Conversely, rights spring from certain facts supposed to be true
of the person entitled to such rights. Where these facts are of
such a nature that they can be made successively true of
different persons, as in the case of the occupation of land, the
corresponding rights may be successively enjoyed. But when the
facts are past and gone, such as the giving of a consideration
and the receiving of a promise, there can be no claim to the
resulting rights set up by any one except the party of whom the
facts were originally true--in the case supposed, the original
contractee,--because no one but the original contractee can fill
the situation from which they spring.
It will probably be granted by English readers, that one of the
essential constituent facts consists in a certain relation to a
material object. But this object may be a slave, as well as a
horse; /1/ and conceptions originated in this way may be extended
by a survival to free services. It is noticeable that even Bruns,
in the application of his theory, does not seem to go beyond
cases of status and those where, in common language, land is
bound for the services in question, as it is for rent. Free
services being [240] so far treated like servile, even by our
law, that the master has a right of property in them against all
the world, it is only a question of degree where the line shall
be drawn. It would be possible to hold that, as one might be in
possession of a slave without title, so one might have all the
rights of an owner in free services rendered without contract.
Perhaps there is something of that sort to be seen when a parent
recovers for the seduction of a daughter over twenty-one,
although there is no actual contract of service. /1/ So,
throughout the whole course of the canon law and in the early law
of England, rents were regarded as so far a part of the realty as
to be capable of possession and disseisin, and they could be
recovered like land by all assize. /2/
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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