judgment of the court of King's Bench. To which leading case all subsequent determinations have been conformable. But where the visitor is under a temporary disability, there the court of King's Bench will interpose to prevent a defect of justice. Also it is said, that if a founder of an eleemosynary foundation appoints a visitor, and limits his jurisdiction by rules and statutes, if the visitor in his sentence exceeds those rules, an action lies against him; but it is otherwise where he mistakes in a thing within his power.

How Dissolved.

IV. We come now, in the last place, to consider how corporations may be dissolved. Any particular member may be disfranchised, or lose his place in the corporation, by acting contrary to the laws of the society, or the laws of the land; or he may resign it by his own voluntary act. But the body politic may also itself be dissolved in several ways, which dissolution is the civil death of the corporation; and in this case their lands and tenements shall revert to the person or his heirs, who granted them to the corporation; for the law doth annex a condition to every such grant, that, if the corporation be dissolved, the grantor shall have the lands again, because the cause of the grant faileth. The grant is, indeed, only during the life of the corporation; which may endure forever; but when that life is determined by the dissolution of the body politic, the grantor takes it back by reversion, as in the case of every other grant for life. The debts of a corporation, either to or from it, are totally extinguished by its dissolution; so that the members thereof cannot recover, or be charged with them, in their natural capacities.

A corporation may be dissolved, 1. By act of parliament, which is boundless in its operations. 2. By the natural death of all its members, in case of an aggregate corporation. 3. By surrender of its franchises into the hands of the king, which is a kind of suicide. 4. By forfeiture of its charter, through negligence or abuse of its franchises; in which case the law judges that the body politic has broken the condition upon which it was incorporated, and thereupon the incorporation is void. And the regular course is to bring an information in nature of a writ of quo warranto, to inquire by what warrant the members now exercise their corporate power, having forfeited it by such and such proceedings.

THE END OF BOOK THE FIRST.

The former book of these commentaries having treated at large of the jura personarum, or such rights and duties as are annexed to the persons of men, the objects of our inquiry in this second book will be the jura rerum, or those rights which a man may acquire in and to such external things as are unconnected. with his person. These are what the writers in natural law style the rights of dominion or property, concerning the nature and original of which I shall first premise a few observations, before I proceed to distribute and consider its several objects.

Origin of Right of Property.

There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination, and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property: or that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe. And yet there are very few that will give themselves the trouble to consider the original and foundation of this right.

The chapter treats of the nature and origin of the rights of property. The only true and solid foundation of man's dominion over external things is the gift of the Creator to him in the beginning. At first all was in common and every one took from the public stock to his own use such things as his immediate necessities required. This community of goods was ever applicable to the substance of things but not to their use. Use gave transient property, the right of property lasting only so long as the act of possession.

With the increase of the race, the conception of more permanent dominion became necessary, and property was soon established in every man's house and home-stall. Movables were first appropriated before the soil itself, then came property in flocks and herds, hence arose the right to certain tracts for pasture, to certain wells, etc.

The earth becoming more populous agriculture grew up, and with it fixed rights in soil. Necessity begat property, and to insure property recourse was had to civil society. Mutual convenience introduced commercial traffic and the transfer of property by sale, grant or conveyance. The right of inheritance or descent seems to have been allowed much earlier than the right of devising by testament.

Origin of Wills.

While property continued only for life, testaments were useless and unknown; and when it became inheritable, the inheritance was long indefeasible, and the children or heirs at law were incapable of exclusion by will; till at length it was found, that so strict a rule of inheritance made heirs disobedient and headstrong, defrauded creditors of their just debts, and prevented many provident fathers from dividing or charging their estates as the exigence of their families required. This introduced pretty generally the right of disposing of one's property, or a part of it, by testament; that is, by written or oral instructions properly witnessed and authenticated, according to the pleasure of the deceased, which we therefore emphatically style his will. This was established in some countries much later than in others. With us in England, till modern times, a man could only dispose of one-third of his movables from his wife and children; and, in general, no will was permitted of lands till the reign of Henry VIII.; and then only for a certain portion; for it was not till after the Restoration that the power of devising real property became so universal as at present.

Wills, therefore, and testaments, rights of inheritance and successions, are all of them creatures of the civil or municipal laws, and accordingly are in all respects regulated by them. In personal estates the father may succeed to his children; in landed property he never can be their immediate heir, by any the remotest possibility; in general only the eldest son, in some places only the youngest, in others all the sons together, have a right to succeed to the inheritance; in real estates males are preferred to females, and the eldest male will usually exclude the rest; in the division of personal estates, the females of equal degree are admitted together with the males, and no right of primogeniture is allowed.

Property Remaining in Common.

There are some few things, which notwithstanding the general introduction and continuance of property, must still unavoidably remain in common; being such wherein nothing but an usufructuary property is capable of being had; and therefore they still belong to the first occupant, during the time he holds possession

of them, and no longer. Such (among others) are the elements of light, air, and water, which a man may occupy by means of his windows, his gardens, his mills, and other conveniences; such also are the generality of those animals which are said to be ferae naturae, or of a wild and untamable disposition; which any man may seize upon and keep for his own use and pleasure. All these things so long as they remain in possession, every man has a right to enjoy without disturbance; but if once they escape from his custody, or he voluntarily abandons the use of them, they return to the common stock, and any man else has an equal right to seize and enjoy them afterwards.

Again: there are other things in which a permanent property may subsist, not only as to the temporary use, but also the solid substance; and which yet would be frequently found without a proprietor, had not the wisdom of the law provided a remedy to obviate this inconvenience. Such are forests and other waste grounds, which were omitted to be appropriated in the general distribution of lands; such also are wrecks, estrays, and that species of wild animals which the arbitrary constitutions of positive law have distinguished from the rest by the well-known appellation of game. With regard to these and some others, as disturbances and quarrels would frequently arise among individuals, contending about the acquisition of this species of property by first occupanc", the law has therefore wisely cut up the root of dissension, by vesting the things themselves in the sovereign of the state, or else in his representatives appointed and authorized by him, being usually the lords of manors. And thus the legislature of England has universally promoted the grand ends of civil society, the peace and security of individuals, by steadily pursuing that wise and orderly maxim, of assigning to every thing capable of ownership a legal and determinate owner.

Chapter II.

OF REAL PROPERTY; AND, FIRST, OF CORPOREAL HEREDITAMENTS.

16-19.

The objects of dominion or property are things, as contradistinguished from persons; and things are by the law of England distributed into two kinds; things real and things personal. Things real are such as are permanent, fixed and immovable, which cannot be carried out of their place; as lands and tene