supply many opportunities. Even if the civil law did not interpose to bar remote pretensions, the very nature of things would shew the reasonableness of a shorter period of limitation being allowed to present than to absent claimants. If impressions of fear were pleaded by any one in excuse, yet their influence would not be of perpetual duration, and length of time would unfold various means of security against such fears, either from resources within himself, or from the assistance of others. Escaping beyond the reach of him he dreaded, he might protest against his oppression, by appealing to proper judges and arbitrators.

VII. Now as time immemorial, considered in a moral light, seems to have no bounds, silence for such a length of time appears sufficient to establish the presumption that all claim to a thing is abandoned, unless the strongest proofs to the contrary can be produced. The most able Lawyers have properly observed, that time according to the memory of man is not an hundred years, though probably it may not fall far short of that space. For a hundred years are the term beyond which human existence seldom reaches; a space, which in general completes three ages or generations of men. The Romans made this objection to Antiochus, that he claimed cities, which neither he himself, his father, nor his grandfather had ever possessed.

VIII. From the natural affection which all men have for themselves, and their property, an objection may be taken against the presumption of any one's abandoning a thing which belongs to him, and consequently negative acts, even though confirmed by a long period of time, are not sufficient to establish the above named conjecture.

Now considering the great importance deservedly attached to the settlement of CROWNS, all conjectures favourable to the possessors ought to be allowed. For if Aratus of Sicyon thought it a hard case, that PRIVATE possessions of fifty years' standing should be disturbed, how much weightier is that maxim of Augustus, that it is the character of a good man and a good subject to wish for no change in the present government, and, IN THE WORDS, WHICH THUCYDIDES HAS ASSIGNED TO ALCIBIADES, to support the constitution, under which he has been born? But if no such rules in favour of possession could be adduced, yet a more weighty objection might

be found against the presumption, drawn from the inclination of every one to preserve his own right, which is the improbability of one man's allowing another to usurp his property for any length of time, without declaring and asserting his own right.

IX. Perhaps it may reasonably be said, that this matter does not rest upon presumption only, but that it is a rule, introduced by the voluntary law of Nations, that uninterrupted possession, against which no claim has been asserted, will entirely transfer such property to the actual possessor. For it is most likely that all nations by consent gave their sanction to such a practice, as conducive to their common peace. The term uninterrupted possession therefore has been very properly used to signify, as Sulpitius says in Livy, "that which has been held by one uniform tenour of right, without intermission. >>> Or as the same author, in another place, calls it, "perpetual possession, that has never been called in question." For a transitory possession creates no title. And it was this exception which the Numidians urged against the Carthaginians, alleging that as opportunity offered, sometimes the Kings of the Numidians had appropriated to themselves the disputed possessions, which had always remained in the hands of the stronger party.

X. But here another question, and that of considerable difficulty, arises, which is, to decide, whether, by this desertion, persons yet unborn may be deprived of their rights. If we maintain that they MAY NOT, the rule already established would be of no avail towards settling the tranquillity of kingdoms, and security of property. For in most things some thing is due to the interests of posterity. But if we affirm that they may, it then seems wonderful that silence should prejudice the rights of those, who were unable to speak, before they had any existence, and that the act of OTHERS should operate to their injury. To clear up this point, we must observe that no rights can belong to a person before he has any existence, as, in the language of the schools, there can be no accident without a substance. Wherefore if a Prince, from urgent motives of policy, and for the advantage of his own native dominions, and subjects, should decline to accept an additional sovereignty, or for the same reasons, should relinquish that, which he had already accepted, he would not be charged with injuring

his heirs and successors, then unborn, who could have no rights before they had a natural existence.

Now as a sovereign may EXPRESSLY declare a change of his will respecting such dominions, so that change may, in certain cases, be implied without such declaration.

