PRINCIPLES AND PRECEDENTS OF MODERN CONVEYANCING, 1882. PART I. PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION. INTRODUCTORY. CONVEYANCING may be defined as the science and art of Definition general. of Conveytransferring property from one owner or owners to another ancing in owner or owners in due form, according to the law which obtains under any given set of circumstances. Conveyancing is a science, inasmuch as it is founded on a system of general principles. Conveyancing is an art, inasmuch as it consists of a putting of those principles into practice. Although no attribute of general jurisprudence—that is, no part of those universal rules which necessarily enter into the constitution of a corpus juris (a)—yet is it a fact common to most, if not all, bodies of jurisprudence which have ever actually received the assent of civilized nations, that the conveyancing of immovable Immovproperty, or of portions of the earth's surface, or what are ject to lex regarded as such, is solely governed by the lex loci rei (a) I. Aust. Jurisp. 3rd ed. 33; Ib. II. 1108. ables sub rei sitæ. Movables subject to lex domi cilii or loci contractus. Scope of present work. site, or law of the country where the property is situate (a), whilst the conveyancing of movable property, or of articles capable of being carried from place to place, or what are regarded as such, is solely, or to a great extent, governed by the lex domicilii or lex loci contractus, or law of the country where the party conveying has his domicil, or the instrument or mode of transfer, is executed or accomplished (b). Hence, the law spoken of in the above definition may in general be stated to be, as regards immovable property, the law of the country where such property is situate; as regards movable property, the law of the country where the owner has his domicil or the transfer of such property is effected (c). It belongs to treatises on Domicil, International Law, and the Conflict of Laws, to investigate the legal conditions under which property of whatever kind, when situate in any one country, may be validly transferred in any other. The inquiry, on the other hand, upon which we are about to embark, is limited to an examination of English Conveyancing in the strictest sense of the expression. Our task, in fact, is confined to an explanation of that department of the law of England which governs the transfer of property-in its locality, ownership, and other material aspects-purely subject to the rules of English jurisprudence. We may, accordingly, define the subject of which we propose to treat as the science and art of transferring property in England from one owner or owners having an English domicil and status to another owner or owners having an English (a) Story's Conflict of Laws, ss. 5254, 487; Dicey's Domicil, 150. (b) Story's Conflict of Laws, ss. 383, 337-400; Dicey's Domicil, 153, 156, 157. (c) I. Halleck's International Law, by Baker, 154-156. domicil and status, in due form, according to the law of England as it exists at the present day. Convey Conveyancing in English jurisprudence, as in the jurispru- English dence of perhaps most other countries, is essentially grounded ancing grounded on the laws of property. Without a knowledge of such laws on laws of property. it is quite impossible to understand, or even state correctly, the elements of the draughtsman's art, far less to frame the legal instruments of transfer which the daily necessities of mankind require. As the basis, therefore, of our future labours, we presuppose a knowledge of the principles that determine the nature and govern the devolution of property in England. By property (a) we understand anything whatever in esse or in Property posse capable of separate appropriation and transmission, and competent, in the eye of the law, to be the subject of a legal right. So understood, property embraces not only tangible objects, whether movable or immovable, but also all such rights, powers, or possibilities in respect of tangible objects as are capable of becoming the subject of individual claims. The chief general propositions which may, at the present day, be predicated of all property, appear to be these: defined. 1. The law favours alienation of property, and in no case, Propositions applyas between private parties, can alienation be restricted ing to property in beyond a life, or any number of lives, in being at the general. time of restriction, and twenty-one years afterwards, with an extension of time for gestation if it actually exist (b). (a) As to various meanings of property, Cf. II. Aust. Jurisp. 3rd ed. 817-830. (b) Cadell v. Palmer, 1 Cl. and F, 372; Tudor's Lead. Cas. 3rd ed. 424 496; 29 & 40 Geo. III. c. 98; Griffiths |