Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1st ed, 1768, vol III).djvu/221

Ch. 12. injurious to the peron or property of another, and therefore necearily accompanied with ome force, an action of trepas vi et armis will lie; but, if the injury is only conequential, a pecial action of trepas on the cae may be brought.

in the limited and confined ene, in which we are at preent to conider it, it ignifies no more than an entry on another man’s ground without a lawful authority, and doing ome damage, however inconiderable, to his real property. For the right of meum and tuum, or property, in lands being once etablihed, it follows as a neceary conequence, that this right mut be excluive; that is, that the owner may retain to himelf the ole ue and occupation of his oil: every entry therefore thereon without the owner’s leave, and epecially if contrary to his expres order, is a trepas or trangreion. The Roman laws eem to have made a direct prohibition neceary, in order to contitute this injury: “qui alienum fundum ingreditur, potet a domino, i is praeviderit, prohiberi ne ingrediatur .” But the law of England, jutly conidering that much inconvenience may happen to the owner, before he has an opportunity to forbid the entry, has carried the point much farther, and has treated every entry upon another’s lands, (unles by the owner’s leave, or in ome very particular caes) as an injury or wrong, for atisfaction of which an action of trepas will lie; but determines the quantum of that atisfaction, by conidering how far the offence was wilful or inadvertent, and by etimating the value of the actual damage utained.

unwarrantable entry on another’s oil the law entitles a trepas by breaking his cloe; the words of the writ of trepas commanding the defendant to hew caue, quare clauum querentis fregit. For every man’s land is in the eye of the law incloed and et apart from his neighbour’s: and that either by a viible and material fence, as one field is divided from another by a hedge; or, by an ideal inviible boundary, exiting only in the Rh