Subjects of Conveyancing, this signifies the means by which a person has a right to them. The modes of acquiring property are: 1. MARRIAGE. 2. DESCENT or hereditary succession to real property; SUCCESSION, or the devolution or transmission of real or personal property, on the death of, and from, persons in a corporate character, to their successors; and ADMINISTRATION, or the distribution of personal property on the death of the owner. 3. ESCHEAT, or the reverting of land to the original grantor or lord of the fee, where a legal tenant of the fee dies without heirs, and without having disposed of it, or was attainted for treason or murder. 4. OCCUPANCY, or the taking possession of an estate which has no owner. 5. ALLUVION, or the washing up of sand or earth; and DERELICTION, or the receding of water, so as to leave land dry. 6. PRESCRIPTION, or usage. 7. ADVERSE POSSESSION, and the operation of certain Statutes, called STATUTES OF LIMITATION, which, by setting a limit to the time within which a person shall be allowed to enforce his right to property against another person, serve to confer a title on the latter in case of the former failing to institute proceedings to enforce his right within the prescribed time. 8. The OPERATION OF THE LAND REGISTRY ACT, 1862, AND THE DECLARATION OF TITLE ACT, AND THE LAND TRANSFER ACT, 1875, by which an indefeasible title or root of title may be obtained in favour of or by a purchaser for value. 9. FORFEITURE, or the loss of property as a punishment for some illegal act or negligence. 10. BANKRUPTCY, or LIQUIDATION. 11. ALIENATION.

One mode of alienation is by MERE WRITTEN AGREEMENT; another is by DEED, that is, by a writing sealed and delivered; a third mode is by MATTER OF RECORD; a fourth, in the case of copyholds, is by VOLUNTARY GRANT, SURRENDER, OR BARGAIN AND SALE, FOLLOWED BY ADMITTANCE, OR BY RECOVERY; and a fifth mode is by WILL.

Every person, to become legal owner of copyholds, must

be admitted tenant of the manor, and every such ADMITTANCE must be entered on the court rolls of the manor. Sometimes such admittance is grounded on a VOLUNTARY GRANT by the lord, where the land was in his own hands, and he might have retained it if he had thought proper, but he chooses to make a grant of it. At other times such admittance is grounded on a SURRENDER to the lord, or a BARGAIN AND SALE by a copyholder, according to the nature of the interest of the party alienating.

Those DEEDS which are termed CONVEYANCES may be arranged into two great classes: CONVEYANCES AT COMMON LAW, that is, conveyances which derive their effect from the unwritten law; and STATUTORY CONVEYANCES, which derive their efficacy from the operation of an Act of Parliament. Of the former there are about thirteen kinds: (1.) FEOFFMENTS, which consist of deeds perfected by livery of seisin, that is, delivery of possession. (2.) GIFTS, which are feoffments whereby an estate tail is created. (3.) GRANTS, which are conveyances of incorporeal hereditaments. (4.) BARGAINS AND SALES, which are contracts for money or money's worth. (5) LEASES, which are conveyances for some less interest than the lessor has in the premises, whether for life, for years, or at will; and UNDERLEASES, which are leases made by a person who has himself only a leasehold interest. (6.) EXCHANGES. (7.) PARTITIONS. (8.) RELEASES, whereby rights are extinguished, or estates or interests are conveyed to persons who have already some estate or interest in possession. (9.) CONFIRMATIONS, whereby conditional or voidable estates are made absolute or unavoidable, or whereby particular estates are increased. (10.) SURRENDERS, whereby estates for life or years are yielded up to him who has a higher or equal estate in reversion or remainder. (11.) ASSIGNMENTS, which are total alienations of chattels, real or personal, not by way of surrender. (12.) DEFEASANCES, which are of the nature of

conditions subsequent, except that they are contained in a distinct deed. (13.) DISCLAIMERS, which are deeds of renunciation of a grant, devise, or bequest.

