As for the feudal rights which brought in money to their owners, it was generally felt, at least by the Commons, that they must be redeemable; that the persons liable to pay on their account must be allowed to buy them off by the payment of a certain sum down, where the ownership was true and fair. Here, however, a great trouble seemed likely to arise from an important divergence of ideas. The French nobles believed, as the vast mass of property holders has believed in all ages, that prescription or ancient use was sufficient evidence of property. If it could be shown that a man, or his predecessors in title, had held a certain piece of land or a certain right over the land of another, from time immemorial, or for a very long time, nothing more was needed to establish his property. Unless this theory be admitted, at least to some extent, it would seem that all rights of property must perish. In respect therefore to land in actual possession the French nation held firmly to prescription. But in respect to those more subtle rights in land which had been enormously favored by the feudal system, another theory came in. Those rights were thought in the eighteenth century to be unnatural in themselves, and therefore abusive. It was believed, moreover, that many of them had been usurped without reason or justice. [Footnote: _T._, Béarn, _A. P._, vi. 500. Rennes, _A. P._, v. 546.] It was commonly held by the Third Estate that unless an express charter or agreement could be shown establishing such rights, they should be abolished without compensation, and that some of them were so unjust and objectionable that not even an agreement or a charter could sanction them. Such were many feudal payments and monopolies; common bulls, common ovens, rights to labor and to services. Such above all, where it lingered, was serfdom.[Footnote: For the desire to retain feudal rights, see _N._, Condom, _A. P._, iii. 38, Section 5. _N._, Dax, _A. P._, iii. 94, Section 21. _N._, Etain, _A. P._, ii. 215, Section 10. _N._, Bas Vivarais, _A. P._, vi. 180, Section 19. For the desire to abolish them, _T._, Avesnes, A. P., ii. 153, Sections 34-40. _T._, Bar-le-duc, _A. P._, ii. 200, Sections 49, 50. _T._, Beaujolais, _A. P._, ii. 285, Section 22. _T._, Cambrai, _A. P._, ii. 520, Sections 14-16. _C._, Clermont en Beauvoisis, _A. P._, ii. 746. _T._, Crépy, _A. P._, iii. 74, Section 21. _T._, Linas, _A. P._, iv. 649, Section 17. _T._, Ploermel, _A. P._, v. 379, Sections 14-20 (a very full exposition), and many others.]