the seventh; a thousand and twenty-four in the tenth and at the twentieth degree, or the distance of twenty generations, every man hath above a million of ancestors, as common arithmetic will demonstrate. (i) This lineal consanguinity, we may observe, falls strictly within the definition of vinculum *personarum ab eodem stipite descendentium; since lineal relations are such as descend one from the other, and both of course from the same [ *204 ]

common ancestor.

Collateral kindred answers to the same description: collateral relations agreeing with the lineal in this, that they descend from the same stock or ancestor; but differing in this, that they do not descend one from the other. Collateral kinsmen are such, then, as lineally spring from one and the same ancestor, who is the stirps, or root, the stipes, trunk, or common stock, from whence these relations are branched out. As if John Stiles hath two sons, who have *each a numerous issue; both these issues are lineally descended from John [ *205 ] Stiles as their common ancestor; and they are collateral kinsmen to each other, because they are all descended from this common ancestor, and all have a portion of his blood in their veins, which denominates them consanguineos.

We must be careful to remember, that the very being of collateral consanguinity consists in this descent from one and the same common ancestor. Thus Titius and his brother are related; why? because both are derived from one father: Titius and his first cousin are related; why? because both descend from the same grandfather; and his second cousin's claim to consanguinity is this, that they are both derived from one and the same great grand-father. In short, as many ancestors as a man has, so many common stocks he has, from which collateral kinsmen may be derived. And as we are taught by holy writ, that there is one couple of ancestors belonging to us all, from whom the whole race of mankind is descended, the obvious and undeniable consequence is, that all men are in some degree related to each other. For indeed, if we only suppose each couple of our ancestors to have left, one with another, two children; and each of those children on an average to have left two more (and, without such a supposition, the human species must be daily diminishing); we shall find that all of us have now subsisting near two hundred and seventy millions of kindred in the fifteenth degree, at the same distance from the several common ancestors as ourselves are; besides those that are one or two descents nearer to or farther from the common stock, who may amount to as many more. (k) And if

(i) This will seem surprising to those who are unacquainted with the increasing power of progressive numbers; but is palpably evident from the following table of a geometrical progression in which the first term is 2. and the denominator also 2; or, to speak more intelligibly, it is evident, for that each of us has two ancestors in the first degree; the number of whom is doubled at every remove, because each of our ancestors has also two immediate ancestors of his own.

A shorter method of finding the number of ancestors at any even degree is by squaring the number of ancestors at half that number of degrees. Thus 16 (the number of ancestors at four degrees) is the square of 4, the number of ancestors at two; 256 is the square of 16; 65536 of 256; and the number of ancestors at 40 degrees would be the square of 1048576, or upwards of a million millions.(4)

(4) This will swell more considerably than the former calculation; for here. though the first term is but 1, the denominator is 4; that is, there is one kinsman (a brother) in the first degree, who makes, together with the propositus, the two descendants from the first couple of ancestors; and in every other degree the num ber of kindred must be the quadruple of those in the degree which immediately precedes it. For, since

(4) [This calculation is right in numbers, but is founded on a false supposition, as is evident from the results; one of which is to give a man a greater number of ancestors all living at one time than the whole population of the earth: another would be, that each man now living, instead of being descended from Noah and his wife alone, might claim to have had at that time an almost indefinite number of relatives. Intermarriages among relatives are one check on this incredible increase of relatives. This is noticed afterwards by Blackstone, as to collateral relatives.]