CCXXXIX
What are the original ways of acquiring dominion or property?
And hence also it is conspicuous how property was introduced, and what are the ways of acquiring property in a thing. For a thing is either still without dominion, or it is in the dominion of some person or persons. Now, in the former case we call the original ways of acquiring property with Grotius, those by which we acquire either the very substance of a thing yet belonging to none, or the accretions which may any how be added or accede to it. The first of which is called occupancy; the latter accession.
SECTION CCXL
What are the derivative ways?
But if a thing be already in any one’s dominion, then it is either in the property of many, or of a particular (§231). In the first case, things in common are appropriated by division or cession; in the latter by tradition. Nor is there any other derivative way of acquiring dominion, which may not be most conveniently reduced to one or other of these sorts.
SECTION CCXLI
What occupancy is, and what a thing belonging to none?
Occupancy is taking possession of a thing belonging to none. A thing is said to belong to none, which none ever had a right to exclude others from the use of, or when the right of none to exclude others from it, is evidently certain, or when the right of excluding others from the use of it is abdicated by the possessor himself freely; in which last case, a thing is held for derelinquished. But seeing none has a right to exclude others from the use of things which belong to none (§231), the consequence is, that things belonging to none, fall <177> to the share and right of the first occupants. Nor can this be understood to extend to things that are lost, carried off by fraud or force, cast over board in imminent danger of shipwreck, or taken away by brute animals; for in no sense are such things belonging to none, since they had owners, and these owners never abdicated their right and dominion.*
SECTION CCXLII
Occupancy is made by mind and body at once.
Occupancy being taking possession of a thing belonging to none (§241), and possession being detention of a thing, from the use of which we have determined to exclude others (§231), it is plain that occupancy is made by mind and body at once, and that intention alone is not sufficient to occupancy, if another has a mind to use his right; nor mere taking possession of a thing, without intention to exclude others from the use of it; but by the tacite consent of mankind the declaration of <178> intention to appropriate a thing to one’s self, joined with certain sensible signs, is held for occupancy.*
SECTION CCXLIII
And either in the lump, or by parts.
Moreover, since every thing may be occupied which is none’s possession (§241), it will therefore be the same thing whether whole tracts of land unpossessed be occupied by many in lump, or whether particular parts be occupied by particular persons. The former, Grotius of the rights of war and peace, calls occupying per universitatem, by the whole; and the latter, occupying by parcels, (per fundos). But because he who takes possession of the whole, is judged to take possession of every part, hence it follows, that when any number of men, as a people in an united body, seize on some desolate tract of land by the whole, nothing becomes proper to any particular person, but all contained in that region, if particular parts be not <179> taken possession of by particulars, belongs to the whole body, or to their sovereign.*
SECTION CCXLIV
Whether wild beasts, fishes, birds, be things belonging to none.
None therefore can deny that hunting, fishing, fowling, are species of occupancy, not only in desart places unpossessed, but likewise in territories already occupied, since such is the abundance of wild beasts, fish, and winged creatures, that there is enough of them for all men (§235); yet, if there be any good or just reason* for it, a people may, without injury, claim to themselves all such animals as are not under dominion (§243) or assign them to their sovereign as his special right; and that being done, it becomes contrary to the law of justice for any one rashly to arrogate to himself the right of hunting already acquired by another.
SECTION CCXLV
What animals may be hunted.
But wherever the right of hunting is promiscuous, reason plainly teaches that this right does not extend to tame animals, because they are in domi<180>nion, nor to creatures tamed by the care of men, while one possesses them, or pursues them with an intention to recover them, or hath not by clear signs manifested his design to relinquish them:† nay, that it does not extend to wild beasts inclosed in a park, to a fish-pond, a warren, a bee-hive, &c. but to those which, as Caius elegantly expresses it, l. 1. §1. de adqu. dom. Terra, mari, caelo capiuntur, are caught in the sea, air, or land.
SECTION CCXLVI
When animals fall to the share of those who take them.
Moreover, since besides the intention of excluding others from the use of a thing, corporal possession is required to occupancy (§242); the consequence is, that it is not enough to wound a wild beast, much less is it sufficient to have a mind to seize one that shall fall by its wound; but it is requisite either that it be taken alive or dead by the hunters dogs, nets, or other instruments; for if neither of these be done, any one has a right to seize and kill a creature, tho’ wounded by another, because it is not yet made property.* <181>
SECTION CCXLVII
Whether occupancy by war be of this kind?
Another species of occupancy is called occupancy by war, by which it is asserted, that persons, as well as things, taken in lawful war, become the taker’s by the law of nations, l. 1. §1. D. de adqu. vel amitt. poss. But because occupancy can only take place in things possessed by none (§241), and things belonging to an enemy can only be by fiction,† and free persons cannot so much as by fiction be deemed to belong to none; it follows, that occupancy by war does not belong neither to the original ways of acquiring, nor to occupancy, but must be derived from another source, even from the right of war itself. <182>
SECTION CCXLVIII
Of finding.
To occupancy finding is properly referred, since it consists in taking hold of a thing belonging to none; and there is no doubt that a thing not yet possessed, or left by its possessor, falls to the finder, who first seizes it with an intention of making it his own; wherefore the law of the Stagiritae, Biblienses and Athenians, is contrary to the law of nature: “ἃ μῂἔσθου, μὴ ἀνέλη.” “What you did not place, do not take up,” unless it be only understood of things lost; Aelian. Hist. Var. 3. 45. 4. 1. Diog. Laert. 1. 57. Nor do they less err, who adjudge a thing found in common to the finder, and him who saw it taken up.* But this right ought not to be extended to things which a people possess themselves of by the right of occupancy made by an united body in whole, or hath ceded to their sovereign as a special privilege, which may be lawfully done, as we have already observed (§243). <183>
SECTION CCXLIX
And things abandoned, as treasures.
Nor is it less manifest that things belong to the finder which are abandoned by one of a sound
