dominium of every kind, and possibly the condemnation is deserved. Community of property is necessarily inconvenient, except in the cases of trusts, partnership, and marriage. In every other case a sale of the property and division of the proceeds is desirable. However this may be it is conceived that in a rational reconstruction of the Law of Property the peculiar species of condominium, known as joint tenancy, tenancy in common, and coparcenary, would have no place.

Servitudes.-The nature of servitudes and the distinction between them and the various modes of property as the basis of arrangement were described in a former paper. It has also been shown that in English law there is no distinct class of rights called servitudes, but that the rights which that expression is intended to include are thrown together miscellaneously with a number of other rights with which. they have nothing in common, into a class designated by the misleading and absurd title "incorporeal hereditaments." The consequence is that the true nature of these rights and their relation to rights of property, specifically so called, have been obscured. It will be necessary, therefore, in the first place to examine the constitution of this class of "incorporeal hereditaments," and to pick out from the heterogeneous collection those of the rights which come under the head of servitudes; and then to suggest an arrangement of the class thus obtained. The principal of the different species of "incorporeal hereditaments" are the following: Profits à prendre, which include rights of common of various kinds, rights of fishing and hunting and the like; easements, (which consist inter alia of rights of way, right to light, right to air, right to support from adjacent, soil, right to discharge water or to receive a flow of water, right to bury in a vault, right to use a pew in a church, right to hang clothes over the land of another); advowsons; titles; seignories; franchises; dignities; corodies; annuities; pensions; rents. Of these numerous kinds of rights those only included under profits à prendre and ease

ments seem to be properly servitudes, and consequently those only which here claim attention. The distinction between profits à prendre andel 'asements is this, the former consist in the party entitled taking some profit out of the land, for example, by turning cattle on to land for the purpose of pasture, or by taking wood, or by catching fish or fowl; whereas an easement consists merely in using its subject in a particular way, or in a right that the owner of a parcel of land shall forbear, for the advantage of the party entitled to the servitude, to use the land in a particular way. The distinction is an intelligible one, and might be conveniently enough adopted as the main division of the class of servitudes. It represents a clear distinction between the different kinds of servitudes, and in the present state of the law of prescription it is a distinction of practical consequence, profits à prendre falling under one section of the Prescription Act, easements under another, with the result of a difference in the periods required for their establishment by user. The celebrated division of servitudes, in so great favour among jurists, into affirmative and negative servitudes, is hardly so applicable in English law considered as the primary division of servitudes as this into profits à prendre and easements. All profits à prendre are affirmative; to them therefore it cannot apply; being applicable only to easements, it seems more appropriate to take it as the basis of a subdivision of easements than a general division of servitudes. We should then have profits à prendre on the one hand, easements on the other, the latter subdivided into affirmative and negative. By an affirmative servitude is meant a right to put the subject of another's property to a particular use; by a negative servitude a right to a forbearance on the part of an owner from putting his property to a particular use. The only negative easements appear to be rights to ancient lights, to air, and to the support of neighbouring land. All the other rights above enumerated as included under the term easement, seem to be affirmative. But these terms affirmative and negative are not altogether free from objection. In one

sense every servitude is negative; every servitude is a right to a forbearance on the part of the owner of the res serviens, never a right to an act on his part. It is the position of the party entitled to the servitude that is regarded in using these terms; where he is entitled to use a subject, his right is affirmative; where he is merely entitled to a forbearance, as that his ancient lights shall not be obstructed, his right is negative. And, for marking this distinction, the terms seem to answer the purpose well enough. Another division of servitudes to be found in treatises on jurisprudence is into real and personal, which seems to correspond with the English distinction into rights appurtenant and rights in gross. By a real servitude is meant a right belonging to a person by reason of his being owner of a parcel of land; by a personal servitude a right existing independently of such ownership, and belonging to the party entitled not as owner of land, but as an individual. The distinction refers therefore to the title by which a servitude is acquired rather than to the nature of the right, and is consequently foreign to a classification of rights of servitudes. It may be added that the terms are not significant enough to mark the distinction they are employed to represent. They do not themselves suggest the meaning attached to them. The expressions," appurtenant " and "in gross" are perhaps better, though clumsy enough. Appurtenant and non-appurtenant would express the meaning more significantly. It is suggested, then, that the main division of servitudes in English law should be into profits à prendre and easements, which has the merit of representing a distinction already recognised, and the advantage of being expressed in established language which must always be preferable to new terms; easements being then subdivided into affirmative and negative, which has this practical consequence in respect of the mode of acquiring and losing rights, that an affirmative servitude is generally intermittent, a negative servitude continuous.

