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commerce, as imported to impose equal restraints on the subjects of England and Ireland, and to entitle them to equal benefits, should be accepted and executed in Ireland, according to the tenor thereof respectively.

By the Irish Statute(k), 21 & 22 Geo. III. c. 49, it is enacted, that all erroneous judgements, orders and decrees, should be finally examined and reformed in the Irish parliament: but that nothing therein contained should invalidate or affect any judgement, order, or decree, which had been made in Great Britain previously to the 1st day of June, 1782, and that the same should remain in full force.

18. Actual investiture, or seisin(), or a regular attornment, was essential, by the feodal law, to complete a transfer of the freehold in lands. The appropriate methods at common law, of creating freehold estates in lands in possession, were by feoffment, or lease, with livery of seisin, or by lease and release. A feoffment, in its usual acceptation, is a conveyance of the inheritance of lands in possession, with a clause of warranty, and may be considered a mode of assurance which has fallen into disuse in Ireland.

19. A lease is a mutual contract, whereby the owner of lands or tenements confers on a tenant the temporary possession of the subject and the enjoyment of the profits, for a stipulated rent, or annual payment in money, grain, or services, retaining the reversion, or property in the land, after the determination of the contract. A feoffment, or freehold lease, at common law, must be completed by livery of seisin.

20. Livery of seisin(m) is the symbolical delivery of the actual possession of lands by the lessor, or his attorney duly appointed by deed for that purpose (n), to the lessee, or his attorney duly constituted, by delivering upon the premises, in the name of seisin of the lands, the key of the house-door, if there be a house on the premises, or a twig or sod cut on the lands, to the tenant, every person having any lawful estate(o) and possession being previously removed. The occupation of a tenant(p) at sufferance, will not defeat the effect of livery, nor will it be defeated by an inmate of the person making livery being

(k) 21 & 22 Geo. III. c. 49, Irish. (1) The word "seisin" is derived from the French 66 saisir" apprehendere seu possessionem rei obtinere. Seisina idem valet in jure nostro quod in jure civili, investitura; Spelm. Gloss. in verbo.

(m) Sharp's case, 6 Rep. 26; Sharp v. Sharp, Cro. Eliz. 482, S. C.; Co. Litt. 418, A.; Thoroughgood's case, 9 Rep. 136; Bettisworth's case, 2 Rep. 31, B.;

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suffered to continue in the dwelling-house, unless placed there to represent(g) some person intended to be ousted. If the lessee be absent, and have neither wife, child, nor servant on the land, though his cattle remain on the ground(r), the livery will be good.

Delivery of the charter of feoffment(s), or lease upon the land by the feoffor, or lessor, in the name of seisin of the land, will also be sufficient. A memorandum of the livery should be endorsed on the deed or lease, and should be subscribed by any person present as a witness to the transaction.

The principles governing the relation of landlord and tenant(t) in Ireland are derived from the common law of England, altered and modified in many respects by the statute law peculiar to this country. Persons capable of alienating their property, or of entering into contracts respecting it, are competent to grant leases; but a lease for lives, or for years, cannot exceed the estate or interest of the lessor out of which it is derived, unless made to take effect under a leasing power.

21. If the whole estate or interest be granted, and no reversion be retained, such an assurance will be an assignment, and not a lease; but if the last day, or the ultimate(u) portion of the grantor's estate, however small, be reserved, the assurance will operate as a lease.

22. A tenant, for his own life, or for the life of another person, may make an underlease for any other and different lives, because the possibility of the continuance of the grantor's(v) estate longer than the interest of the grantee, is considered a reversion sufficient for that purpose.

23. A lease for years confers on the tenant a right to the possession of the premises demised, and the title is completed by his entry; but even before entry, an interest passes to the lessee, called an "interesse termini," which the lessor cannot rescind or defeat. Livery, however, is not requisite, as a tenant for years has no seisin of the premises.

24. A rent reserved upon a lease for lives or for years, where the lessor retains a reversion, is a rent-service, and is so called because(w)

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the service of fealty is incident to it. The title to fealty (x) still continues part of our law, and is due from every tenant for life, or lives, or for years, holding by rent or other services; and, although the performance of fealty has become utterly obsolete in Ireland, yet, if required, it must be renewed or repeated on every change of the lord.

25. A tenant for years, or at will, is capable of accepting a release of the freehold, which operates as an enlargement of the interest. The common law (y) assurance by lease and release was introduced for the purpose of creating freehold estates, and of dispensing with the necessity of actual livery. This object was effected by making a lease for a year, or for some other short period, under which the lessee actually entered upon the lands, and acquired the possession, whilst the freeholder retained the reversion, and which he was then competent to grant, or to release by deed, without livery, to the tenant.

26. According to the principles of the feodal law observed in England, it was deemed(z) unreasonable that the fealty and services of a tenant should be transferred to a new lord or superior, unless the tenant attorned and consented to become the tenant of such new lord. The Act, expressing the tenant's assent to the alienation of his landlord, in order to give effect to the grant, by which the remainder, reversion, rents, or services were intended to pass, was called "attornment;" and the ceremony, by which the tenant put one person(a) in the place of another, as his landlord, was as essential to the operation of the grant, as livery of seisin was to a conveyance at common law of a freehold estate in possession.

Attornment, however, was not required where the reversion came to the party by matter of law, as to the heir by descent, or to a husband by marriage, but only in cases (b) where the party acquired a reversionary estate by his own act, as by purchase, and then the assignee merely gained an inchoate title, which would not support a distress, until the tenant by attornment acknowledged the reversioner's right.

