Use

n.

1.

The term a use, in its original legal application, denoted simply the benefit or beneficial enjoyment of land. After the enactment of the rectly to religious, houses, the ecclesiastics obtained grants to persons to the use of religious houses, which the clerical chancellors of those days declared to be binding. This device, in some measure, evaded the operation of the statutes of mortmain; and under it a use came to consist in the equits Jble right to receive the profit or benefit of lands and taiements, which was, in cases of lands conveyed to uses, diverted from the legal ownership thereof. The system of uses was attended with numerous advantages to the true owners of the land, — uses not being subject to escheat or to forfeiture, and being devisable by will, and transferable without livery of seisin; but, like other Systems, it was made the channel of numerous abuses; lands being conveyed by means of it to persons and in tvays forbidden by the words — or, at all events, by the policy — of the statute law. Then came the statute of uses (27 Hem. VIIL ch> 10), otherwise called the statute for tra-ttsfei-ring uses into possession. It enacted that, '" When any person shall be seised of lands^ &c., to the use, confi'dence, or trust of any other person or body politic, the person or corporation entitled to the Use in feesimple, fee-tail, for life or years, or otherwise, shall from thenceforth stand and be seised or possessed of the land, &c., of and in the like estate as they have in the uise, trust, of confidence; and that the estates of the persons so seised to the uses shall be deemed to be in him or them that have the use, in such (quality, manner, form, and condition as they had before in the use." The operation of this statute is to execute the use; that is, it Conveys the possession to the use, and transfers the use to the possession, and in this manner makes the cestui que me complete owner of the lands and tenements, as well at law as in equity. In other words, it has, in effect, en-acted that the use should be the land, and that where the Use was there the laud or legal estate should be, and should be deemed to be. Hence, since the statute, the use involves the legal ownership; and the Woi-d use has lost But by the decision in Tyrrell's Case (4 & 5 Ph. ir M.) the courts of law held that the statute of uses intended the first use only, and that as soon as it had executed that Use and made it the legal estate, it was exhausted. The courts of chancery, however, went further, and gate the benefit or beneficial enjoyment, as before, to the person intended to benefit, — calling the first usee the legal estate man, or trustee merely; and the proper beneficiary, being the second or last usee, the cestui que trust and true owner in equity. By the joint opera^ tloli of the statute of uses and the decision in Tyrrell's Case two lines of estate became well established in law; namely, the legal estate in the tiustee, which retains aU, or nearly all, its ancient incidents; and the equitable estate in the cestui que trust, which has received incidents analogous to those of the legal estate, upon the maxim, equity follows the law. See Trust. What is signified by the two words, " Use " and " trust," is really much the same thing, regarded from two dif Eerent points of view: a use regards principally the beneficial interest; a tmst regards principally the nominal owners ship. The usage of the two terms is, however, widely dif Eerent. The word use is employed to denote either an estate vested since the statute of uses, and by force of that statute, or to denote such an estate created before that statute, as, had it been created since, would have become a legal estate by force of the statute. The word trust is employed since that statute to denote the relation between the party invested with the legal estate (whether by force of that statute or independently of it) and the party beneficially entitled, who has hitherto been said to have the equitable estate. See Brown; Modey if W. As to charitable uses, or superstitious uses, see those titles. If the beneficial interest which one person has in land, which in the eye of the common la\* belongs to another, is a permanent enjoyment of the benefits or profits of the land, it is a use; if the interest is for a temporary purpose, it is a trust. Hutchins V. Hey\vood, 50 N. H. 491. which have come before the courts for construction. Use maj' be synonymous with benefit. Heaston v. Commissioners of Eandolph County, 20 Ind. 398. The expression change in use, in a policy of insurance, includes a change from occupancy to disuse. Cannell v. Phoenix Ins. Co., 69 Me. 682. In conveyancing, the phrase "for the use of " is expressive of the right of appropriation or enjoyment, rather than descriptive of the purposes or mode of the use. Stock-, bridge Iron Go. v. Hudson Iron Co., 107 Mass. 290i 324. Riding a stray horse about, in the endeavor to discover his owner, is not making use of him, within the. rule that one who keeps an estray and uses him becomes liac ble in trover. Henry v. Bichardson, 7 Watts, 557. A grant of "the use of the timber " con- \ey,s only an ijicorppreaj right to use it, and not the timber itself, nor the soil, the invasion of which cannot support an action of trespass 511. cl. ft. Clark v. Way, 11 Bich. 621. TSae ancl occupation, The name of an action (one species of the action of assumpsit) which is maintainable where one person has had the enjoyment of; real property belonging to aijother, under an express or implied contract to pay therefor, but cannot maintain an action techjiically for rent, fpi; wajit of a lease, or agreement to pay a, speciiic sum. The owner recovers the reasonable value of the use of' the premises, upon the ground that it is just and right the. occupant should make payment.. But the action will not lie where the occupation was tortious, as that forbids the implied promjjie.