PROPERTY. The right and interest which a man has in lands and chattels to the exclusion of others. 6 Binn. Penn. 98 • 4 Pet. 511 ; 17 Johns. N. Y. 283 ; 11 East, 290, 518 ; 14 id. 370.
2. All things are not the subject of pro perty : the sea, the air, and the like cannot be appropriated ; every one may enjoy them, but he has no exclusive right in them. When things are fully our own, or when all others are excluded from meddling with them or from interfering about them, it is plain that no person besides the proprietor, who has this exclusive right, can have any claim either to use them, or to hinder him from dis posing of them as he pleases : so that property, considered as an exclusive right to things, contains not only a right to use those things, but a right to dispose of them, either by ex changing them for other things, or by giving them away to any other person without any consideration. or even throwing them avray. Rutherforth, Inst. 20 ; Domat, liv. pre'. tit. 3 ; Pothier, des Chases ; 18 Viper, Abr. 63 ; Comyns, Dig. Biens. See, also, 2 Barnew. & C. 281 ; 9 id. 396 ; 3 Dowl. & R. 394 ; 1 Carr. & M. 39 ; 4 Call, Va. 472 ; 18 Ves. Ch. 193 ; 6 Bingh. 630.
3. Property is said to be real and personal property. See those titles.
It is also said to be, when it relates to goods and chattels, absolute or qualified. Absolute property is that which is our own without any qualification whatever : as, when a man is the owner of a watch, a hook, or other inanimate thing, or of a horse, a sheep, or other animal which never had its natural liberty in a wild state.
Qualified property consists in the right which men have over wild aninials which they have reduced to their own possession, and which are kept subject to their power : as, a deer, a buffalo, and the like, which are his own while he has possession of them, but as soon as his possession is lost his property is gone, unless the animals go animo rever tendi. 2 Sharswood, Blackst. Comm. 396 ; 3 Binn. Penn. 546.
4. But property in personal goods may be absolute or qualified without any relation to the nature of the subject-matter, hut sim ply because more persons than one have an interest in it, or because the right of property is separated from the possession. A bailee
of goods, though not the owner, has a quali fied property in them ; while the owner has the absolute property. See BAILEE ; BAIL MENT.
Personal property is further divided into property in possession, and property or °hoses in action. See CHOSE IN ACTION.
Property is again divided into eorporeal and incorporeal. The former comprehends such property as is perceptible to the senses, as lands, houses, goods, merchandise, and the like ; the latter consists in legal rights, as choses in action, easements, and the like.
5. Property is lost by the act of man by— first, alienation ; but in order to do this the owner must have a legal capacity to make a contract ; second, by the voluntary abandon ment of the thing ; but unless the abandon ment be purely voluntary the title to the property is not lost : as, if things be thrown into the sea to save the ship, the right is not lost. Pothier, n. 270 ; 3 Toullier, n. 346. But even a voluntary abandonment does not deprive the former owner from taking posses sion of the thing abandoned at any time before another takes possession of it.
It is lost by operation of law—first, by tho forced sale, under a lawful process, of the property of a debtor to satisfy a judgment, sentence, or decree rendered against him, to compel him to fulfil his obligations ; second, by confiscation, or sentence of a criminal court ; third, by prescription ; fourth, by civil death ; fifth, by capture of a public enemy. it is lost by the act of God, as in the case of the death of slaves or animals, or in the total destruction of a thing: for example, if a house be swallowed up by an opening in the earth during an earthquake.
6. It is proper to observe that, in some cases, the mcrnent that the owner loses his possession he also loses his property or right in the thing : animals ferce naturce, as men tioned above, belong to the owner only while he retains the possession of them. But, in general, the loss of possession does not im pair the right of property, for the owner may recover it within a certain time allowed by law. See, generally, Bouvier, Inst. Index.