The necessity of attornment was avoided in many instances by the Statute(c) of Uses, which executed the possession immediately to the

(r) 1 Cruise's Dig. Estates in Fee, sect. 32; Hargrave's note, 20, to Co. Litt. 68, B., and his note, 95, to Co. Litt. 93, B.; Bradby on Distress, 101.

(y) Barker v. Keat, 2 Mod. 251, by North, C. J.

(z) Co. Litt. 309, A., and Butler's note, 272; Com. Dig. title Attornment.

(a) Cornish v. Searell, 8 B. & Cress. 476; Doe dem. Linsey v. Edwards, 5 Ad. & Ell. 95-103; 6 Nev. & Mann. 633, S. C.

(b) See the reporter's note to Brown v. Storey, 1 Mann. & Gr. 129.

(c) 10 Car. I. sess. 2, c. 1, Irish; 27 Hen. VIII. c. 10, English.

use, and by the Statute(d) of Wills, which transferred the legal estate directly to the devisee; but by the Irish(e) Statute, 6 Anne, c. 10, it was enacted that all grants of any manors, or rents, or of the reversion, or remainder of any messauges or lands, should be good without attornment of the tenant, provided that no such tenant should be damaged by payment of rent to any such grantor, or by breach of any condition. for nonpayment of rent(f) before notice given to him of such grant.

27. By the Irish Statute(g), 15 Geo. II. c. 8, it is enacted, that the attornments of tenants to strangers claiming title to the estate of their landlords, should be absolutely null and void(h), provided nothing therein contained should extend to vacate, or affect any attornments made pursuant to a judgement at law, or order of a Court of Equity, or made with the consent of the landlord, or to any mortgagee after the mortgage had become forfeited.

The effect of these Statutes has been to destroy the necessity or efficacy(¿) of attornments, except where a tenant attorns to a creditor by mortgage, or judgment, or by the order of a Court of Equity, or with the consent of the landlord.

28. Leases, with respect to their commencement, may be divided into—first, leases in possession; secondly, leases of the reversion or concurrent leases; and, thirdly, reversionary leases, or leases in futuro. First-Leases in possession confer an immediate right to the enjoyment of the land demised.

Secondly-Leases of the reversion or concurrent leases, are granted to commence in præsenti during the continuance of a prior subsisting interest, and take effect out of the grantor's reversion. If there be a tenant in possession, under a lease for thirty-one years, and during the continuance of that term, another lease be made to a different person for lives, or for years, to commence in præsenti, the second, or concurrent lease, must be made by deed, and confers on the second lessee a right to the rent reserved by the prior lease, and creates a new relation of landlord and tenant, by constituting the second lessee, landlord of the original lessee, or tenant.

Thirdly-A reversionary lease, or lease in reversion, is made to

(d) 10 Car. I. sess. 2, c. 2, Irish; 32 Hen. VIII. c. 1, English; and 34 & 35 Hen. VIII. c. 5, English.

(e) 6 Anne, c. 10, ss. 9 and 10, Irish; 4 & 5 Anne, c. 16, English.

(f) Lumley v. Hodgson, 16 East, 99; Birch . Wright, 1 T. R. 385; Pope v. Biggs, 9 B. & Cress. 262.

v.

(g) 15 Geo. II. c. 8, ss. 7 and 8, Irish; 11 Geo. II. c. 19, s. 11, English.

(h) Meredith v. Gilpin, 6 Price, 146

154.

(i) See Brawley v. Wade, M'Clell. 666; Harris v. Booker, 4 Bing. 99; Harris v. Pugh, 4 Bing. 335.

commence on the determination of a prior subsisting interest, and if granted for years, does not require(j) a deed, but may be created by an instrument in writing, as an interesse termini is only conferred during the continuance of the prior lease. A lease in futuro is made to commence in possession at a future day, where there is no prior subsisting estate, as a lease made and delivered on the 1st of January for a term of years to commence on the 25th of March next ensuing.

29. Where lands are in possession of a tenant for life, or for years, the reversion may be conveyed to a purchaser, subject to the subsisting lease, merely by deed of grant, without livery, or any further ceremony, the attornment or consent of the lessee being rendered unnecessary by Statute.

30. The whole system of the transfer of landed property was altered by the introduction of uses, by means of which a landed proprietor was enabled to dispose of his estate by the mere delivery of a deed of conveyance, subject to such limitations as the owner thought fit to direct.

Conveyances to uses conferred many advantages(k) on landed proprietors, by enabling them to evade(?) the heaviest of the feodal burthens, to dispose of the property by will, or to limit it by deed in a manner which the rules of the common law would not have warranted. The estate was conveyed to certain persons as trustees, who, at law, were the absolute owners; but in a Court of Equity such trustees were considered merely as nominees of the person by whom the estate was granted. If the feoffees to uses or trustees violated the confidence reposed in them, no redress could have been obtained in any court of law; but the Chancellor, who then was usually an ecclesiastic, guided by the doctrines of the civil law, compelled a discovery upon oath from the trustees, and enforced the execution of the trust. In like manner, a person who contracted to convey or demise lands to another for valuable consideration, was treated in Equity as a trustee, and was compelled to execute a valid legal conveyance or lease pursuant to his agreement.

The Statute of Uses (m) was passed for the purpose of annihilating the equitable estate of the cestuique trust, and this object was sought to be attained by vesting the legal estate of the trustees, as well as the beneficial interest in the land, in the cestuique use.

(j) 2 Prest. Abstr. 80.

(k) Butler's note, 231, to Co. Litt. 271, B.

(7) See Appendix, No. VIII. ; 3 Edw. II. c. 4, Irish; and the Stat. of Kil

kenny, 40 Edw. III. c. 22, printed by the Archæological Society.

(m) 10 Car. I. sess. 2, c. 1, Irish; 27 Hen. VIII. c. 10, English.

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