PROPERTY is derived, probably through the French language, from the Latin word Proprietas, which is used by Gains (ii. 89) as equivalent to ownership (dominium,) and is opposed to possession. [PossEssro.) The etymology of the word proprietas (proprins) suggests the notion of a thing being a man's own, which general notion is contained in every definition of property. A foreign writer defines ownership or property to be "the right to deal with a corporeal thing according to a man's pleasure, and to the exclusion of all other per sons." The definition excludes incorporeal things, which however are considered objects of property in our law, and were also considered as objects of property in the Roman law, under the general name of jure. or jura in re ; they were considered as detached parts of ownership, and so op posed to Dominium, a word which repre sented the totality of the rights of owner ship. (Savigny, Das Recht des Besitzes, 5th ed., p. 166.) This definition also de scribes property as consisting in a right, by which word right is meant "a legal power to operate on a thing, by which it is essentially distinguished from the mere possession of the thing, or the physical power to operate upon it. Consequently such a right is not established by the possession of the thing ; and it is not lost when the possession of a thing is lost. Such a right can also be en forced by him who possesses the right by an actio in rem against every person who possesses the thing, or disputes his right to it." (Mackeldey, Lehrbuch des heutigen Rom. Rechts, ii. p. 1-36.) This definition, which is characterised by more precision than that of Blackstone (ii. 1), may be adopted, with this limitation, that to deal with a corporeal thing according to a man's pleasure, must not be such a dealing as will prevent other people from dealing with their property at their pleasure. The extent of this limitation is very indefinite ; but such a limitation must be admitted as necessary. A man may destroy his own property if he likes, but the destruction must not be in such manner as to destroy any other man's property. By Property then is here un derstood that which the positive law of a country recognises as property, and for the protection or recovery of which it gives a remedy by legal forms against every person who invades the property, or has the possession of it.
Austin observes An Outline of a Course of Lectures on General Juris prudence') that "dominion, property, or ownership is a name liable to For, first, it may import that the right in question is a right of unmeasured dura tion, as well as indicate the indefinite extent of the purposes to which the en titled person may turn the subject. Se condly, it often signifies property, with the meaning wherein property is dis tinguished from the right of possession. Thirdly, dominion, as taken with one of its signification, is exactly co-extensive with ins in rem, and applies to every right that is not jus in personate." The first sense of the word property is ex pounded by determining the quantity and quality of an estate as understood in English law. As to the second, posses sion is of itself no right, but a bare fact, and its relation to rights in rem is the same as the physical to the legal power to operate on a thing. The doctrine of possession is therefore distinct from and should precede the doctrine of property. The third sense of property has reference to the legal modes of obtaining the pos session of a thing in which a man can prove that he has property and a present right to possess.
A complete view of property, as re cognised by any given system of law, would embrace the following heads, which it would be necessary to exhaust, in order that the view should be com plete. It would embrace an enumera tion of all the kinds or classes of things which are objects of property : the ex position of the greatest amount of power over such things as are objects of pro perty, which a man can legally exercise —and connected with this, the different parts or portions into which the totality of the right of property may be divided or conceived to be divided : the modes in which property is legally transferred from one person to another, that is, ac quired and lost the capacity of parti cular classes of persons to acquire and transfer property as above understood ; or, to take the other view of this divi sion, an enumeration of persons who labour under legal incapacities as to the acquisition and loss of property.