[What is Property? by P. J. Proudhon]@TWC D-Link book
What is Property?

CHAPTER II
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The proprietor may, if he chooses, allow his crops to rot under foot; sow his field with salt; milk his cows on the sand; change his vineyard into a desert, and use his vegetable-garden as a park: do these things constitute abuse, or not?
In the matter of property, use and abuse are necessarily indistinguishable.
According to the Declaration of Rights, published as a preface to the Constitution of '93, property is "the right to enjoy and dispose at will of one's goods, one's income, and the fruit of one's labor and industry." Code Napoleon, article 544: "Property is the right to enjoy and dispose of things in the most absolute manner, provided we do not overstep the limits prescribed by the laws and regulations." These two definitions do not differ from that of the Roman law: all give the proprietor an absolute right over a thing; and as for the restriction imposed by the code,--PROVIDED WE DO NOT OVERSTEP THE LIMITS PRESCRIBED BY THE LAWS AND REGULATIONS,--its object is not to limit property, but to prevent the domain of one proprietor from interfering with that of another.

That is a confirmation of the principle, not a limitation of it.
There are different kinds of property: 1.

Property pure and simple, the dominant and seigniorial power over a thing; or, as they term it, NAKED PROPERTY.2.POSSESSION.

"Possession," says Duranton, "is a matter of fact, not of right." Toullier: "Property is a right, a legal power; possession is a fact." The tenant, the farmer, the commandite', the usufructuary, are possessors; the owner who lets and lends for use, the heir who is to come into possession on the death of a usufructuary, are proprietors.

If I may venture the comparison: a lover is a possessor, a husband is a proprietor.
This double definition of property--domain and possession--is of the highest importance; and it must be clearly understood, in order to comprehend what is to follow.
From the distinction between possession and property arise two sorts of rights: the jus in re, the right in a thing, the right by which I may reclaim the property which I have acquired, in whatever hands I find it; and the jus ad rem, the right TO a thing, which gives me a claim to become a proprietor.


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