Title.-The English law of title, in other words the law relating to the methods of acquiring property, presents a

wide scope for simplification. Much as has been done during the present century to improve the law regulating the transfer of land, this department of the law is still disfigured with useless distinctions and clumsy devices. It is here that realty and personalty are so prominently opposed to each other; and here consequently are the effects of that absurd division more strongly marked than elsewhere. It is here in an eminent degree that the law accomplishes its object through indirect and evasive means. It is here also that we find the singularly harsh disposition of an intestate landowner's property in favour of a single child. Unsatisfactory, therefore, is this branch of the law, both as regards arrangement, modes of conveyance, and policy. To adequately discuss these various points would require far greater space than can be here devoted to them. All that can be now attempted is briefly to run through the various kinds of titles and make a few general observations upon them. The most appropriate primary division of titles appears to be into those which arise from the voluntary alienation of owners, and those which do not. The former head may be subdivided into transfers inter vivos on the one hand, and testamentary dispositions on the other. Transfer inter vivos, then, first claims attention; and on the threshold of this subject we have to encounter the distinction between realty and personalty, which occasions this difficulty, that although it runs through the whole system of title, it produces no uniformity of transfer amongst the various subjects of the opposed classes. So far as title is concerned the distinction. is useless and without meaning. There is, indeed, this verbal difference, that transfers of real property of every kind are called conveyances; of personal property, assignments; but this difference is merely verbal; assignments of personalty frequently resemble conveyances of realty more nearly than assignments of other kinds of personalty. The difference, for example, between an assignment of a lease for years (which is personal property) and a transfer of goods by delivery is very much greater than the difference between

this assignment of a lease for years, and the conveyance of a leasehold for life, though the latter is realty. No satisfactory arrangement of the modes of transfer, therefore, is possible with the distinction between real and personal property standing in the way. The only course open is to enumerate the different methods of alienation applicable respectively to the various subjects of property. For the conveyance of land there are at least five different modes available, the usual deed of grant, the old lease and release, the release under the Act for making a release as effectual for the conveyance of freehold estates as a lease and release, a bargain and sale enrolled under 27 Hen. VIII, c. 16, and a covenant to stand seized to uses. This multiplication of conveyances is of course quite unnecessary, the first being that alone resorted to in practice. The others might be very properly abolished, if only for the sake of simplicity. Their preservation is not required for any purpose whatever. With regard to the remaining conveyance, the deed of grant, which is the only ordinary mode of conveyance, much cannot be said in its favour. It is a very indirect and round-about means of accomplishing a very simple object, depending, as it does, for its operation, on a technical employment of the word "use," the utility of such a device having, nevertheless, passed away. Much complexity and difficulty might be removed from the Law of Property by the doctrine of uses being altogether eradicated. The object of the Statute of Uses was entirely defeated within a short time of its passing; and its retention has no useful purpose; for, as was remarked by Lord Hardwicke, its only practical effect is to add three words, " to the use " to every conveyance, and, it might also be added, to create considerable confusion and perplexity. There is no reason whatever why a conveyance. of land should not be made directly, and without any such device as that of making one person a conduit pipe for passing an estate to another, or still more absurdly making the transferee a conduit pipe for passing an estate to himself. There are not wanting, even, those who advocate the trans