PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. THE writer published some time ago a tract on Registration, which furnished the outline, but merely the outline, of the following INTRODUCTION. The matter is, for the most part, new. His object is to assist the student over the threshold by exhibiting, in a form as concise and as free from technicality as may be, the rise, progress, and actual state of the system under which landed possessions are enjoyed. The demand for such assistance will increase in proportion as legislative alterations diminish the practical value of an accurate knowledge of the details of the old law, without superseding the necessity of a frequent recurrence to its general principles. An Appendix of Forms was requisite to illustrate the text; but both the Pre cedents and Notes have been extended beyond their original purpose, in the hope of rendering the volume acceptable to the practitioner, as well as to the student. With the same intention, a somewhat disproportionate space has been allotted to the consideration of the Statutes recently passed for altering the law of Real Property. It is hardly necessary to add, that opinions on the merits or construction of these Statutes, formed at so early a period of their operation, must be received with caution. 6th Jan. 1834. TABLE OF CONTENTS. Freehold and copyhold tenures, whence severally derived Gradual extension of the tenant's interest to a fee simple The creation of new seigniories prohibited by the statute law But sub-tenure may be created by granting a particular interest Disseisins, why rare at this day.. 2dly, As to the modifications of ownership Alleged simplicity and safety of the common law....... But the publicity of livery and attornment declined with the feudal system... Inconvenience of the common law... ib. ib. ib. .......... but not to an actual conveyance to uses. Two modes of raising uses,-by transmutation of possession, or without. Uses governed, in most points, by analogy to the rules of law 2. Permissive or passive uses.. Official uses dictated by the permanent wants of society But the remedy of the equitable owner was against the trustee fraudu- Inference thence drawn that the use was unconnected with the land.. The use bound a gratuitous transferee of the land without notice The use was not binding on strangers entering adversely, nor on the OF THE DESIGN AND EFFECTS OF THE Statute of Uses. 1, by the exclusion of leaseholds for years from the statute.. ib. |