39 If a man found treasure in his own land, the Emperor Hadrian,
following natural equity, adjudged to him the ownership of it, as he
also did to a man who found one by accident in soil which was sacred or
religious. If he found it in another man's land by accident, and without
specially searching for it, he gave half to the finder, half to the
owner of the soil; and upon this principle, if a treasure were found in
land belonging to the Emperor, he decided that half should belong to
the latter, and half to the finder; and consistently with this, if a man
finds one in land which belongs to the imperial treasury or the people,
half belongs to him, and half to the treasury or the State.
40 Delivery again is a mode in which we acquire things by natural law;
for it is most agreeable to natural equity that where a man wishes to
transfer his property to another person his wish should be confirmed.
Consequently corporeal things, whatever be their nature, admit of
delivery, and delivery by their owner makes them the property of the
alienee; this, for instance, is the mode of alienating stipendiary and
tributary estates, that is to say, estates lying in provincial soil;
between which, however, and estates in Italy there now exists, according
to our constitution, no difference.
41 And ownership is transferred whether the motive of the delivery
be the desire to make a gift, to confer a dowry, or any other motive
whatsoever. When, however, a thing is sold and delivered, it does not
become the purchaser's property until he has paid the price to the
vendor, or satisfied him in some other way, as by getting some one else
to accept liability for him, or by pledge. And this rule, though laid
down also in the statute of the Twelve Tables, is rightly said to be a
dictate of the law of all nations, that is, of natural law. But if the
vendor gives the purchaser credit, the goods sold belong to the latter
at once.
42 It is immaterial whether the person who makes delivery is the owner
himself, or some one else acting with his consent.
43 Consequently, if any one is entrusted by an owner with the management
of his business at his own free discretion, and in the execution of his
commission sells and delivers any article, he makes the receiver its
owner.
44 In some cases even the owner's bare will is sufficient, without
delivery, to transfer ownership. For instance, if a man sells or makes
you a present of a thing which he has previously lent or let to you or
placed in your custody, though it was not from that motive he originally
delivered it to you, yet by the very fact that he suffers it to be
yours you at once become its owner as fully as if it had been originally
delivered for the purpose of passing the property.
45 So too if a man sells goods lying in a warehouse, he transfers the
ownership of them to the purchaser immediately he has delivered to the
latter the keys of the warehouse.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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