Lost property

“ Let us admit, then, with the most careful writers, that if transient property, or the right of preference resulting from occupation, existed prior to the establishment of civil society, permanent property, as we know it to-day, is the work of civil law. It is the civil law which holds that, when once acquired, property can be lost only by the action of the proprietor, and that it exists even after the proprietor has relinquished possession of the thing, and it has fallen into the hands of a third party. ”

“ The trap was cunningly set, and accomplished its purpose so thoroughly that in idle hands money became only dissolving wealth, a false symbol, a shadow of riches. An excellent economist and profound philosopher was that miser who took as his motto, "WHEN A GUINEA IS EXCHANGED, IT EVAPORATES." So it may be said, "When real estate is converted into money, it is lost." This explains the constant fact of history, that the nobles—the unproductive proprietors of the soil—have every where been dispossessed by industrial and commercial plebeians. ”

“ If any one place his property with another for safe keeping, and there, either through thieves or robbers, his property and the property of the other man be lost, the owner of the house, through whose neglect the loss took place, shall compensate the owner for all that was given to him in charge. ”

“ It includes more than the mere value of the property taken, for often the main injury is not in the value of the property absolutely lost to the owner, but in the effect upon the balance of his property of the cutting out of the part taken. ”

“ There is something shocking to all our ideas of the rights of property in the proposition that one man may invade the possessions of another, dig up his fields and gardens, cut down his timber, and occupy his land, under the pretence that he has reason to believe there is gold under the surface, or if existing, that he wishes to extract and remove it. ”

“ I am the late owner of this house. During my lifetime I took possession of another man's property—a farm—to which I had no right whatever; in fact, I was no better than a thief. If my wife does not make restitution and return the property to the right owner I shall go—to hell, from which I am not very far now, and so will my wife and family. But if she makes restitution we shall be saved, and all go to heaven. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With equal gravity it might have sanctioned any species of theft or spoliation, by promulgating the principle, that when a man can no longer keep possession of his goods, “all property has passed 94 away from the original owner.” ”

“ But is even the abuse of land worse than the abuse of other forms of property; and is the spectacle of one man owning 75,000 acres of rich land more deplorable than that of another man holding enough personal property to buy him out? ”

“ But the thief and the robber place themselves outside the legal domain of property. In my property they deny both the idea of property, and, at the same time, an essential condition of the existence of my person. If we suppose their mode of action to become general, to become a maxim of the law, property is denied both in theory and in practice. ”

“ Those, therefore, who acquire personal property, acquire only what will last about a generation, longer or shorter. Such property is quickly converted into money—it perishes and is gone. But land is hedged round with numerous guards which protect it from hasty spoliation. ”

“ You now claim that the rights of property in land should be respected, while you have too frequently by your settlements and entails kept your lands out of the possibility of fulfilling any of the obligations of property, and you have robbed your tradespeople and creditors, because your land was protected by cunningly contrived statutes and parchments against all duty, while it enjoyed all privilege. ”

“ It is, however, obvious that the confiscation of rent would, seeing that land has for generations been in the circle of exchangeable commodities, strike at the roots of the institution of private property. ”

“ A thousand dollars, once invested, is virtually immortal, unless it is stolen, or disposed of in some extra legal way. Depreciation, amortization, insurance and special surplus-fund charges throw around income earning property a large guarantee of safety. Any failure in the perpetuity of the property values is due to inadvertence or impotence in the property interests. For centuries the thought and effort of the business world have been directed toward the increasing permanence of property rights. ”

“ The disintegration of the large feudal estates operated to increase the number of landowners, and the abolition of the restraints by which landowners endeavoured to compel labourers to remain on their estates also contributed to draw away attention from the essential injustice involved in private property in land. ”

“ Yet land nationalisers seem to be prepared to treat as sacred the landlords' claim to private property in capital acquired by thefts of this kind, although they will not hear of their claim to property in land. ”

“ The presumption in such cases arises not merely from the possibilities of the loss of documents by the common accidents of time, but from the general experience of men that property is not usually suffered to remain for long periods in the quiet possession of any one but the true owner, and that no other person will deliberately add to the value of the property by permanent improvements. ”

“ Here, then, is a piece of land upon which, henceforth, no one has a right to step, save the proprietor and his friends; which can benefit nobody, save the proprietor and his servants. Let these sales multiply, and soon the people—who have been neither able nor willing to sell, and who have received none of the proceeds of the sale—will have nowhere to rest, no place of shelter, no ground to till. They will die of hunger at the proprietor's door, on the edge of that property which was their birthright; and the proprietor, watching them die, will exclaim, "So perish idlers and vagrants!" ”

“ It cannot be denied that inheritance, assessment, commerce, industry, labor, and wages require the most important modifications.”
You wish, proletaires, to regulate property; that is, you wish to destroy it and reduce it to the right of possession. For to regulate property without the consent of the proprietors is to deny the right of domain; to associate employees with proprietors is to destroy the eminent right; to suppress or even reduce farm-rent, house-rent, revenue, and increase generally, is to annihilate perfect property. ”

