Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol II).djvu/401

 Ch. 24. by the common law, of all a man's goods and chattels, for mibehaviours and inadvertencies that at preent hardly eem to deerve o evere a punihment. Our antient law-books, which are founded upon the feodal proviions, do not therefore often condecend to regulate this pecies of property. There is not a chapter in Britton or the mirroir, that can fairly be referred to this head; and the little that is to be found in Glanvil, Bracton, and Fleta, eems principally borrowed from the civilians. But of later years, ince the introduction and extenion of trade and commerce, which are entirely occupied in this pecies of property, and have greatly augmented it’s quantity and of coure it’s value, we have learned to conceive different ideas of it. Our courts now regard a man's peronalty in a light nearly, if not quite, equal to his realty: and have adopted a more enlarged and les technical mode of conidering the one than the other; frequently drawn from the rules which they found already etablihed by the Roman law, wherever thoe rules appeared to be well-grounded and appoite to the cae in quetion, but principally from reaon and convenience, adapted to the circumtances of the times; preerving withal a due regard to antient uages, and a certain feodal tincture, which is till to be found in ome branches of peronal property.

things peronal, by our law, do not only include things moveable, but alo omething more. The whole of which is comprehended under the general name of chattels, catalla; which, ir Edward Coke ays, is a French word ignifying goods. And this is true, if undertood of the Norman dialect; for in the grand coutumier, we find the word chattels ued and et in oppoition to a fief or feud: o that not only goods, but whatever was not a feud, were accounted chattels. And it is, I apprehend, in the ame large, extended, negative ene, that our law adopts it; the idea of goods, or moveables only, being not ufficiently comprehenive to take in every thing that our law con- Rh