Society indemnifies, it is said, the dispossessed proprietor; but does it return to him the traditional associations, the poetic charm, and the family pride which accompany property?
Naboth, and the miller of Sans-Souci, would have protested against French law, as they protested against the caprice of their kings.

"It is the field of our fathers," they would have cried, "and we will not sell it!" Among the ancients, the refusal of the individual limited the powers of the State.

The Roman law bowed to the will of the citizen, and an emperor--Commodus, if I remember rightly--abandoned the project of enlarging the forum out of respect for the rights of the occupants who refused to abdicate.

Property is a real right, _jus_ _in re_,--a right inherent in the thing, and whose principle lies in the external manifestation of man's will.

Man leaves his imprint, stamps his character, upon the objects of his handiwork.
This plastic force of man, as the modern jurists say, is the seal which, set upon matter, makes it holy.