“ It is said that, whenever a poor man refused to give his estate to the bishop, the curate, the count, the judge, or the centurion, these immediately sought an opportunity to ruin him. They made him serve in the army until, completely ruined, he was induced, by fair means or foul, to give up his freehold."—Laboulaye: History of Property.
How many small proprietors and manufacturers have not been ruined by large ones through chicanery, law-suits, and competition? Strategy, violence, and usury,—such are the proprietor's methods of plundering the laborer. ”

“ That these effects do not amount to a complete, physical, or permanent deprivation of real property is irrelevant, since even the temporary or partial impairments to property rights that such encumbrances entail are sufficient to merit due process protection. ”

“ Should there be the slightest irregularity in the method of transfer, men, members of society, imprescriptible possessors of the land, might be deprived at one blow of property, possession, and the means of production. ”

“ Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money, and, for greater security, invests his savings in land, the land, in such case, is only his wages under another form; and, consequently, a workingman's little estate thus purchased should be as completely at his full disposal as are the wages he receives for his labor. But it is precisely in such power of disposal that ownership obtains, whether the property consist of land or chattels. ”

“ But if you say, you can still pass the violations over, then I ask, Hath your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then are you not a judge of those who have. ”

“ Given the elaborate system of title records relating to real property which prevails in all of our states, a lienor need not obtain possession or use of real property belonging to a debtor in order to significantly impair its value to him. ”

“ Yet where is the citizen that does not gladly exchange all the steadfast earth-bound property he has, and invest it in this more beneficial and productive possession? Trover and trespass may be maintained for it, contracts may be made with regard to it, transfers may take place of it-in short, there is no criterion of property or ownership, that may not be applied to what is regarded as having no substantial existence. ”

“ I am no longer a believer in the sacredness of property rights. Indeed, I look upon all rich men as so many robbers who have seized upon the land and the natural resources which should, of right, be the common property of all mankind. ”

“ In order to satisfy the claims of these persons it was accordingly enacted that all who had obtained property from the grantees "for good and valuable consideration, and not consideration of blood, affinity or marriage," should, in lieu of the lands restorable to their former owners, receive "other lands, tenements, hereditaments of equal value, worth, or purchase." ”

“ It is possible to criticise academically the famous saying of Proudhon, ‘property is theft.’ To refute it will be at times difficult. I do not mean to say that all property is theft, but I maintain that property in a measure that can be fixed is nothing else. ”

“ I ask, then, in the first place, how possession can become property by the lapse of time? Continue possession as long as you wish, continue it for years and for centuries, you never can give duration—which of itself creates nothing, changes nothing, modifies nothing—the power to change the usufructuary into a proprietor. Let the civil law secure against chance-comers the honest possessor who has held his position for many years,—that only confirms a right already respected ”

“ In fact, they are always either deeds of gift, or of sale, or of exchange, or of the grant of precaria. It is impossible not to allow that the thousands of deeds of this kind are so many proofs of private property, since you can neither sell nor give away what is not already your own. ”

“ In that case it may truly be said that 'property is theft.' The rationale of property, in short, requires that everyone who will conform to the positive condition of possessing it, viz. labour, and the negative condition, viz. respect for it as possessed by others, should, so far as social arrangements can make him so, be a possessor of property himself, and of such property as will at least enable him to develope a sense of responsibility, as distinct from mere property in the immediate necessaries of life. ”

“ No limitation on this general principle arises from the mere fact of the particular situation of the property, as the principle is general and embraces all the property of the bankrupt estate, wherever situated. ”

“ Prior to December 1, 1881, the limitation of actions for the recovery of real property, or the possession thereof, was 20 years; and this, by the territorial act of that date, was reduced to 10 years. ”

“ In order that the question of proprietorship may not remain too long unsettled, and thereby injure the public welfare, disturbing the peace of families and the stability of social transactions, the law has fixed a time when all claims shall be cancelled, and possession shall regain its ancient prerogative through its transformation into property. ”

“ What most prevents the realization of the injustice of private property in land is the habit of including all the things that are made the subject of ownership in one category, as property, or, if any distinction is made, drawing the line, according to the unphilosophical distinction of the lawyers, between personal property and real estate, or things movable and things immovable. The real and natural distinction is between things which are the produce of labor and things which are the gratuitous offerings of nature; or, to adopt the terms of political economy, between wealth and land. ”

“ Sometimes this political action primarily affects only the distribution of wealth, and so makes one class rich and another poor. Such is the case with laws which give all the real estate to the oldest son, [Pg 344] laws which allow property to be entailed for a long time or forever, laws which cut men off from the land. ”

“ If it were true that land had always been treated as private property, that would not prove the justice or necessity of continuing so to treat it, any more than the universal existence of slavery, which might once have been safely affirmed, would prove the justice or necessity of making property of human flesh and blood. Wherever we can trace the early history of society, whether in Asia, in Europe, in Africa, in America, or in Polynesia, land has been considered as common property. ”