REAL PROPERTY. In the artificial classi fication of property rights adopted by the Eng lish and American law, real property compre hends (lie larger part of the rights (those, Ila Me ly, known as "freehold" interests) in land, to gether with a limited number of other rights, which have for one reason or another, been sub jected to the same rules of law. The mo-t im portant of the latter are certain "incorporeal" interests. as they are called, such as hereditary offices, titles of honor. franchises, annuities, tithes, and the like; while, on the other hand, not a few interests in land, such as leaseholds. mortgages, and certain other creditor's estates, have, for historical or practical reasons, found their place in the rival category of personal property. The famous expression. "land-, tene ments and hereditaments." usually employed as an exhaustive description of real property rights, is thus an inaccurate statement of such rights, certain landed interests. as has been seen, not be ing included in the description of real property, while other forms of such property, as heirloom, and the "incorporeal" interests above referred to, not being in the feudal sense of a superior lord. cannot be described as tenements. The term "hereditament," alone, has come to repre sent all the varieties of property known as "real." and to be in a sense coextensive in mean ing with that class of interests, as they all have the common quality of heritability. tndeed, from the conception of heritability as a quality, or incident of estates in real property, we have, by a curious process of inversion, arrived at the notion of real property as anything capable of inheritance, and have included in the category of real property many classes of rights having noth ing to do with land, for no better reason than that, by local custom or otherwise, they descend, like freehold estates in land, to the heir of the possessor.
The ordinary division of real property into "corporeal" and "incorporeal hereditaments" has been considered in the general discussion of property rights. (SEE PROPERTY.) Though not free from objection, it may be taken as a con venient description of such interests in land as rest on possession and such as do not involve possession, respectively. The former comprise the so-called freehold estates of possession simple, fee tail, and life estates). and tluo latter all future estates (as remainders, reversion, and the like), a great variety of equitable interests in land of which the most important are trusts and equities of redemption), and the large class of interests in the land of others, known as ease ments and profits.
The feudal origin of our real property law and the strange conception derived therefrom that lands are not like chattels. susceptible of abso lute ownership. but only of tenure and of the
qualified ownership described by the term "es tate," has been considered elsewhere. (See Es TATE; FEE; PROPERTY.) It remains to he noted that incorporeal as well as corporeal heredita ments are subject to be "held" in estates, rather than owned outright, and that there may as well be a fee simple, a fee tail, or a life estate in a re mainder, a trust or an easement, as in the visible land with which all of these term, are concerned. The difference between the two classes of here ditaments lies rather in the processes by which they may be acquired and transferred. Both de scend to the same heir upon the same event, and both are alike subject to the free power of aliena tion, but the nature of the one renders it incapa ble of seisin or possession. and therefore alien ation by the ancient process of livery of seizin to "lie in livery," i.e. to be susceptible of deliv er•, wherefore it "lies in grant," and is trans ferred only by deed. Our modern instrument of conveyance is merely the ancient deed of grant, originally appropriated to the inco•poeal here ditament, but now employed for the alienation of corporeal property as well. See ALIENATION; DEED; GRANT; HEREDITAMENT.
The history of the law of real property is one of the most interesting chapters in the long rec ord of social and political progress from the Nor man conquest of England to the present time. The rise and decay of the system of feudal ten ure, the transformation of the law of land by the court of chancery in the institution of uses and trusts and in its assumption of jurisdiction over mortgages, the changes which that law under went in its migration to America, are only the more obvious and dramatic developments of a long and steady process of amelioration. The base rights of inheritance and alienation gained in the thirteenth century have been followed by a constantly enlarging conception of the rights of offspring to the inheritance and by a growing freedom of alienation. Conveyancing, once the most intricate and technical of professional tasks, requiring the services of a specially trained class of lawyers, has been robbed of its terrors, and promises, in the near future, to become as simple a matter as the sale of a horse. Entails and other restrictions upon the free control of the land by the generation in possession have been well nigh done away with, and the para mount rights of the State have been narrowed to the rare exercise of the right of escheat upon the failure of heirs. Consult the authorities cited under the title PROPERTY, and, in addition, Kent, Commentaries on American. Law Digby, Intro duction to the History of the Law of Real Prop erty (5th ed.. Oxford, 1897) ; Jenks, Modern, Land Law (Oxford, 1899) ; Tiffany, The Law of Real Property (St. Paul, 1903).