Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/528

 PROPERTY

462

PROPERTY

1827, Balkan States $364,835.95

1833, Canada, Mexico, West Indies. . 1,384,418.59

1837, Great Britain and Ireland 2,593,644.88

1837, Holland 1,325,100.98

1837, Portugal 502,619.84

1837, Russia and Poland 72,353.50

1839, Spain 866,570.50

1840, United States 2,749,436.11

1840, South America 1,029,972.39

1843, Oceanica 103,737.52

1848, Asia 88,140.14

1857, Africa 310,573.68

Countries not mentioned 25,779.40

.578,846,872.51 The foregoing sum has been distributed as follows:

To missions in America $10,747,397.45

To missions in Europe 11,066,975.88

To missions in Asia 32,061,680.43

To missions in Africa 11,552,228.26

To missions in Oceanica 7,309,152.81

Special donations, transportation of missionaries, pubhcations, man- agement 6,109,437.68

On 25 March, 1904, Pius X addressed an encyclical letter to the Catholic world recommending the Propa- gation of the Faith to the charity of all the faithful, in which he says: "If the messengers of the Catholic doctrine are able to reach out to the most distant lands, and the most barbarous peoples, it is to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith that credit must be given. Through that Society salvation began for numberless peoples . . ., through it there has been gathered a harvest of souls . . . ." In 1884, His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons, writing to the directors of the society in the name of the American hierarchy assembled at Baltimore for the third national Council, said: "If the grain of mustard seed planted in the virgin soil of America has struck deep roots and grown into a gigantic tree, with branches stretching from the shores of the Atlantic ocean to the coasts of the Pacific, it is mainly to the assistance rendered by your admirable Society that we are indebted for this blessing."

Annales de la Propagation de la Foi (82 vola., Lyons, 1822- 1910), passim; Les missions calholiques (42 vols.. Lyons. 1867- 1910), passim; GuASCO. Uteuvre de la Propagation de la Foi (Paris, 1904) : Freri, The Society for the Propagation of the Faith and the Catholic Mis^ons (Baltimore, 1902) ; Idem, The Missionary Work of the Church (New York, 1906) ; Idem, Fads and Figures (New York, 1908); Biographic de M. Didicr Petit de Meurville (Lyons, 1873)- Maubin, Pauline Marie Jaricol (New York, 1906).

Joseph Freri.

Property. — I. Notion of Property. — The pro- prietor or owner of a thing, in the current acceptation of the word, is the person who enjoys the full right to dispose of it in so far as is not forbidden by law. The thing or object of this right of disposal is called property, and the right of disposal itself, ownership. Taken in its strict sense, this definition applies to absolute ownership only. As long as the absolute owner does not exceed the limits set by law, he may dispose of his property in any manner whatsoever; he may use it, alienate it, lease it etc. But there is also a qualified ownership. It may happen that several persons have different rights to the same thing, one subordinate to the other: one has the right to the substance, another to its use, a third to its usufruct, etc. Of all these persons he alone is called the pro- prietor who has the highest right, viz., the right to the substance; the others, whose rights are subor- dinate, are not called proprietors. The tenant, for example, is not said to be the proprietor of the land he tills, nor the lessee proprietor of the house in which he dwells; for though both have the right of use or usufruct, they h.avc not the highest right, namely the right to the substance. There are two reasons why

he to whom the substance of a thing belongs is called its proprietor: first, because the right to the substance is the highest right; secondly, because this right nat- urally tends to grow into absolute ownership. The tenant, for instance, enjoys the usufruct of a thing only through a cause which hes outside the thing itself, i. e. through a contract. If this cause is removed, then he loses his right, and the thing reverts to him to whom the substance belongs. The right to the substance necessarily implies the absolute right of dis- posal as soon as any accidental, external limitations are removed. This is probably the reason why law- makers, when establishing the definition of property, take into consideration only absolute ownership. Thus the French civil code (544) defines ownership as "the right to make use and dispose of a corporeal thing absolutely provided it be not forbidden by law or statute"; the code of the German Empire (903) says: "The proprietor of a thing may use it as he likes and exclude from it all outside interference, as long as the law or the rights of others arc not violated " and in Blackstone (Comm. I, 138) we read that the right of property "consists in the free use, enjoy- ment and disposal of all acquisitions, without any control or diminution, save only by the laws of the land".

The statement has been made that the Roman law set up a definition of property which is absolute and excludes all legal restrictions. This is not correct. The Hoiiian jurists were too vividly conscious of the principle ^idiis publica suprema lex to exempt private pro])(Tty friiui all legal restrictions. No clearer proof is needed than the numerous easements to which the Roman law subjected property (cf. Puchta, "Kursus der Inslitulionen", II, 1842, 551 sqq.). Precisely in order to exclude this erroneous conception, the Roman jurists, following the example of Bartolus, generally define perfect ownership as the right to dispose perfectly of a material thing in so far as is not forbidden by law {Jus perfecte disponcndi de re corporali nisi lege prohibeatnr) . Again, man is es- sentially a social being. Consequently, all rights granted him are subject to the necessary restrictions which are demanded by the common welfare and more accurately determined by law. This right of dis- posal which the civil power exercises over property has been called dominium altum, but the term is misleading and should be avoided. Ownership gives to a person the right to dispose of a thing for his private interests as he sees fit. The Government has no right to dispose of the property of its subjects for its private interests, but only as far as the common weal requires.

II. Classes of Property. — If the holder of the right of ownership is considered, property is either individual or collective, according as the owner is an individual (a physical person) or a community (a moral person). Individual property is also called private property. Again, collective property differs as the community. Those estates are not collective property which have for ever been set aside for a fixed purpose and are, by a sort of fiction, considered as a person (persona juridica, ficta), for example, endowments for pious purposes or for the public benefit : hospit.als orphanages etc. For the actual administrators or usufructuaries are not to be regarded as proprietors of the endowment. Furthermore, property may be either public or private. Public property is the property of a public community, namely, the State and" the Church. Everything else is private property. However, the distinction between private and public property arises not only from difference in ownership, but also from difference in purpose. Public property is intended to serve the interests of the community at large; private property, the interests of a limited circle. Family property is private property, even if it belongs to