I. A great difficulty arises here respecting the right to property by uninterrupted possession for any certain time. For though time is the great agent, by whose motion all legal concerns and rights may be measured and determined, yet it has no effectual power of itself to create an express title to any property. Now those rights were introduced by the civil law; and it is not their long continuance, but the express provisions of the municipal law, which gives them their validity. They are of no force therefore, in the opinion of Vasquez, between two independent nations or sovereigns, or between a free nation and a sovereign: between a sovereign and an individual who is not his subject, or between two subjects belonging to different kings or nations. Which indeed seems true; and is actually the case; for such points relating to persons and things, are not left to the law of nature, but are settled by the respective laws of each country. As the unqualified admission of this principle would lead to great inconvenience, and prevent the disputes of kings and nations respecting the bounds of territory from ever being adjusted; in order to eradicate the seeds of perpetual warfare and confusion, so repugnant to the interests and feelings of every people; the settlement of such boundaries is not left to the claims of prescriptive right; but the territories of each contending party are, in general, expressly defined by certain treaties. II. To disturb any one in the actual and long possession of territory, has in all ages been considered as repugnant to the general interests and feelings of mankind. For we find in holy writ, that when the King of the Ammonites demanded the lands situated between the rivers Arnon and Jabok, and those extending from the deserts of Arabia to the Jordan, Jepthah opposed his pretentious by proving his own possession of the same for three hundred years, and asked why he and his ancestors had for so long a period neglected to make their claim. And the Lacedaemonians, we are informed by Isocrates, laid it down for a certain rule admitted among all nations, that the right to public territory as well as to private property was so firmly established by length of time, that it could not be disturbed; and upon this ground they rejected the claim of those who demanded the restoration of Messena.