pant or finder; and so continued under
the imperial law. But, in settling the modern constitutions of most of
the governments in Europe, it was thought proper (to prevent that
strife and contention, which the mere title of occupancy is apt to
create and continue, and to provide for the support of public
authority in a manner the least burthensome to individuals) that these
rights should be annexed to the supreme power by the positive laws of
the state. And so it came to pass that, as Bracton expresses it[t],
_haec, quae nullius in bonis sunt, et olim fuerunt inventoris de jure
naturali, jam efficiuntur principis de jure gentium_.

[Footnote t: _l._ 1. _c._ 12.]

XVI. THE next branch of the king's ordinary revenue consists in
forfeitures of lands and goods for offences; _bona confiscata_, as
they are called by the civilians, because they belonged to the
_fiscus_ or imperial treasury; or, as our lawyers term them,
_forisfacta_, that is, such whereof the property is gone away or
departed from the owner. The true reason and only substantial ground
of any forfeiture for crimes consist in this; that all property is
derived from society, being one of those civil rights which are
conferred upon individuals, in exchange for that degree of natural
freedom, which every man must sacrifice when he enters into social
communities. If therefore a member of any national community violates
the fundamental contract of his association, by transgressing the
municipal law, he forfeits his right to such privileges as he claims
by that contract; and the state may very justly resume that portion of
property, or any part of it, which the laws have before assigned him.
Hence, in every offence of an atrocious kind, the laws of England have
exacted a total confiscation of the moveables or personal estate; and
in many cases a perpetual, in others only a temporary, loss of the
offender's immoveables or landed property; and have vested them both
in the king, who is the person supposed to be offended, being the one
visible magistrate in whom the majesty of the public resides. The
particulars of these forfeitures will be more properly recited when we
treat of crimes and misdemesnors. I therefore only mention them here,
for the sake of regularity, as a part of the _census regalis_; and
shall postpone for the present the farther consideration of all
forfeitures, excepting one species only, which arises from the
misfortune rather than the crime of the ow