A law dictionary, adapted to the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, and of the several states of the American union Volume 2; with ... to the civil and other systems of foreign law

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1843 Excerpt: ...C. L. R. 87; 3 D. & R. 394; 9 B. & C. 396; S. C. 17 E. C. L. R. 404; 1 C. & M. 39; 4 Call, 472; 18 Ves. 193; 6 Bing. 630. Property is also divided, when it consists of goods and chattels, into absolute and qualified. Absolute property is that which is our own, without any qualification whatever; as when a man is the owner of a watch, a book, or other inanimate thing; or of a horse, a sheep, or other animal which never had its natural liberty in a wild state. Qualified property consists in the right which men have over wild animals which they have reduced to their own possession, and which are kept subject to their power; as a deer, a buffhloe, and the like, which are his own while he has possession of them, but as soon as his possession is lost, his property is gone, unless the animals, go animo revertendi. 2 Bl. Com. 396; 3 Binn. 546. But property in personal goods may be absolute or qualified without any relation to the nature of the subject-matter, but simply because more persons than one have an interest in it, or because the right of property is separated from the possession. A bailee of goods, though not the owner, has a qualified property in them; while the owner has the absolute property. Vide Bailee; Bailment. Personal property is further divided into property in possession, and property or choses in action, (q. v.) Property is lost, in general, in three ways, by the act of man, by the act of law, and by the act of God. 1. It is lost by the act of man by, 1st, alienation; but in order to do this, the owner must have a legal capacity to make a contract; 2d, by the voluntary abandonment of the thing; but unless the abandonment be purely voluntary the title to the property is not lost, as, if things be thrown into the sea to save the ship,...