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fied right to possess, use, and dispose of the same, accompanied by the actual or constructive possession thereof.3 Absolute property is the greatest right which anyone may have in any object of ownership. It is composed of only three elements: the possession; the use or enjoyment; and the disposal. The allowance of these three things is all that any man can require of his fellowmen, and the right to these things can hardly be called absolute, for it is subject to a number of paramount rights of the State, which will be referred to shortly. An absolute property may be had in contracts, quasi-contracts, most remedial obligations, and over corporeal chattels personal both inanimate and animate, except wild animals.

§ 4. Qualified Property. If any of the elements of absolute property are lacking, but a person has some of them, his right of property is so limited that it is called a qualified property. A qualified property may exist because the object of the right is not one in which the law will permit absolute ownership, as wild animals alive and the elements of light, air, fire, and water; or because the right is not exclusive; or because of limited duration; or because the right does not embrace all of the elements of possession, use, and disposal; or is not accompanied by actual possession. Only a qualified property can be had as respects wild animals, remedial rights to damages for personal torts, and bailments. A qualified property may be either general or special. If a person, who has the absolute property in some object of ownership, splits up his property and lets another have temporarily the possession, or possession and right to use the same, the former is said to have the general property and the latter the special property.

§ 5. Limitations. The acts and forbearances referred to above do not completely indicate the boundaries of personal property. The legal right of property is not so extensive as might appear from the foregoing discussion. Even absolute property has certain limitations that have 3 Webb v. Fox, 7 T. R. 391; Griffith v. The Railroad Co., 23 So. Car. 25.

not yet been spoken of. An individual's right is always held subject to the coördinate rights of his fellowmen. A man may have the right to the exclusive possession, use, and disposal of some object of ownership so far as all the world as individuals are concerned; and yet, when the majority of the people in the State acting through their government and in conformity with established law, assert a right to the same object of ownership, which makes it impossible for the individual to longer insist upon the acts and forbearances to which he was therefore entitled, if the right of society is to prevail, the individual right must yield to the rights of the majority. The latter do not under such circumstances owe the former the duty to refrain from interfering with either his possession, or use, or disposal of the object of ownership. The rights of the State to which all private property is subject are (1) the police power, which includes the right of the State to destroy or abate as a public nuisance, anything which injures the public safety, health, or morals (for example, to destroy diseased animals); (2) the power of taxation, under which the individual right is made to bear its share of the public burdens; (3) eminent domain, under which the private property may be taken for public use upon the payment of just compensation; (4) public necessity, which justifies the destruction of an individual's property by reason of an immediate and overwhelming necessity, such as fire and flood; (5) claims of creditors, for the State has ordained that such rights shall be paramount to the individual right; (6) liability for injuries, for the State requires the owner to pay the person injured damages if any private property causes another person injury through the owner's negligence, sic utere tuo ut alienum non ladas (one must so use his own property as not to injure another).4

§ 6. History of Personal Property. In the early history

4 Lawton v. Steele, 152 U. S. 133; Providence Bank v. Billings 4 Pet. 514; West River Bridge Co. v. Dix, 6 How. 507; American Print Works v. Lawrence, 23 N. J. L. 590; Byrnes v. Volz, 53 Minn. 110; Earl v. Van Alstine, 8 Barb. 630.

of England, as of all countries, land constituted the chief property and wealth of the community, and what we call today personal property comprised with the exception of articles made from precious metals, an almost negligible quantity. Agriculture was the occupation of nearly the entire population, and the amount of personal property found on the farms was small indeed, as is still true in our own time in many sections of the country. However, within the last few centuries, and most of all in our own era, with the increase of inventions and the expansion of trade and commerce, not only has the amount of personal property increased to vast proportions but new forms of personal property have come into existence, such as stocks and bonds, so that today the value of personal property in the world probably exceeds that of real property, and the branch of law known as personal property covers a wider field and larger interests than that of real property. To the rise of great cities is due in large measure this striking change.

CHAPTER II

SPECIES OF PERSONAL PROPERTY

§ 7. Objects to Which the Right Relates. The objects to which the right of personal property relates embrace all those external things which man has subjected to his dominion during the progress of the centuries and which the majority of the people of the State through law have declared that he may own, with the exception of those objects which are classified with real property.

§ 8. Freeholds and Leaseholds. At the common law the right to land for one's life, or for the life of another, or forever, that is, an estate for life or of inheritance, an estate granted to a free man, was called a freehold estate, and was classed as real property. Thus it is seen that all rights to land, except estate less than freeholds, called leaseholds, held originally by non-free men, called serfs, are excluded from the realm of personal property; and had it not been for the accident of the feudal system estates in land less than freeholds would also have been classed as real property, as they should have been. The natural division between real property and personal property would have been the rights to immovables and the rights to movables; this was the division of the Roman law; but the common law, because of the influence of the feudal system, decreed that only an estate for life or greater was worthy of a freeman and should be classed as real property. Even today in agricultural communities there is likely to be a well-marked difference between the attitude of an owner of lands and that of a mere renter of the property.

§ 9. Heirlooms. The common law, by the same perversity with which it refused to classify estates less than

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freeholds as real property, classified the right to certain movables as real property. We might almost say that it swapped leaseholds for heirlooms. Heirlooms are such personal chattels connected with a household as descended to the heir along with the inheritance, contrary to the usual rule, instead of passing to the executor or administrator of the last owner. These things are classed as realty by construction of the law, not because of any inherent characteristics which liken them to immovable property, but merely because local custom favored the heir rather than the executor in this respect. Some of the things which have been held to be heirlooms are: the ancient jewels of the British Crown; the coat armor of ancestors hung in church; ancient portraits and family pictures (though not fastened to the wall, as it is not a question whether they are fixtures); the visitor's register keys of a house; and title deeds. Some authors have also classed deer in a park and doves in a dovecot as heirlooms, because they passed with the inheritance; but they passed with the inheritance, not because they were heirlooms, but because the deceased had no transmissible property right to them. Heirlooms, then, are also excluded from the realm of personal property.1

§ 10. Fixtures. Fixtures are also excluded from the realm of personal property. A fixture is a chattel annexed to the freehold in such a way as to become part of it, so that no right of removal can be claimed by the person making the annexation. Fixtures are the objects of property, but of real not personal property. It does not seem anomalous that fixtures should be so classed, for though they once were chattels they have so changed their identity as to become land. If chattels are in some way annexed to the land but not sufficiently to become a part thereof and fixtures, they are properly designated by such terms as domestic chattels, trade chattels, and agricultural chattels; although the term "fixtures" is sometimes incorrectly employed in such connection. To determine whether a 1 Corven's Case, 12 Co. 105.

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