Now, that which the law has made the law can unmake; especially since, according to M.Laboulaye,--an avowed partisan of the historical or pantheistic school,--the law is not absolute, is not an idea, but a form.
But why is it that property is variable, and, unlike obligation, incapable of definition and settlement?
Before affirming, somewhat boldly without doubt, that in right there are no absolute principles (the most dangerous, most immoral, most tyrannical--in a word, most anti-social--assertion imaginable), it was proper that the right of property should be subjected to a thorough examination, in order to put in evidence its variable, arbitrary, and contingent elements, and those which are eternal, legitimate, and absolute; then, this operation performed, it became easy to account for the laws, and to correct all the codes.
Now, this examination of property I claim to have made, and in the fullest detail; but, either from the public's lack of interest in an unrecommended and unattractive pamphlet, or--which is more probable--from the weakness of exposition and want of genius which characterize the work, the First Memoir on Property passed unnoticed; scarcely would a few communists, having turned its leaves, deign to brand it with their disapprobation.

You alone, sir, in spite of the disfavor which I showed for your economical predecessors in too severe a criticism of them,--you alone have judged me justly; and although I cannot accept, at least literally, your first judgment, yet it is to you alone that I appeal from a decision too equivocal to be regarded as final.
It not being my intention to enter at present into a discussion of principles, I shall content myself with estimating, from the point of view of this simple and intelligible absolute, the theories of property which our generation has produced.
The most exact idea of property is given us by the Roman law, faithfully followed in this particular by the ancient legists.

It is the absolute, exclusive, autocratic domain of a man over a thing,--a domain which begins by USUCAPTION, is maintained by POSSESSION, and finally, by the aid of PRESCRIPTION, finds its sanction in the civil law; a domain which so identifies the man with the thing, that the proprietor can say, "He who uses my field, virtually compels me to labor for him; therefore he owes me compensation." I pass in silence the secondary modes by which property can be acquired,--_tradition, sale, exchange, inheritance_, &c.,--which have nothing in common with the origin of property.
Accordingly, Pothier said THE DOMAIN OF PROPERTY, and not simply PROPERTY.

And the most learned writers on jurisprudence--in imitation of the Roman praetor who recognized a RIGHT OF PROPERTY and a RIGHT OF POSSESSION--have carefully distinguished between the DOMAIN and the right of USUFRUCT, USE, and HABITATION, which, reduced to its natural limits, is the very expression of justice; and which is, in my opinion, to supplant domanial property, and finally form the basis of all jurisprudence.
But, sir, admire the clumsiness of systems, or rather the fatality of logic! While the Roman law and all the savants inspired by it teach that property in its origin is the right of first occupancy sanctioned by law, the modern legists, dissatisfied with this brutal definition, claim that property is based upon LABOR.

Immediately they infer that he who no longer labors, but makes another labor in his stead, loses his right to the earnings of the latter.