The Express.
London, England, 1848-09-15 00:00:00

them. Private proierty is always aggressive—public
rights are ever giving way. e unfortunate truth
that what is everybody 's business is nobody's, is too
well exemplified in the sleepless vigilance with which
every unwatehed privilege is appropriated by some
larking proprietor, whose race have perhaps for cen-
turies been crouching in the neighbourhood with their
etc4xed on this prey. It is a false and a dangerous
os
to believe that such persons have drawn a
profitable lesson from late events. On the contrary,
there are unfortunate circumstances in the history of
European affairs that may harden their hearts into an
indolent and insolent security. The desire of the
middle clams to avoid and defeat convulsion, they
may have the folly to interpret into a consent to sub-
mit to all the demands of their capricious tyranny.
They will find it in the end a mistake, but it is a mis-
take that they are not unlikely to commit, and there-
fore it would more grieve than surprise us should we
find the aristocracy of this country exhibiting for a
short period refreshed arrogance and rapacity, in
their practical commentary on the scenes that have
been enacted in Franco and Germany.
It is of the utmost importance that the public of all
grades should be kept alive to the infinite moment of
preserving popular rights, such as those connected
with commons, pathways, open sea-shores, &c., un-
touched, because uo one can look at these selects in
&constitutional pointer view without seeing how slight
a variation of legal principle has sometimes affected this
clams of privileges to the widest extent. It is a doc-
trine both of the common law of England and of the
civil law as practised in fitotlaad and other countries,
that the sea-shore within high water mark belongs to
the crown. By . a distinction of principle, small at
first, but widening into important consequences,
the English crown right became a spe-
cies of proprietary interest capable of being
parted with, while the civil law doctrine came
nearer to the principle that the crown was
but another word for the public. Under both sys-
tems the right could be alienated, but it came by de-
grees under the English system to be held that it
might be acquired without conveyance from the
crown, by something like a prescriptive right of ad-
verse possession. Mr. HALL, in his " Essay on the
Rights of the Crown and the Privileges of the Subject
in the Sea Shores of the Realm," says :
As all the laud of &mined, hether terra firma, sea
, shore, or sea bottom, belonged originally (aowthng to our
laws of tenure) to the king, and as the ownership of a sub-
ject, in nr over any part of it, could only be derived by grant
from or through the kLig, it might seem to fellow that
f every claim of the subject, or of a corporate body of subject*,
to any part of the sea shore or of the shore of tide rivers,
, must be supported by precisely the same evidence of title as
a claim to any inland estate, as flab at the king's primil
! _facie title. Nor does it appear how the king's right and
L claim to the sea shore, or shore of tide riven, or any part
thereof, can be rebutted by any other k nd of evidence than
I that which would be called far by our courts of law in a case
, of ilt4o/111 title. .

But this author is obliged to admit that, practically, li
the right of absolute exclusion of the public from the,
sea shore has been acquir‘d by individuals through
mere prescription, and as an accessory to other rights
—a principle which probably found its way into the
law, not from any desire to restrict the liberty of the
subject, but from want of a speculative foresight into
the large a• d formidable results which might arise
from petty deviations in principle. A very formid-
able illawration of the rule adopted in the English
law occurred in 1821, in the well known case of
" Blundell " (6 Barn. and Ald., 268). A person had es-
tablished an hotel at an excellent bathing station on the
estuary of the Mersey. The lord of the manor of Great
Crosby brought an action of trespass against him, for
" with feet in walking, and with the feet of horsey,
and with the wheels of bathing machines, carte, and
other carriages, passing over, tearing up, and da-
maging the sand, gravel, and soil," &c., of a "close
called the sea-shore," within the manor of Great
Crosby, &c. The innkeeper and his guests might say
II the Trojans to LATINUS—

Littwque reputes
Innocuunt, et matte undateque autamque petentem.
Bat they could not well subjoin—

Non erinme regno indecorce.

The lord of the manor did not like to have an inde-
finite number of naked bathers on the sea-share, oppo-
site to his grounds; and he succeeded in his action of
trespass, though hie right to the shore was at best
but prescriptive, and acquired as an accessary of other
flied rights.
The law of Scotland aipears from a recent decision
to emblem a principle more favourable to the public,
which we hope it will not be found hereafter relin-
quiphing. la the COW of the " Officers of State c.
Smith," decided on March 11, 1846, it was found that
the crown could, as guardian of the public, prevent e
contiguous proprietor from extending an edifice
within the highest high water-mark on the seabeach
of Portobello, though his titles derived from the
crown, described his property as bounded by the sea-
shore. Such a principle, it fully followed up, must be
infinitely valuable to the people of Scotland, and if in
England the powers of contiguous proprietors be such
as the case if "Blundell" would lead one to suppose
they are, it deserves consideration whether the law
should not be amended by statute.