For a river, dividing territories, is not to be considered barely as so much water, but as water flowing in a PARTICULAR CHANNEL, and inclosed WITHIN CERTAIN BANKS. For which reason an addition, a decrease, or such a change of small portions, as leaves the ancient appearance, upon the whole, nearly the same, allows us to consider the river as still the same. But if the whole face of the river is changed, the case will be entirely altered. For as a river may be entirely destroyed by the erection of dams upon the higher parts of its stream, or by digging canals, which carry off its waters in another direction: so by the desertion of its old channel, and breaking out for itself another course, it will not continue to be same river it was before, but will be completely a new one. In the same manner if a river has been dried up, the middle of its channel will remain as the boundary between neighbouring states, who in taking possession of the neighbouring territory originally intended the middle of such a river to be the line of separation, and under all changes to preserve the same as a permanent limit. But in doubtful cases, the territories bordering upon a river ought to be considered as arcifinious, because nothing can be a more apt mark of distinction than those impassable bounds assigned by nature. It very seldom indeed happens, that the artificial or civil admeasurements of territory can be regulated by such natural bounds, as they are, in general, the effect of original acquisition, or have been ceded by treaty.

IX. Although in doubtful cases, it has been said that the territories on each side of a river are determined by the middle of the channel; yet it may happen, and has happened, that the sole right to a river may belong to the territories on one side of it. Because that on the opposite side was of later occupancy, and subsequent to the possession of that river by the other power: or because this sole right may have been so settled by treaty.

X. It is not unworthy of observation that things which have had an owner, but have ceased to have one, become subject to the right by original aquisition. They are supposed to have been abandoned from the want of an owner, and therefore have returned to the original state of common stock. But at the same time it is proper to observe, that some times the original acquisition may have been made by a people or their sovereign, in such a manner as to give them or him not only those pre-emi

nent rights which constitute prerogative, but also the full title of property.

And this property again may be divided into smaller grants, and those again subdivided into other portions, to be held as dependent upon the original grantor, the Sovereign, or the Lord. Though the land may not be held by base service, or vassalage, yet it is possessed by some conditional tenure. For things are occupied by many kinds of right; among which may be reckoned the right of a person who expects property to be left to him under the condition of a trust. Seneca says, that an owner's being debarred from selling his lands, committing waste upon them, or even making improvements, is not to be taken as a proof that the property is not his. For that is a man's own, which he holds under any certain conditions. Since then property distributed in the manner above named is held of the sovereign, or of some intermediate Lord, who himself is tenant of the sovereign, it follows that any thing which wants an owner does not become the property of him, who can first seize it, but reverts to the state or to the sovereign.