But the most important case of the so-called possession of rights in our law, as in the Roman, occurs with regard to easements.  An easement is capable of possession in a certain sense.  A man may use land in a certain way, with the intent to exclude all others from using it in any way inconsistent with his own use, but no further.  If this be true possession, however, it is a limited possession of land, not of a right, as others have shown.  But where an easement has been actually created, whether by deed or prescription, although it is undoubtedly true that any possessor of the dominant estate would be protected in its enjoyment, it has not been so protected in the past on the ground that the easement was in itself an object of possession, but by the survival of precedents explained in a later [241] Lecture.  Hence, to test the existence of a mere possession of this sort which the law will protect, we will take the case of a way used de facto for four years, but in which no easement has yet been acquired, and ask whether the possessor of the quasi dominant tenement would be protected in his use as against third persons.  It is conceivable that he should be, but I believe that he would not. 2

The chief objection to the doctrine seems to be, that there is almost a contradiction between the assertions that one man has a general power and intent to exclude the world from dealing with the land, and that another has the power to use it in a particular way, and to exclude the from interfering with that.  The reconciliation of the two needs somewhat artificial reasoning.  However, it should be borne in mind that the question in every case is not what was the actual power of the parties concerned, but what was their manifested power.  If the latter stood thus balanced, the law might recognize a kind of split possession.  But if it does not recognize it until a right is acquired, then the protection of a disseisor in the use of an easement must still be explained by a reference to the facts mentioned in the Lecture referred to.

The consequences attached to possession are substantially those attached to ownership, subject to the question the continuance of possessory rights which I have touched upon above.  Even a wrongful possessor of a [242] chattel may have full damages for its conversion by a stranger to the title, or a return of the specific thing. 1

It has been supposed, to be sure, that a “special property” was necessary in order to maintain replevin 2 or trover. 3 But modern cases establish that possession is sufficient, and an examination of the sources of our law proves that special property did not mean anything more.  It has been shown that the procedure for the recovery of chattels lost against one’s will, described by Bracton, like its predecessor on the Continent, was based upon possession.  Yet Bracton, in the very passage in which he expressly makes that statement, uses a phrase which, but for the explanation, would seem to import ownership,—­“Poterit rem suam petere.” 4 The writs of later days used the same language, and when it was objected, as it frequently was, to a suit by a bailee for a taking of bona et catalla sua, that it should have been for bona in custodia sua existentia, it was always answered that those in the Chancery would not frame a writ in that form. 5