The argument now returns to the English law, fortified with some general conclusions.  It has been shown that in both the systems from whose union our law arose the rules governing conveyance, or the transfer of specific [367] objects between living persons, were deeply affected by notions drawn from inheritance.  It had been shown previously that in England the principles of inheritance applied directly to the singular succession of the heir to a specific fee, as well as to the universal succession of the executor.  It would be remarkable, considering their history, if the same principles had not affected other singular successions also.  It will soon appear that they have.  And not to be too careful about the order of proof, I will first take up the joinder of times in prescription, as that has just been so fully discussed.  The English law of the subject is found on examination to be the same as the Roman in extent, reason, and expression.  It is indeed largely copied from that source.  For servitudes, such as rights of way, light, and the like, form the chief class of prescriptive rights, and our law of servitudes is mainly Roman.  Prescriptions, it is said, “are properly personal, and therefore are always alleged in the person of him who prescribes, viz. that he and all those whose estate he hath, &c.; therefore, a bishop or a parson may prescribe, ... for there is a perpetual estate, and a perpetual succession and the successor hath the very same estate which his predecessor had, for that continues, though the person alters, like the case of the ancestor and the heir.” 1 So in a modern case, where by statute twenty years’ dispossession extinguished the owner’s title, the Court of Queen’s Bench said that probably the right would be transferred to the possessor “if the same person, or several persons, claiming one from the other by descent, will [368] or conveyance, had been in possession for the twenty years.”  “But .... such twenty years’ possession must be either by the same person, or several persons claiming one from the other, which is not the case here.” 1

In a word, it is equally clear that the continuous possession of privies in title, or, in Roman phrase, successors, has all the effect of the continuous possession of one, and that such an effect is not attributed to the continuous possession of different persons who are not in the same chain of title.  One who dispossesses another of land cannot add the time during which his disseisee has used a way to the period of his own use, while one who purchased can. 2

The authorities which have been quoted make it plain that the English law proceeds on the same theory as the Roman.  One who buys land of another gets the very same estate which his seller had.  He is in of the same fee, or hereditas, which means, as I have shown, that he sustains the same persona.  On the other hand, one who wrongfully dispossesses another,—­a disseisor,—­gets a different estate, is in of a new fee, although the land is the same; and much technical reasoning is based upon this doctrine.