J. ANDREW STRAHAN, M.A., LL.B.,

OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE AND MIDLAND CIRCUIT, BARRISTER-AT-LAW,

Regius Professor of English Law, Queen's College, Belfast; Senior Scholar in the Law of
Property, Middle Temple, 1881; Joint Author of Fisher and Strahan's
"Law of the Press," and Macassey and Strahan's "Law relating

to Civil Engineers and Architects."

ASSISTED BY

J. SINCLAIR BAXTER, B.A., LL.B. (Lond.),

OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE AND NORTH-EAST CIRCUIT (IRELAND), BARRISTER-AT-LAW,
Holder of Studentship and Prizeman in Constitutional Law, Council of Legal Education,
1894; Senior Scholar in the Law of Property, Middle Temple, 1892;
and John Brooke Scholar, King's Inns, Dublin, 1895.

SECOND EDITION.

LONDON:

STEVENS AND SONS, LIMITED,

119 & 120, CHANCERY LANE,

Law Publishers.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY C. F. ROWORTH, GREAT NEW STREET, FETTER LANE-E.C.

ΤΟ

R. A. MCCALL, Esq., LL.D.,

ONE OF HER MAJESTY'S COUNSEL,

AND A MASTER OF THE BENCH OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE,

This Little Book

IS DEDICATED

AS

A MARK OF THE AUTHOR'S

FRIENDSHIP AND ESTEEM.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

IN preparing this edition the Author, while altering some details and stating a little more fully those things which, in the language of Lord Coke, "though they seem ancient are yet necessary to be known," has in no way departed from the general plan of the first edition of this work.

While fully admitting that for purposes of exhaustive study it will be necessary, or at least convenient, for some time to come, to deal separately with the law of realty and the law of personalty, the Author is still of opinion that the time has arrived when, for institutional treatment, both branches of the law of property are best considered together. When what may be called the classic works on the subject were written, the circumstances were entirely different. The law as to personalty was then much as it is now; but the law as to realty was a system based on radically different principles. Fines and recoveries, the doctrine of seisin, and a peculiar law of wills, controlled the creation, transfer, and devolution of freehold interests in land, but had no bearing on goods or choses in action. All these have now, for every practical purpose, been either abolished or superseded. The law of personalty has been eating up the law of realty. The Land Transfer Act of the present year is the latest example of this process. Realty henceforth will, on its owner's death, vest in his executors or administrators precisely as if it were personalty, and should the machinery of the Act be made compulsory, or be generally adopted, interests in and mortgages of land will be transferred almost in the same manner as shares and debentures. Surely, then, the mode of dealing with the law of property which was wisely adopted by the classical writers of old, need not necessarily be the best method at the present day.