Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/93

§. 3. the tatute itelf is a proof of a time when uch a cutom did not exit.

2.&ensp; mut have been continued. Any interruption would caue a temporary ceaing: the revival gives it a new beginning, which will be within time of memory, and thereupon the cutom will be void. But this mut be undertood with regard to an interruption of the right; for an interruption of the poeion only, for ten or twenty years, will not detroy the cutom. As if the inhabitants of a parih have a cutomary right of watering their cattle at a certain pool, the cutom is not detroyed, though they do not ue it for ten years; it only becomes more difficult to prove: but if the right be any how dicontinued for a day, the cutom is quite at an end.

3.&ensp; mut have been peaceable, and acquieced in; not ubject to contention and dipute. For as cutoms owe their original to common conent, their being immemorially diputed either at law or otherwie is a proof that uch conent was wanting.

4.&ensp; mut be reaonable ; or rather, taken negatively, they mut not be unreaonable. Which is not always, as ir Edward Coke ays, to be undertood of every unlearned man’s reaon, but of artificial and legal reaon, warranted by authority of law. Upon which account a cutom may be good, though the particular reaon of it cannot be aigned; for it ufficeth, if no good legal reaon can be aigned againt it. Thus a cutom in a parih, that no man hall put his beats into the common till the third of October, would be good; and yet it would be hard to hew the reaon why that day in particular is fixed upon, rather than the day before or after. But a cutom, that no cattle hall be put in till the lord of the manor has firt put in his, is unreaonable, and therefore bad: for peradventure the lord will never put in his; and then the tenants will loe all their profits. 5. -