Right to property

“ Property is an eternal right, independent of time, indestructible except by the act and at the will of the proprietor; and here this right is taken from the proprietor, and on what ground? Good God! on the ground of absence! Is it not true that legists are governed by caprice in giving and taking away rights? When it pleases these gentlemen, idleness, unworthiness, or absence can invalidate a right which, under quite similar circumstances, labor, residence, and virtue are inadequate to obtain. Do not be astonished that legists reject the absolute. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not merely in the sense, which is commonly acknowledged, that they have the right to property if they have the opportunity of acquiring it; but in the further significance, that they have a right to the opportunity. They are in fact born proprietors—de jure at least, and they are so for two reasons. ”

“ There, the right of the public being limited to the use, when the use ceases the right ceases; when the property is taken, though a particular use may be abandoned, the right to the property remains.” “The public had the right of the land in making payment, and as soon as the owner was paid he was disseised. There is no reverter.” ”

“ And as the right of farm-rent necessarily implies the right of use,—in other words, as the right to cultivate land by the labor of a slave supposes one's power to cultivate it himself, according to the principle that the greater includes the less,—the name property was reserved to designate this double right, and that of possession was adopted to designate the right of use. ”

“ Property is that right held by each citizen to dispose freely of that portion of the general goods guaranteed him by the laws.
2. The right to property, like all other rights, is limited by the obligation to regard the rights of others. ”

“ Free activity is then the principle of the right of property. But that alone does not legitimate possession. All men are free; all can use property by labor. Does that mean that all men have a right to all property? Not at all. To possess legitimately, I must not only labor and produce in my capacity of a free being, but I must also be the first to occupy the property. In short, if labor and production are the principle of the right of property, the fact of first occupancy is its indispensable condition. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Due protection of the rights of property has been regarded as a vital principle of Republican institutions. 'Next in degree to the right of personal liberty * * * is the right of enjoying private property without undue interference or molestation.' The requirement that the property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation is but 'an affirmance of a great doctrine established by the Common Law for the protection of private property. ”

“ Scholium.—If farm-rent is only a fraction of the supposed product of the proprietor, whatever the amount and value of the property, the same is true in the case of a large number of small and distinct proprietors. For, although one man may use the property of each separately, he cannot use the property of all at the same time.
To sum up. The right of increase, which can exist only within very narrow limits, defined by the laws of production, is annihilated by the right of occupancy. Now, without the right of increase, there is no property. Then property is impossible. ”

“ Property is a real right, jus in re,—a right inherent in the thing, and whose principle lies in the external manifestation of man's will. Man leaves his imprint, stamps his character, upon the objects of his handiwork. This plastic force of man, as the modern jurists say, is the seal which, set upon matter, makes it holy. Whoever lays hands upon it, against the proprietor's will, does violence to the latter's personality. And yet, when an administrative committee saw fit to declare that public utility required it, property had to give way to the general will. ”

“ The peculiarity of this solution consisted in this, that in recognizing the land to be a common possession, be proposed to abolish the right of the ownership of land by separate individuals in that the possession of land could not be passed by inheritance, and the land, which was private property, at the death of the owner became the possession of the nation. ”

“ The right of property is that which belongs to every citizen to enjoy, and to dispose at his pleasure of his goods, income, and of the fruits of his labor and his skill.
17. No kind of labor, tillage, or commerce can be forbidden to the skill of the citizens.
18. Every man can contract his services and his time, but he cannot sell himself nor be sold: his person is not an alienable property. The law knows of no such thing as the status of servant; there can exist only a contract for services and compensation between the man who works and the one who employs him. ”

“ Now, the law bases property upon immemorial, unquestionable possession; that is, prescription. Labor is only the sensible sign, the physical act, by which occupation is manifested. If, then, the cultivator remains proprietor after he has ceased to labor and produce; if his possession, first conceded, then tolerated, finally becomes inalienable,—it happens by permission of the civil law, and by virtue of the principle of occupancy. So true is this, that there is not a bill of sale, not a farm lease, not an annuity, but implies it. ”

“ And such a long silence does, as we have already intimated, justly lead to the conclusion of a consciousness, that the right, if any, was exceedingly doubtful. In the mean time, the property has materially risen in value, from the general improvement and settlement of the country, and thus furnishes an additional reason for not disturbing the existing rights of property. ”

“ But if such inconsistency can be charged on him who claims the right of property in land, although that, too, is beginning to be disputed, with how much more force does it press on the man who asserts property, or—if a less odious term is preferred—authority, in persons? ”

“ The owners of property, especially if it be valuable and available, do not often allow it to remain in the quiet and unquestioned enjoyment f others. Such a course is not in accordance with the ordinary conduct of men. When, therefore, possession and use are long continued, they create a presumption of lawful origin; that is, that they are founded upon such instruments and proceedings as in law would pass the right to the possession and use of the property. ”

