JB/078/104/001

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1826 Sept. 19
Review of Humphreys

§ Emandenda miscellæ
(2 § Real and personal

But all denomination it may be said are arbitrary
these English-bred ones being fixt — fixt by the use of ages.
Why seek then to change them? the inconvenience of change
is obvious: where would be the convenience?

Answer. All denominations arbitrary. True
in their origin: true at the time of their origin first use made of the radical original
appellative. Not so when the denomination import of that appellation
has once become fixt: to g of give to any derivation
an import repugnant to one materially varying from
that of the original appellation confusion is the result.
Employ the new appellation in the new and discordant
sense, there stands the original in contradiction to you,
there stands the original, by which a sense different from
that which you are endeavouring to associate with your
new newly devised appellation as continually or as often as you employ it, certified as being the sense properly belonging
to it

In the present instance the technical sense given by
lawyers and them alone to the adjectives real and personal
as applied to the substantive property is not in indeed contradictive
with the original sense: but what is as bad is irrelevant
to it; it covers the mind of the non lawyer with confusion
as often as presented to it. With relation to him It is in such a degree inapposite
as to be perpetually and incurably, so long as he is what he is,
unintelligible to him. To make it in any tolerable degree intelligible
to him, you must begin with making him a lawyer: and to
the last the conception presented to him by those appellations
will be obscure more or less obscure and confused. What
lawyer has now been or is there or has ever been are arranged on the one side to whose mind all
these cases in which land is personal property, on the other side all the cases in which it is real property.

Identifier: | JB/078/104/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 78.
Date_1	1826-09-19	Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	078	Main Headings	Review of Humphreys
Folio number	104	Info in main headings field	[[info_in_main_headings_field::Review of Humphrey[s]]]
Image	001	Titles
Category	Text sheet	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	E2
Penner		Watermarks
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	25195
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