by the common law, of all a man's goods and chattels, for miſbehaviours and inadvertencies that at preſent hardly ſeem to deſerve ſo ſevere a puniſhment. Our antient law-books, which are founded upon the feodal proviſions, do not therefore often condeſcend to regulate this ſpecies 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, ſeems principally borrowed from the civilians. But of later years, ſince the introduction and extenſion of trade and commerce, which are entirely occupied in this ſpecies of property, and have greatly augmented it’s quantity and of courſe it’s value, we have learned to conceive different ideas of it. Our courts now regard a man's perſonalty in a light nearly, if not quite, equal to his realty: and have adopted a more enlarged and leſs technical mode of conſidering the one than the other; frequently drawn from the rules which they found already eſtabliſhed by the Roman law, wherever thoſe rules appeared to be well-grounded and appoſite to the caſe in queſtion, but principally from reaſon and convenience, adapted to the circumſtances of the times; preſerving withal a due regard to antient uſages, and a certain feodal tincture, which is ſtill to be found in ſome branches of perſonal property.
But things perſonal, by our law, do not only include things moveable, but alſo ſomething more. The whole of which is comprehended under the general name of chattels, catalla; which, ſir Edward Coke ſays[1], is a French word ſignifying goods. And this is true, if underſtood of the Norman dialect; for in the grand couſtumier[2], we find the word chattels uſed and ſet in oppoſition to a fief or feud: ſo that not only goods, but whatever was not a feud, were accounted chattels. And it is, I apprehend, in the ſame large, extended, negative ſenſe, that our law adopts it; the idea of goods, or moveables only, being not ſufficiently comprehenſive to take in every thing that our law con-
