Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/311

 Ch. 8. ore, (other than tin-ore in the counties of Devon and Cornwall) paying for the ame a price tated in the act. This was an extremely reaonable law: for now private owners are not dicouraged from working mines, through a fear that they may be claimed as royal ones; neither does the king depart from the jut rights of his revenue, ince he may have all the precious metal contained in the ore, paying no more for it than the value of the bae metal which it is uppoed to be; to which bae metal the land-owner is by reaon and law entitled.

XIII. the ame original may in part be referred the revenue of treaure-trove (derived from the French word, trover, to find) called in Latin theaurus inventus, which is where any money or coin, gold, ilver, plate, or bullion, is found hidden in the earth, or other private place, the owner thereof being unknown; in which cae the treaure belongs to the king: but if he that hid it be known, or afterwards found out, the owner and not the king is entitled to it. Alo if it be found in the ea, or upon the earth, it doth not belong to the king, but the finder, if no owner appears. So that it eems it is the hiding, not the abandoning of it, that gives the king a property: Bracton defining it, in the words of the civilians, to be "vetus depoitio pecuniae." This difference clearly aries from the different intentions, which the law implies in the owner. A man, that hides his treaure in a ecret place, evidently does not mean to relinquih his property; but reerves a right of claiming it again, when he ees occaion; and, if he dies and the ecret alo dies with him, the law gives it the king, in part of his royal revenue. But a man that catters his treaure into the ea, or upon the public urface of the earth, is contrued to have abolutely abandoned his property, and returned it into the common tock, without any intention of reclaiming it; and therefore it belongs, as in a tate of nature, to the firt occupant, or finder; unles the owner appear and aert his right, which then proves that the los was by accident, and not with an intent to renounce his property. Rh