Not reckoning deeds which existed at common law, and when made to uses operate under the Statute of Uses, there are about ten kinds of GENERAL STATUTORY CONVEYANCES: (1.) COVENANTS TO STAND SEISED, whereby a person covenants that he will stand seised, that is, possessed, to the use of his wife or some relative. (2.) DEEDS OF LEASE AND RELEASE, which consist, first, of a lease, or rather a bargain and sale for a year, conferring on the bargainee the use of the land for that time, which the Statute of Uses converts into a legal estate; and, secondly, of a common law release of the reversion to the bargainee -a contrivance resorted to in order to effect the transfer of real property in a more secret manner than by feoffment, which required the notoriety of livery, or than by bargain and sale, to which enrolment was requisite. (3.) STATUTORY RELEASES, which are substituted by the stat. 4 Vict. c. 21, for leases and releases. (4.) STATUTORY GRANTS, which are simply grants to which the stat. 8 & 9 Vict. c. 106, s. 2, has given the effect of passing things corporeal as well as incorporeal, by enacting that the former shall be deemed to lie in grant as well as in livery. Before that statute, none but incorporeal things were said to lie in grant, that is, could be made the subject of a grant; because, from their very nature, they were incapable of actual delivery of the possession: whereas corporeal tenements and hereditaments were said to lie in livery alone; because they were capable of actual delivery of possession ; and it was the policy of the common law that they should only pass by such delivery, or by some other means calculated to give the public some notice or means of knowing that a transfer of ownership had taken place. (5.) DEEDS TO LEAD OR DECLARE THE USES OF FINES AND RECOVERIES

-assurances which we shall presently notice. (6.) DEEDS OF REVOCATION OF USES. (7.) DEEDS OF APPOINTMENT, whereby a person, to whom a power of appointing or creating an estate is reserved or given, exercises that power. (8.) LEASES UNDER POWERS. (9.) BARGAINS AND SALES under the Act for the abolition of fines and recoveries. (10.) CONCISE CONVEYANCES AND LEASES under the stat. 8 & 9 Vict. c. 119, and c. 124, and the stat. 25 & 26 Vict. c. 53.

There are some DEEDS OTHER THAN CONVEYANCES, such as DEEDS OF COVENANT OR AGREEMENT, AND DECLARATIONS OF TRUST, and BONDS, which are deeds whereby a person obliges himself alone, or himself or his representatives, to do some act.

Some of the conveyances, and other deeds above enumerated, receive other names, derived from the purpose to be effected by them. So that some are called purchase deeds, others mortgage deeds, others marriage settlements, others deeds of arrangement, others deeds of indemnity others composition or creditors' deeds, &c.

There were four modes of ALIENATION BY MATTER OF RECORD (1.) By a PRIVATE ACT of Parliament. (2.) By a ROYAL GRANT by charter or letters patent. (3.) By a FINE, which was an amicable composition or agreement to terminate a suit (usually a fictitious suit), whereby real estate was acknowledged by one of the parties, who was called the cognisor, to be, and thereby became, the property of another of the parties, who was called the cognisee. (4.) By a CоMMON RECOVERY, which was an action (usually fictitious) not compromised, but carried through every step of proceeding, by means whereof real estate was recovered by one party, who was called the recoveror, against the tenant of the freehold, who was called the

recoveree.

IV. In concluding this rapid sketch of our subject, we may briefly observe that there are certain Persons connected with conveyancing, of whom it is convenient to treat separately, though succinctly. Such are those who are clothed with an official character, as executors, administrators, and trustees, or with a certain civil character, as CORPORATIONS; of which last some consist of single individuals, called corporations sole; while others consist of a number of persons, called corporations aggregate. Such also are those who are under peculiar disabilities; as MARRIED WOMEN; INFANTS, that is, all persons under the age of 21 years; ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN; PERSONS OF UNSOUND MIND and ALIENS.

Again, there are certain Miscellaneous Heads of Law connected with conveyancing, which it is also convenient to make the subject of separate consideration; such as WASTE, or that which tends to the permanent depreciation of an inheritance; MERGER, or the absorption of a less estate in a greater; CONVERSION, or the actual or constructive change of property of one kind into property of a different kind; ELECTION, or the choosing between two rights; and SATISFACTION, or the making of a gift in extinguishment of some claim of the party to whom it is made.