"The Mercantile Law is in one respect better adapted to compression
than the Law of Real Property; inasmuch as the reasons upon which
the former is based, can be explained more shortly than those which
support the latter. The reasons upon which our Law of Real Property
is founded, are, generally speaking, historical; and part of
history must therefore be recounted, in order to explain them
clearly and philosophically; while the Mercantile Law is deduced
from considerations of utility, the force of which the mind
perceives as soon as they are pointed out to it. For instance, if a
writer were desirous of explaining why a rent-service cannot be
reserved in a conveyance, by a subject, of lands in fee-simple, he
would be obliged to show the feudal relations that existed between
lord and tenant, the nature of sub-infeudations, and how the lord
was injured by them, in such his relation to his tenant, how the
statute _quia emptores_ was enacted to prevent this injury; in
consequence of which statute a tenure, without which no
rent-service exists, cannot be raised by a conveyance from one
subject to another, in fee-simple. In like manner, the explanation
of a recovery, of a fine, of a copyhold, of an estate in ancient
demesne, of an use, of a trust, would require a process of
historical deduction. But when the reader is told, that the drawer
of a bill of exchange is discharged, if timely notice be not given
him of its dishonour; because, without such notice, he might lose
the assets he had placed to meet it in the drawee's hands; or, that
if A hold himself out as B's partner, he will be liable as such,
because he might else enable B to defraud persons who had trusted
him upon the faith of the apparent partnership and joint
responsibility: when these reasons, and such as these, are given,
every man at once perceives their cogency, and needs not to be told