638 CITATIONS FROM WRITINGS OF JURISTS AND ECONOMISTS. 



engage in .scientific pursuits, in teaching, literature, in governmental 

 functions (judicial, military or administrative), in the healing art, in 

 traveling, in the fine arts, etc., and render more or less indirectly, or 

 with the aid of intermediaries, their services to agricultural produc- 

 tions or manufactured articles, which consist, to a great extent, of 

 alimentary substances. What animates everybody, what stimulates 

 the agriculturist, the extractor, the manufacturer, the merchant, the 

 artist^ the scientist, the contractor or the workman, is need, interest, 

 liberty of action". (Joseph Garnier, Traile, (Vcconomic politique, 

 edition de 1873, Partie II, no. 70, p. 50.) 



Theo. D. Woolsey, Political Science, vol. I, pp. 09-70. New-York, 



1878, 



2. How can the individual acquire property in material which is not 

 Lis by expending labor upon it? Who gave him the right to take a por- 

 tion of matter which is not his own, and cannot be his own because it 

 is not the product of his labor? Or, if he is addicted to pastoral lite, 

 what right has he to appropriate sheep or cows at the first, or to claim 

 any right in his flocks which have multiplied by the use of the soil and 

 by a natural propagation which is not even the result of his direct 

 labor? Will it be said that human beings must live, and in order 

 that they may live must have control over the earth, over animals, and 

 natural agents ? Very true; but this necessity depends on a nature 

 and destination of human beings which is the source of the right of 

 labour as well as ot other rights. 



3. But in matter of fact, for all the higher uses of labor, for agricul- 

 ture, for buildings, for ways of intercourse, the earth itself is material 

 and is prepared for use like any other product. Land is cleared, 

 fenced, broken up; seed is sown, crops are gathered; when the returns 

 diminish, manures are saved and applied, houses are put up for the men 

 and perhaps for the cattle, If the highest improvement and greatest 

 multiplication of the human race depends on this kind of life, which 

 makes all division of labour, and all city-life possible, here we have 

 the destination of man, his highest culture pointing to a recognition of 

 a right to do such things and to be sure of permanence in occupation, 

 as well as of a right of transfer if the owner desires. 



Henry Ahrens, Course of Natural Law. Vol. II, Bk. I. Div. I. Sec. 2. 



Title 1, eh. HI. Leipsig, 1875. 



Sect. 64.— General Principles that Regulate the Right of Property in 

 the interest of Society. 



The definitions of the right (droit) of property given by positive laws 

 generally concede to the owner the power to dispose of his object in 

 an almost absolute manner, to use and abuse it, and even through 

 caprice to destroy it ' ; but this arbitrary power is not in keeping with 

 natural law, and positive legislation obedient to the voice of common 

 sense, and reason, in the interest of society, has been obliged itself to 

 establish numerous restrictions, which examined from a philosophic 



'Roman law gave the owner the jus utendi ei abutendi: after the Austrian Code 

 (11, 2, Set'. 362), Tie lias the power (faculte) to destroj arbitrarily that which belongs 

 to him. The Code Napoleon, which defines property as "the right to enjoy and to 

 dispose ot things in the most absolute manner, provided no usage be made of them 

 forbidden by the laws or by the regulations", interposed social interest by this 

 restriction. 



