It must protect the substance of these properties and administer them according to the rules of usufruct." The following letter touches incidentally upon the description of the rights of an invader over certain kinds of State property in the occupied territory as being those of a "usufructuary." INTERNATIONAL "USUFRUCT" Sir,--The terminology of the law of nations has been enriched by a new phrase.

We are all getting accustomed to "spheres of influence." We have been meditating for some time past upon the interpretation to be put upon "a lease of sovereign rights." But what is an international "usufruct"?
The word has, of course, a perfectly ascertained sense in Roman law and its derivatives; but it has been hitherto employed, during, perhaps two thousand years, always as a term of private law--_i.e._ as descriptive of a right enjoyed by one private individual or corporation over the property of another.

It is the "ius utendi fruendi, salva rerum substantia." The usufructuary of land not merely has the use of it, but may cut its forests and work its mines, so long as he does not destroy the character of the place as he received it.

His interest terminates with his life, though it might also be granted to him for a shorter period.

If the grantee be a corporation, in order to protect the outstanding right of the owner an artificial limit is imposed upon the tenure--e.g.