Odger's English Common Law

CH08ES IN ACTION. 37
only to a debt, to a claim for damages, to any right to take
proceedings either at law or in equity to obtain some other
judicial relief, and to any document (such as a bond, bill,
promissory note or agreement *) which was mere evidence of
such a right. It did not include any other incorporeal right
of property ;
2 and of course it included no tangible personal
property. In more modern times, however, there sprang up
several species of incorporeal personal property, which were
unknown to our ancestors, such as Consols, stocks, shares,
debentures, patents and copyrights. All these— probably
for want of a better classification—were also called choses in
action. A mortgagor's right of redemption, however, is not
a chose in action but an equitable estate in the land mort-
gaged.
We have so far described property as consisting of land
or things, or rights in, to or over land or things, or rights
against persons. And we have divided property into two
classes, tangible and intangible ;
tangible property consisting
of land and things : intangible, of the various rights just
mentioned. Tangible property can obviously be sub-divided
into two classes—moveable and immoveable property ; things
are moveable, while land is not. " No man, be he ever so
feloniously disposed, can run away with an acre of land." 3
But our ancestors, whether laymen or lawyers, were eminently
practical men, not scientific theorists ; they looked at all
these questions from the point of view, not of the nature of
the property itself, but of the nature of the remedy which
the owner would have if he were dispossessed of it. If a
man were ousted from his land, he could claim to recover
the fields themselves ;
he could bring what was called a real
action, an action in rem. But if he were dispossessed of some
thing, he could only claim damages from the trespasser or
thief; he could only bring a personal action, an action
in personam. He could not in early times compel restitution
1 B. v. Watts (1854), Dearal. 326.
1 " There was formerly no such thing as an incorporeal chattel personal
per Cotton, L. J., in Colonial Bank v. Whinney (1885), 30 Ch. D. at p. 275.
» Williams on Real Property, 12th ed., 1.
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