From these remarks it will appear, first, that there is a difficulty in classifying the things that are objects of personal property ; second, that things, as choses in action, are not property, and yet they can be transferred (in equity) as if they were property. Accordingly it happens that it is sometimes difficult to say whether a particular thing is an assignable thing or not, whether in its nature it is capable of any transfer.
Property in chattels may, like property in things real, vary as to quantity and quality of interest, though things personal are not capable of such extended and various modifications, analogous to estates, as things real are. As to quantity, that is, duration, a man may have the use of a personal thing for life, and another may have the absolute property in it after his death. As to quality, persons may own a thing personal as joint tenants and as tenants in common. There is an equitable 'property in chattels as well as in things real. Money, for instance, is often paid to a trustee, in order that he may give the interest of it to one person for life, and after his death pay the money to another. The trustee, so long as he holds the money, has the legal property in the money, and in the thing in which the money is invested. A legatee has only an equitable interest, even in a specific legacy, after his testator's will is proved, until the executor gives the thing to him, or in some clear way admits his right to it.
The modes of acquiring and losing personal property are reduced by Blackstone to the following principal modes :—Occupancy; preroga tive, whereby a right accrues to the crown or the crown's grantee ; forfeiture, which is a punishment for a crime or misdemeanour ; custom, as heriets, &c.; succession, by which term Blackstone under stands the capacity of a corporation aggregate to take what their predecessors had ; marriage, by which the husband acquires the chattels of the wife, and the right of suing for her choses in action, and a peculiar kind of interest in her chattels real ; judgment ; gift or grant ; contract ; bankruptcy and insolvency, so far as relates to chattels ; testament ; administration. The enumeration taken from Blackstone is not here offered as one that is complete or altogether unexceptionable. Under contract Blackstone includes sale, as to which it may be observed that the formalities required by the law for the transfer of ownership in things personal are few ; but the difficult questions which arise as to the transfer of property in personal things are ,probably much more numerous than in the case of estates in things real.
Under contract he also comprehends bailment, by which "a special qualified property is transferred from the bailor to the bailee together with the possession." This qualified property, as it is called, gives the bailee a right of action against all persons who injure or take away the chattels; and Blackstone, as usual, finds a reason for this right of action. This right of action is however really founded on the right of possession, and it is just the same right of action that a man has who finds a thing, against any person, except the owner, who injures or takes away the thing. • This right, when understood, is in all respects consistent with sound principles ; and there is no objection to calling it a right founded on a qualified property, when the term qualified property is rightly understood. Under contract, he also includes hiring and borrowing, and these also are contracts which, he says,•may transfer a qualified property to the hirer or borrower. The same remarks apply to this kind of property as to that acquired by bailment.' There is, however, a case in which a man must acquire an absolute property by borrowing, as in the case of the Roman mutuum, when the thing borrowed is a thing which consists "pondere, names°, or mensurel, as, for instance, se many pounds of butter. The distinc tions of the Roman law between hiring, et conductio," lending, " mutuum," " commodatum," and " depositum," are founded on unchangeable principles, and are expounded in that system with a clearness which, in this respect, ours perhaps does not admit.
The incapacities of persons as to acquiring personal property are fewer than these as to real property; and the incapacities to transfer and lose arc also fewer. But a complete enumeration of the classes of persons who labour under either of these incapacities, and the particular incapacities of each of such classes, would probably be more difficult than a like enumeration as to estates in real property.