security of property and the encouragement of industry requires, that a time should be regulated for the effect of possession as to prescribing, in all states which admit of alienations and commerce; but that it requires that this time should be the most equal that can be fixed upon, all the circumstances of a particular state being considered, with regard to the non-disturbance of honest industry, i.e. the properest to prevent unjust dispossession on either side, i.e. either with respect to the first or the last possessor. And therefore, 5. There is no difficulty with regard to the following general maxims about it. 1. That prescription may affectually proceed, ’tis requisite that the party receiving the thing at the hands of a false proprietor, do obtain this possession by a just title; and consequently, that he act in this matter bona fide, with fair and honest intention. For this is necessary to just possession. “A man doth not become a just possessor of a thing barely by taking it to himself, but by holding it innocently.” Detaining is otherwise, as Tacitus expresses it, diutina licentia, a long continued injustice. Upon this head Pufendorff observes, that according to the civil law, ’tis enough if a man had this uprightness of intention at his first entring on the possession, though he happens afterwards to discover, that the person who conveyed it to him was not the just proprietor. But the canon law requires the same integrity throughout the whole term of years, on which the prescription is built. But Barbeyrac justly takes notice in his notes, “That the maxim in the civil law is better grounded than that of the canon law. And the artifice of the clergy consists not so much in this, that the determinations of the Popes require a perpetual good intention in him that prescribes, as in this, that they will have the goods of the church look’d upon as not capable of being alienated, either absolutely, or under such conditions as will make all prescriptions void.”
6 2. Another necessary condition is, that it be founded on constant possession, such as hath not been interrupted, either naturally, as if the thing hath returned in the mean while to the former owner, or hath at any time lain abandoned or forsaken: or civilly, as if the owner had been actually engaged at law with the possessor for the recovery of what he lost; or at least by solemn protestations hath put in a salvo to his right. 3. That the space of time during which the prime possessor holds the thing, shall be reckoned to the benefit of him that succeeds in the possession, provided that both the former and the latter first entered upon it <249> with honest minds, and upon a just title. For otherwise the prime possessor shall not be allowed to make over his time to the next holder, and consequently, if the former come to the possession by dishonest means, the time he passed in it shall not be computed towards the prescription of the latter, tho’ he, for his own part, obtained the possession fairly and justly. See Pufendorff, ibidem. 4. Prescription does not run against minors. And if one that is major happens to have a right undivided with a minor, the prescription which could not run against the minor, will have no effect against the major. And the same reason for which prescription does not run against minors, hinders it likewise from running against those whom a long absence disables from pursuing their rights; which is to be understood not only of absence on account of public business, but also of other absences occasioned by accidents, such as captivity. See Domat’s civil law, ibidem. And for the same reasons, it is highly agreeable to reason, that the time during which a country hath been the seat of war, shall not avail towards prescription. But with regard to minority, it is remarked by Pufendorff ibidem, that there may be a case in which the favour of possession shall overbalance the favour of majority. As for instance, suppose it should so happen, that when I want only a month or two of compleating my prescription, and it is morally certain that the ancient proprietor will not within that space give me any trouble about the title, and if he should then decease leaving an infant heir, it would be unreasonably hard, if after five and twenty years possession, I should be thrust out of my hold for want of those two months, especially if it be now impossible for me to recover damages of him from whom I received what is thus challenged, as I might have done, had the dispute happened before the goods devolved on the minor. See this subject more fully discussed than it can be done in a short note, by Pufendorff and Grotius. It is sufficient for our purpose to have taken notice of these few things relative to prescription; and to have observed once for all, that unless the determinations of the law of nature be confined to signify the determinations of right reason with regard to a state of nature, (a very limited sense of the law of nature, in which it is hardly ever taken by any writer) every decision of right reason concerning equity, justice, and necessity or conduciveness to the public good of society, or of men having property and carrying on commerce, is a decision of the law of nature. Whatever reason finds to be the best general rule in this case is a law of nature; and in this sense, prescription is of the law of nature, i.e. reason is able to settle several general rules about it in consequence of what commerce, the security of property, and the encouragement of industry make necessary. So that where reason is able to make any such decisions, it is an impropriety to say, that thing is not of the law of nature, because some forms and modes relative to it must be determined and settled by convention, or by civil constitution; as the parti-<250>cular spaces of time, for instance, with regard to prescription of moveables and immoveables, &c. must be. For if right reason requires, that time should have a certain effect with regard to property, then is prescription of the law of nature, which by its definition is the acquisition or addition of a property, by means of long possession. But indeed we may safely say, that the law of nature is an absolute stranger to the debates among lawyers, whether prescription should be defined with Modestinus adjectio, or adeptio with Ulpianus; for all such disputes are mere verbal wranglings, grievossly cumbersome to right reason and true science.
