322, 27 Sup. Ct. 529, 51 L. Ed. 821; McDear mott Commission Co. v. Board of Trade, 146 Fed. 961, 77 C. C. A. 479, 7 L. R. A. (N. S.) 889, 8 Ann. Cas. 759; an option for the pur chase of a manufacturing plant; Haskins v. Ryan, 75 N. J. Eq. 330, 78 Atl. 566 ; the perpetual and exclusive right granted by Governor Dongan in 1686 to the freeholders of East Hampton to purchase Montauk Point from the Indians ; Pharaoh v. Ben son, 69 Misc. Rep. 241, 126 N. Y. Supp. 1035; a fixed contract right under Spanish law to acquire land; Welder v. Lambert, 91 Tex. 510, 44 S. W. 281; franchises of a public corporation ; Willcox v. Gas Co., 212 U. S. 19, 44, 29 Sup. Ct. 192, 53 L. Ed. 382, 15 Ann. Cas. 1034; People v. O'Brien, 111 N. Y. 1, 18 N. E. 692, 2 L. R. A. 255, 7 Am. St. Rep. 684; a franchise to build a water works and use the streets for that purpose; Adams v. Bul lock, 94 Miss. 27, 47 South. 527, 19 Ann. Cas. 165; all rights in real and personal property, and easements, franchises and incorporeal hereditaments; Metropolitan City R. Co. v. R. Co., 87 Ill. 317; a secret code or system of a mercantile company, containing the cost and selling price of its merchandize, for use of its salesmen ; Simmons H. Co. v. Waibel, 1 S. D. 488, 47 N. W. 814, 11 L. R. A. 267, 36 Am. St. Rep. 755.
A person has no property nor vested inter est in any rule of the common law ; Pacific Tel. Co. v. Oregon, 223 U. S. 150, 32 Sup. Ct. 224, 56 L. Ed. 377; nor in a liquor license ; Sprayberry v. Atlanta (Ga.) 13 S. E. 197; nor in a mere idea unprotected by statute or contract ; Haskins v. Ryan, 71 N. J. Eq. 575, 64 Atl. 436; nor in a coffin in which a corpse has, with the consent of all persons having a pecuniary interest in it, been buried ; Guthrie v. Weaver, 1 Mo. App. 136. Debts have been said not to be the "property" of the debtor ; Dibert v. D'Arcy, 248 Mo. 617, 154 S. W.1116.
The domestic services of a wife and her companionship possess none of the attributes of property ; Billingsley v. R. Co., 84 Ark. 617, 107 S. W. 173, 120 Am. St. Rep. 95.
All things are not the subject of property; the sea, the air, and the like cannot be ap propriated; 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 ei ther to use them, or to hinder him from disposing 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 exchanging them for other things, or by giving them away to any other person with out any consideration, or even throwing them away. Rutherforth, Inst. 20; Domat. liv.
prfil. tit. 3; Pothier, des Choses;. 18 Viner, Abr. 63; Com. Dig. Biens. See, also, 2 B. & a 281; 1 C. & M. 39; Mayo v. Carrington, 4 Call (Va.) 472, 2 Am. Dec. 580; 6 Bingh. 630.
See Story v. R. Co., 90 N. Y. 122, 43 Am. Rep. 146; Thompson v. R. Co., 130 N. Y. 360, 29 N. E. 264, where easements of light and air and ingress and egress to buildings were held to be property.
The ownership of property implies its use in the prosecution of any legitimate busi ness which is not a nuisance in itself ; In re Hong Wah, 82 Fed. 623.
Property is said to be real and personal property. See those titles.
Dicey (Conti. Laws, Moore's ed. 72) treats of property as consisting of movables and immovables, but says that this "does not square with the distinction known to English lawyers between things real, or real proper ty, and things personal, or personal proper ty." Movables are equivalent to personal property with the omission of chattels real; immovables are equivalent to realty, with the addition of chattels real or leaseholds. Law is concerned, not with things but with rights over, or in reference to property. • It is also said to be, when it relates to I goods and chattels, absolute or qualified.
Ab solute property is that which is our own without any qualification whatever : as, when a man is the owner of a watch, a book, 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 animals 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 prop erty is gone, unless the animals go animo revertendi; 2 Bla. Com. 396 ; Wallis v. Mease, 3 Binn. (Pa.) 546; but a whale, harpooned, , but not connected with a boat by line, is vested in the crew that harpooned it, and not in one which afterwards followed and captured it; Ghen v. Rich, 8 Fed. 159 ; when killed and marked, it belongs to the person who killed it ; Taber v. Jenny, 1 Sprague 315, Fed. Cas. No. 13,720.
But property in personal goods may be absolute or qualified without any relation to the nature of the subject-matter, but sim ply because more persons than one have an interest in it, or because the right of prop erty is separated from the possession. A bailee of goods, though not the owner, has a qualified property in them ; while the owner has the absolute property. See BAILEE; BAILMENT.