e not the means even of conjecturing, for the
distinctions adverted to have no modern history. As I before
explained, the allodial form of property was entirely lost in the
feudal, and when the consolidation of feudalism was once completed,
there was practically but one distinction left standing of all those
which had been known to the western world--the distinction between
land and goods, immoveables and moveables. Externally this distinction
was the same with that which Roman law had finally accepted, but the
law of the middle ages differed from that of Rome in distinctly
considering immoveable property to be more dignified than moveable.
Yet this one sample is enough to show the importance of the class of
expedients to which it belongs. In all the countries governed by
systems based on the French codes, that is, through much the greatest
part of the Continent of Europe, the law of moveables, which was
always Roman law, has superseded and annulled the feudal law of land.
England is the only country of importance in which this transmutation,
though it has gone some way, is not nearly accomplished. Our own, too,
it may be added, is the only considerable European country in which
the separation of moveables from immoveables has been somewhat
disturbed by the same influences which caused the ancient
classifications to depart from the only one which is countenanced by
nature. In the main, the English distinction has been between land and
goods; but a certain class of goods have gone as heir-looms with the
land, and a certain description of interests in land have from
historical causes been ranked with personalty. This is not the only
instance in which English jurisprudence, standing apart from the main
current of legal modification, has reproduced phenomena of archaic
law.

I proceed to notice one or two more contrivances by which the ancient
trammels of proprietary right were more or less successfully relaxed,
premising that the scheme of this treatise only permits me to mention
those which are of great antiquity. On one of them in particular it is
necessary to dwell for a moment or two, because persons unacquainted
with the early history of law will not be easily persuaded that a
principle, of which modern jurisprudence has very slowly and with the
greatest difficulty obtained the recognition, was really familiar to
the very infancy of legal science. There is no principle in all law
which the moderns, in spite of its be