a
place among the ordinances of Nature. The dignity with which they were
invested has gone on increasing in modern times till it is quite out
of proportion to their original importance. Theory has made them its
favourite food, and has enabled them to exercise the most serious
influence on practice.

It will be necessary for us to attend to one only among these "natural
modes of acquisition," Occupatio or Occupancy. Occupancy is the
advisedly taking possession of that which at the moment is the
property of no man, with the view (adds the technical definition) of
acquiring property in it for yourself. The objects which the Roman
lawyers called _res nullius_--things which have not or have never had
an owner--can only be ascertained by enumerating them. Among things
which _never had_ an owner are wild animals, fishes, wild fowl, jewels
disinterred for the first time, and lands newly discovered or never
before cultivated. Among things which _have not_ an owner are
moveables which have been abandoned, lands which have been deserted,
and (an anomalous but most formidable item) the property of an enemy.
In all these objects the full rights of dominion were acquired by the
_Occupant_ who first took possession of them with the intention of
keeping them as his own--an intention which, in certain cases, had to
be manifested by specific acts. It is not difficult, I think, to
understand the universality which caused the practice of Occupancy to
be placed by one generation of Roman lawyers in the Law common to all
Nations, and the simplicity which occasioned its being attributed by
another to the Law of Nature. But for its fortunes in modern legal
history we are less prepared by _a priori_ considerations. The Roman
principle of Occupancy, and the rules into which the jurisconsults
expanded it, are the source of all modern International Law on the
subject of Capture in War and of the acquisition of sovereign rights
in newly discovered countries. They have also supplied a theory of the
Origin of Property, which is at once the popular theory, and the
theory which, in one form or another, is acquiesced in by the great
majority of speculative jurists.

I have said that the Roman principle of Occupancy has determined the
tenor of that chapter of International Law which is concerned with
Capture in War. The Law of Warlike Capture derives its rules from the
assumption that communities are remitted to a state of nature by the
outbreak of ho