possessing any estate therein. It is founded on personal confidence, and is not assignable. 26. What of offices?-454. Offices, in England, may be granted to a man in fee, or for life, as well as for years, and at will. In the United States no public office can properly be termed an hereditament, or a thing capable of being inherited. 27. What are franchises ?—458. They are certain privileges conferred by grant from government, and vested in individuals, such as the privilege of making a road, or establishing a ferry, and taking tolls for the use of the In England they are understood to be royal privileges in the hands of a subject. same. 28. What are annuities ?—460. An annuity, says Lord Coke, is a yearly sum stipulated to be paid to another, in fee, or for life, or for years, and chargeable only on the person of the grantor. If it be agreed to be paid to the annuitant and his heirs, it is a personal fee, and transmissible by descent, like a personal fee. It is chargeable upon the person of the grantor, for if the annuity was made chargeable upon land, it would be a rent-charge. 29. What are rents ?-460. Rent is a certain profit in money, provisions, chattels, or labor, issuing out of lands and tenements, in return for the use, and it can not issue out of a mere privilege or easement. There were, at common law, according to Littleton, three kinds of rents, viz. rent-service, rent-charge, and rent-seck. 30. What was rent-service?-461. Where the tenant held his land by fealty, or other corporeal service, and a certain rent. A right of distress was inseparably incident to this rent. 31. What is a rent-charge, or fee-farm rent?-461. Where the rent is created by deed, and the fee granted; and as there is no fealty annexed to such a grant of the whole estate, rent charge was not favored at common law. The right of distress is not an incident, and it requires an express power of distress to be annexed to the grant, which gives it the name of a rent-charge. 32. What was rent-seck, siccus, or barren rent?-461. It was rent reserved by deed without any clause of distress, and in a case in which the owner of the rent had no future interest or reversion in the land. 33. What is the rule as to whom rent must be reserved?-463. That it must be reserved to him from whom the land proceeded, or his lawful representatives, and it can not be reserved to a stranger. 34. What will discharge the tenant from paying the rent ?—464. · If the tenant be evicted by title paramount before the rent falls due, he will be discharged from the payment. But if the lawful eviction by paramount title be of part only of the demised premises, the rent is apportionable, and the eviction a bar pro tanto. So, if there be an actual expulsion of the tenant from the whole, or part, by the lessor before the rent becomes due, the entire rent is suspended. 35. What is the rule in cases where the premises are destroyed, as by fire?-166. That upon an express contract to pay rent, the loss of the premises by fire, or inundation, or external violence, will not exempt the party from paying the rent. 36. Where and when is rent to be paid?-468. When rent is due, a tender upon the land is good, and prevents forfeiture, when the contract is silent as to the place of payment; and a personal tender to the landlord, off the land, is also good. In the absence of any special agreement, rent would be payable yearly, half yearly or quarterly, according to usage and the presumed intention to conform to it; if no usage, the rent is ་་ due at the end of the year. In the city of New York, it is provided by statute, that, in the absence of special agreement, rent is payable quarterly, and the hiring terminates on the first of May thereafter. 37. May rent be apportioned ?—469. Yes either by granting the reversion of part of the land out of which the rent issues, or by granting part of the rent to one person and part to another. 38. What is the remedy for the non-payment of rent ?—471, 472. An action of covenant, or debt, or assumpsit for use and occupation, according to the nature of the instrument or contract by which payment is secured. Or the landlord may reenter, or recover possession by ejectment, or he may distrain the goods and chattels found upon the land in those States in which the right of distress has not been abolished. 39. In what cases are articles not distrainable at common law ?— 477, et seq. Articles temporarily placed upon land, by way of trade, and belonging to third persons. A horse at a public inn, or sent to a livery stable to be taken care of, or corn at a mill, or cloth at a tailor shop, or grazier's cattle put upon the land for the night, on the way to market, or goods deposited in a warehouse for sale or on storage, in the way of trade, or goods of a principal in the hands of a factor are not distrainable for rent. Nor can beasts of the plow, sheep, or implements of a man's trade be taken for rent, so long as other property can be found. Various other articles are exempted in some of the States by special statutes from distress, and in New York and other States the right of distress has been altogether abolished. LECTURE LIII, OF THE HISTORY OF FEUDAL TENURE. 1. To what source do we trace the origin of the feudal system ?— 491, et seq. To the Gothic or northern nations. Some authors have supposed that the sources of feuds were not confined to those nations. And Niebuhr, in his History of Rome, volume I., 99, declares the relation of patron and client to have been the feudal system in its noblest form. The better and prevailing opinion, however, is, that the origin of the feudal system is essentially to be attributed to the northern Gothic conquerors of the Roman empire. It was part of their military policy, and devised by them as the most effectual means to secure their conquests. The chieftain, as head or representative of his nation, allotted portions of the conquered lands, in parcels, to his principal followers, and they, in their turn, gave smaller parcels to their subtenants or vassals, and all were granted on the same conditions of fealty and military service. The rudiments of the feudal law have been supposed, by many modern feudists, to have existed in the usages of the ancient Germans, as they were studied and described by Cæsar and Tacitus. The traces of the feudal policy were first distinctly perceived among the Franks, Burgundians and Lombards, after they had invaded the Roman provinces. They generally permitted the Roman institutions to remain in the cities and towns, but they claimed a proportion of the land and slaves of the provincials, and brought their own laws and usages with them. The conquered lands, which were appropriated by military chiefs to their faithful followers, had the condition of future military service annexed, and this was the origin of fiefs and feudal tenures. The same class of persons, who had been characterized as volunteers or companions in Germany, became loyal vassals under the feudal grants. These grants, which were at first called benefices, were, in their origin, for life, or perhaps only for a term of years. The vassal had a right to use the land, and take the profits, and was bound to render in return such feudal duties and services as belonged to military tenure. The property of the soil remained in the lord from whom the grant was received. The king or lord had the dominium rectum, and the vassal or feudatory the dominium utile. Prior to the introduction of the feudal system, lands were allodial, and held in free and absolute ownership in like manner as personal property was held. Allodial land was not suddenly but very gradually supplanted by the law of tenures. They were never so entirely introduced as to abolish all vestiges of allodial estates. The precise time when benefices became hereditary is uncertain. They began to be hereditary in the age of Charlemagne, who facilitated the conversion of allodial into feudal estates. The perpetuity of fiefs was established earlier in France than in Germany; but throughout the continent it appears they had become hereditary, and accompanied with the right of primogeniture and all the other incidents peculiar to feudal governments, long before the era of the Norman conquest. England was distinguished above every part of Europe for the universal establishment of feudal tenures. There is no presumption or admission in the English law of allodial lands. They are all held by some feudal tenure. There were traces of feudal grants, and of the relation of lord and vassal in the time of the Anglo-Saxons, but the formal and regular establishment of feudal tenures in their genuine character, and with all their fruits and services, was in the reign of William the Conqueror. The tenures which were authoritatively established in England in the time of the Conqueror were principally of two kinds, according to the services annexed. They were either tenures by knight service, in which the services, though occasionally uncertain, were altogether of a military nature; or tenures by socage, in which the services were defined and certain, and generally of a predial or pacific nature. Most of the feudal incidents and consequences of socage tenure were expressly abolished in New York by the act of 1787; and they were wholly and entirely annihilated by the New York Revised Statutes They were also abolished by statute in Connecticut in 1793; and they have never existed, or they have ceased to exist in all essential respects, in every other State. The only feudal fictions and services which can be presumed to exist in the United States, consist of the feudal prin |