620 CITATIONS FROM WRITINGS OF JURISTS AND ECONOMISTS. 



Page 12S. 



The kind of physical appropriation of which a thing is susceptible 

 depends on the constitution and qualities of the thing itself. Things 

 differ from each other in size, durability, mobility, chemical and 

 mechanical structure, as well as in the amount of demand for them 

 arising from the greater or less quantity of them that is present, or 

 from their greater or less serviceableness for the purposes of human 

 life. 



1. "Natural" agents as opposed to all other things. As owner- 

 ship implies the useof some things by one or more persons to the exclusion 

 of all other persons, where a thing habitually exists in such supera- 

 bundant quantity as to satisfy the utmost possible demands of every 

 person in the community, there is in the case of that thing no occasion 

 for ownership. Thus, it is customary to say that air, light, and the 

 water of the sea are generally not capable of being owned. Particular 

 circumstances, however, may limit the abundance and the unlimited sup- 

 ply of any of these things, and the dense and struggling life of modern 

 cities or the artificial relations of modern states notoriously impart to 

 every one of them in some of their forms a capacity of being owned. 

 For instance, air combined with combustible compounds taking the 

 form of what is called gas; air and light, regarded as essentials to the 

 complete enjoyment of other things, and capable of being obstructed 

 by the interposition of other things; waters of the sea mainly enclosed 

 by the territory of a state, or within a definite distance of the shore 

 bordering such territory, — all give rise to rights, duties and remedies 

 of exactly the same nature as do tilings indisputably capable of strict 

 legal appropriation. The true mode of distinguishing things capable 

 of ownership from all other things, is to ascertain whether or not any 

 benefit can be conferred by law upon individual persons employing 

 them for some purpose or other, by protecting them against the inter- 

 ference of other persons. It is of no consequence to the jurist what 

 the purpose is, however relevant this may be to the legislator as a 

 guide to the kind of laws he shall make. It is of no consequence what 

 are the kinds of remedies which the legislator shall invent in order to 

 guard the free and undisturbed employment of these things. Accident, 

 no doubt, will, from time to time, as in the case of certain animals, of 

 mineral products, and of other heterogeneous classes of objects capri- 

 ciously determine their capability of appropriation; but the above prin- 

 ciple will always reassert itself, and this is the only principle which it 

 is possible here to accept as a permanent and efficacious test. 



Page 131. 



The very earliest things owned must have been things that could 

 easily be carried from place to place; such as food, arms, dress orna- 

 ments and rough implements of husbandry. It would appear, however, 

 that in the chief communities to which research has been hitherto 

 extended the first existence of true laws of ownership is associated 

 with what may be called the systematization of Family life and with 

 the stability of an agricultural state of society. It is only at a far later 

 stage that the individual citizen disengages himself from the family 

 group, and becomes, for the purpose of being invested with and pro- 

 tected in the enjoyment of rights of ownership, as well as for other 

 purposes, the immediate object of the attention of the legislator. 