“ Although the natural rights of all men to acquire, possess, and dispose of property- which, of course, involves the right to make all the contracts, naturally lawful, by which property may be acquired or disposed of-is so clearly announced in most of our constitutions ”

“ If labor, through the appropriation which results from it, alone gives birth to property, the Civil Code lies, the charter is a falsehood, our whole social system is a violation of right. To this conclusion shall we come, at the end of the discussion which is to occupy our attention in this chapter and the following one, both as to the right of labor and the fact of property. We shall see, on the one hand, our legislation in opposition to itself; and, on the other hand, our new jurisprudence in opposition both to its own principle and to our legislation. ”

“ But when the law declares that the lapse of time changes possessor into proprietor, it supposes that a right can be created without a producing cause; it unwarrantably alters the character of the subject; it legislates on a matter not open to legislation; it exceeds its own powers. Public order and private security ask only that possession shall be protected. Why has the law created property? Prescription was simply security for the future; why has the law made it a matter of privilege? ”

“ If the reader thinks it is pushing logic too far to question a nation’s right of property in the territory which it possesses, I will simply remind him of the fact that at all ages the results of the fictitious right of national property have been pretensions to suzerainty, tributes, monarchical privileges, statute-labor, quotas of men and money, supplies of merchandise, &c. ”

“ It seems to us little less than absurd to say that a settler or any other person by acquiring a right to be preferred in the purchase of property, provided a sale is made by the owner, thereby acquires a right to compel the owner to sell, or such an interest in the property as to deprive the owner of the power to control its disposition. ”

“ We think it a settled principle, growing out of the nature of well ordered civil society, that every holder of property, however absolute and unqualified may be his title, holds it under the implied liability that its use may be so regulated that it shall not be injurious to the equal enjoyment of others having an equal right to the enjoyment of their property nor injurious to the rights of the community. ”

“ Like man himself, every form of the property of man possesses, besides its special character which makes it the private possession of an individual, a universal side which men gives the community a well-grounded claim to a right to it. That the State and the municipality appropriate a part of the property of every citizen as taxes we all consider a matter of course, or that the law limits the free control of the individual's property. ”

“ Because the government has given it the power to take and to hold property, in a particular form, and for particular purposes, has the government a consequent right substantially to change that form, or to vary the purposes to which the property is to be applied? ”

“ And this right of property—this right of supreme, absolute, and irresponsible dominion over anything that is naturally a subject of ownership—is subject only to this qualification, viz., that each man must so use his own, as not to injure another. ”

“ The court said in that case, 'by grants of land, we do not mean the mere grant itself, but the right, title, legal possession, and estate, property and ownership, legally resulting upon a grant of land to the owner.' But in the case before us, from the want of survey, or some point for the beginning of one, there can neither be a seisin in fact nor in law; for identity of premises is as essential for a seisin in law, as it is necessarily implied in a seisin in fact. ”

“ If the form cannot be separated from the object, nor property from possession, possession must be shared; in any case, society reserves the right to fix the conditions of property. Let us suppose that an appropriated farm yields a gross income of ten thousand francs; and, as very seldom happens, that this farm cannot be divided. ”

“ For instance, in early states of society, the right of property did not include the right of bequest. The power of disposing of property by will was in most countries of Europe a rather late institution; and long after it was introduced it continued to be limited in favor of what were called natural heirs. Where bequest is not permitted, individual property is only a life interest. ”

“ The words 'life,' 'liberty,' and 'property' are constitutional terms, and are to be taken in their broadest sense. They indicate the three great subdivisions of all civil right. The term 'property,' in this clause, embraces all valuable interests which a man may possess outside of himself; that is to say, outside of his life and liberty. It is not confined to mere tangible property, but extends to every species of vested right. ”

“ The result of the decision is, that the constitution of the State has secured to every citizen the right of 'acquiring, possessing, and enjoying property;' and that, by the true intent and meaning of this section, property cannot, by a mere act of the legislature, be taken from one man and vested in another directly ”

“ If they did, every restriction upon legislative authority would be at once abrogated, and private property would be at the mercy of the legislature.' p. 15. Yet the act of 1878 does attempt by its own force, and without any judicial action, not only to change a contract and increase its obligations, but also to deprive the railroad companies of their property. What is property? What is the common understanding of the term? It is, in reference to its subject, whatever a person can possess and enjoy by right, and the person who has that right has the property. ”

“ The right of jurisdiction seems to have been so inherent to the right of property, that a landed proprietor could always put an end to feuds and personal quarrels, could temporarily bring any lawsuit to a close, and, by issuing his ban, stop the course of the law in his own immediate neighbourhood--at least, within a given circumference of his residence. ”