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Excerpt from The Revised Reports, Being a Republication of Such Cases in the English Courts of Common Law and Equity, From the Year 1785, as Are Still of Practical Utility, Vol. 99: 1853-1855, 17 Beavan, 4 Ellis and Blackburn, 2 Weekly Reporter
Some troublesome questions in the law of real property and possessory rights therein were manfully faced by Lord Romilly in Dixon 7. Gayfere, p. 218. It does not seem possible now to maintain that he was altogether successful, but the subject has been cleared up only by recent decisions of the Court of Appeal and the J udicial Committee (1 L'ord Romilly said, quite rightly, that no Statute of Limitation confers any positive title on an intruder or his heirs. But he did not sufficiently consider that the intruder has at common law an estate in fee simple, though a wrongful one, and can maintain it against any one who has not a better title. Hence, if an outstanding better right is cleared out of his way by the operation of the statute or otherwise, he moves up a step, 90 to speak; and if there is no still better right outstanding elsewhere, he becomes the true owner, for at common law there is no higher test of ownership than the best ultimate right to possess (though the possession may be deferred by particular interests) for the greatest estate known to the law. What is true of the intruder himself is no less true for persons claiming through him, and this is the precise point, as it seems, on which the Master of the Rolls erred. Then, it is submitted, the facts that the estates were equitable, and the Court had put in a receiver, really made no differ ence; for no reason is shown why in a question of this kind equity should do otherwise than follow the law.
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