A Treatise of Equity

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1835. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... TREATISE OF EQUITY OF USES AND TRUSTS. CHAP. I. Their Nature. SECTION I. We will now proceed to some of the particular kinds of agreements which occur most usually in Chancery. And, 1st, Of a depositum or trust, to which this Court owes its original, (a) and which, if well considered, will still be [2] found to make the (a) The trust here intended, as it was the origin so it is also the peculiar object of equitable jurisdiction. There are, however, other rusts, which are, and always have been cognisable in courts of law, as deposits, and all manner of bailments, * and especially that implied [2] trust to account for money received to another's use. See 3 Bla. Com. 432, and Sir Wm. Jones's admirable Essay on the Law of Bailments. With respect to those trusts which are exclusively cognisable in out courts of equity, they are in their nature very similar to the fidei commissa of the civil law; and indeed the invention seems to have been borrowed from them; and as the jurisdiction of the praetor was created for the purpose of protecting properly fidei commissum, so were courts of equity erected, or at least their jurisdiction extended, for the purpose of protecting and enforcing the execution of trusts. The history of the praetorian institution is thus described by Justinian: Sciendum * Chancery has no jurisdiction of a bailment, as such, though it be strictly a trust. Ashley v. Dcnton. 1 Litt. 88. principal business here; for whoever [3] has the possession of goods or lands, either hath the absolute property or estate in them, by a sufficient [4] title, or, so far as this is wanting, is considered as a trustee for the true owner. And no man can be de est omuia fidei commissa, primis temporibus, inlirnia fuisse, quia nemo invitus cogebatur preeslare id de quo...