In consequence of such a change either expressed or implied, before the rights of heirs and successors can be supposed to have any existence, the possession may be considered as entirely abandoned. The case here has been considered according to the LAW OF NATURE: for the civil law, among other fictions, introduced that of the law's personating those, who are not yet in being, and so preventing any occupancy from taking place to their prejudice; a regulation of the law established upon no slight grounds in order to preserve estates in families, although every means of PERPETUATING property to individuals, which prevents its transfer from hand to hand, may in some measure be detrimental to the public interest. From whence it is a received opinion, that length of time will give a property in those fees, which were originally conveyed, not by right of succession, but by virtue of primitive investiture. Covarruvias, a lawyer of great judgment, supports this opinion with the strongest arguments in favour of primogeniture, and applies it to estates left in trust. For nothing can prevent the civil law from instituting a right, which, though it cannot be lawfully alienated by the act of one party without consent of the other, yet, to avoid uncertainty in the tenure of present proprietors, may be lost by neglect of claim for a length of time. Still the parties thus deprived may maintain a personal action against those, or their heirs, through whose neglect their right has been forfeited.

XI. It is an inquiry of importance whether the law of usucaption and prescription, if it prevail in a prince's dominions, can be applied to the tenure of the crown, and all its prerogatives. Many legal writers, who have treated of the nature of sovereign power according to the principles of the Roman civil law, seem to affirm that it may be so applied. But this is an opinion to which we cannot accede in its full extent. For to make a law binding upon any one, it is requisite that the legislator should possess both power and will. A legislator is not bound by his law, as by the irrevocable and unchangeable controul of a superior. But occasions may arise that

will demand an alteration or even a repeal of the law which he has made. Yet a legislator may be bound by his own law, not directly as a legislator, but as an individual forming part of the community: and that too according to natural equity, which requires that all the component parts should bear a reference to the whole. We find in holy writ, this rule observed by Saul in the beginning of his reign.

Now that rule does not take place here. For we are considering the lawgiver, not as a part but as the REPRESENTATIVE and sovereign of the whole community. Nor indeed can any such intention in the lawgiver be presumed to have existed. For legislators are not supposed to comprehend themselves within the rule of the law, except where the nature and subject of it are general. But sovereignty is not to be compared with other things; it so far surpasses them in the nobleness of its end, and the dignity of its nature. Nor is any civil law to be found which either does, or designs to comprehend sovereign power within the rules of prescription.

CHAPTER IX.*

IN WHAT CASES JURISDICTION AND PROPERTY CEASE.

Jurisdiction and property cease, when the family of the owner has become extinct-In what manner the rights of a people may become extinct- A people becomes extinct when its essential parts are destroyed-A people does not become extinct by emigration The existence of separate states not destroyed by a federal union.

I. and II. AFTER the preceding inquiries into the manner in which private property as well as sovereign power may be acquired and transferred, the manner, in which they cease, naturally comes next under consideration. It has been shewn before that the right to property may be lost by neglect; for property can continue no longer than while the will of ownership continues. There is also another manner in which property may cease to exist, without any express or implied alienation: and that is where the family either of a sovereign, or an owner, becomes extinct, a contingency for which provision must be made somewhat similar to a succession to the property of one who dies intestate. Wherefore if any one die, without any declaration of his will, and have no relations by blood, all the right, which he had, becomes extinct, and reverts, if a sovereign, to the hands of the nation, except where express provisions of law have been made to the contrary.

III. The same mode of reasoning applies to a nation. Isocrates, and after him the Emperor Julian, has said that states are immortal, or may be so. For a people is one of that kind of bodies which are formed of distinct parts, following each other in regular succession, and supplying the place of the deceased. This body goes under one name, forming, as Plutarch says, one constitu

* The translation proceeds from the fourth to the ninth Chapter of the Second book of the original. The intermediate chapters, being chiefly a repetition of the author's former arguments, respecting the rights of seas and rivers, and other kinds of dominions; and that relating to the rights of persons, being so fully treated in the first volume of Judge Blackstone's Commentaries, it seemed unnecessary to give them in the present work.-TRANSlator.