ore, (other than tin-ore in the counties of Devon and Cornwall) paying for the ſame a price ſtated in the act. This was an extremely reaſonable law: for now private owners are not diſcouraged from working mines, through a fear that they may be claimed as royal ones; neither does the king depart from the juſt rights of his revenue, ſince he may have all the precious metal contained in the ore, paying no more for it than the value of the baſe metal which it is ſuppoſed to be; to which baſe metal the land-owner is by reaſon and law entitled.
XIII. To the ſame original may in part be referred the revenue of treaſure-trove (derived from the French word, trover, to find) called in Latin theſaurus inventus, which is where any money or coin, gold, ſilver, plate, or bullion, is found hidden in the earth, or other private place, the owner thereof being unknown; in which caſe the treaſure belongs to the king: but if he that hid it be known, or afterwards found out, the owner and not the king is entitled to it[1]. Alſo if it be found in the ſea, or upon the earth, it doth not belong to the king, but the finder, if no owner appears[2]. So that it ſeems it is the hiding, not the abandoning of it, that gives the king a property: Bracton[3] defining it, in the words of the civilians, to be "vetus depoſitio pecuniae." This difference clearly ariſes from the different intentions, which the law implies in the owner. A man, that hides his treaſure in a ſecret place, evidently does not mean to relinquiſh his property; but reſerves a right of claiming it again, when he ſees occaſion; and, if he dies and the ſecret alſo dies with him, the law gives it the king, in part of his royal revenue. But a man that ſcatters his treaſure into the ſea, or upon the public ſurface of the earth, is conſtrued to have abſolutely abandoned his property, and returned it into the common ſtock, without any intention of reclaiming it; and therefore it belongs, as in a ſtate of nature, to the firſt occupant, or finder; unleſs the owner appear and aſſert his right, which then proves that the loſs was by accident, and not with an intent to renounce his property.
