STRIKE'S CASE.—1 BLAND. 71

too, according to the marine law, an account for meliorations is
made, if necessary, even beyond the profits; and for ascertaining
the amount, the rule is to consider the quantum of the improved
state in which the ship comes into the hands of the original pro-
prietors; for as to that part, it is not a restitution to them, but a
new acquisition. The Perseverance, 2 Rob. 239; The Kierlighett, 3
Rob. 101; Nostrflde Conceicas, 5 Rob. 284. But according to the
English principles of equity, if the true owner insists on an
account of rents and profits, as he may, not according to the
value when the purchaser entered, but according to the present
value, the Court will order an allowance to be made for repairs
and improvements. Sugd. V. & P. 525.

But where a man has acted fraudulently, and is conscious of a
defect in his title, or has bought a title notoriously bad at the time
of the purchase, in such a case, as a mala fide possessor, he is per-
mitted by no law to make any claim whatever for improvements;
he must take the consequences of his own imprudence. By the
Roman law it is declared, that if a man build with his own mate-
rials upon the ground of another, the edifice becomes the property
of him to whom the ground belongs, because the owner of the mate-
rials is understood to have made a voluntary alienation of them,
if he knew he was building upon another's land; and by the com-
mon law it is in general true, that where a tenant affixes any thing
*to the freehold, he does thereby immediately vest it in the
freeholder, so entirely, that it would be waste, in the tenant, 78
afterwards to remove it; Am. & Fer. Law Fix. 14, 214; and so it
has been held, in the English Court of Admiralty, that if a person
buys a ship, the title to which is notoriously invalid, it must be at
his own peril that he proceeds to lay out money in repairing and
improving her, as no allowance for ameliorations will be made in
such case. Just. Inst. b. 2, tit. 1, s. 30; Nostra de Conceicas, 5 Rob.
294.

In the argument of Coulter's Case, 5 Co. 30, among other things,
it is said, "in divers cases, one who is in of his own wrong, shall
recoupe and retain, &c. He who hath a rent of £10 issuing out of
certain lands, disseises the tenant of the land, in an assise brought
by the disseisee, the disseisor shall recoupe the rent in the dam-
ages; so that where the mesne profits of the land, in such case,
were of the value of £13, the disseisee shall recover but £3. The
disseisor shall recoupe all in damages which he hath expended in
amending the houses.'' And as an authority in support of the last
position, a case cited as far back as the year 1340. This argument
is adduced in a case in which the only question was, whether an
executor de son tort could retain. The Court in their opinion held
that he clearly could not, assigning the most satisfactory reasons-
and they then go on to say, that "as to the case of recouper in
damages in the case of rent service, charge, or seek, it was resolved,