that possession and property are CONTEMPORANEOUS, and that they exist AT
THE SAME TIME, which implies that the RIGHT of property is based on the
FACT of possession,--a conclusion which is evidently absurd; at
another, he denies that possession HAD ANY HISTORICAL EXISTENCE PRIOR
TO PROPERTY,--an assertion which is contradicted by the customs of many
nations which cultivate the land without appropriating it; by the Roman
law, which distinguished so clearly between POSSESSION and PROPERTY; and
by our code itself, which makes possession for twenty or thirty years
the condition of property. Finally, M. Troplong goes so far as to
maintain that the Roman maxim, _Nihil comune habet proprietas cum
possessione_--which contains so striking an allusion to the possession
of the _ager publicus_, and which, sooner or later, will be again
accepted without qualification--expresses in French law only a judicial
axiom, a simple rule forbidding the union of an _action possessoire_
with an _action petitoire_,--an opinion as retrogressive as it is
unphilosophical.

In treating of _actions possessoires_, M. Troplong is so unfortunate or
awkward that he mutilates economy through failure to grasp its
meaning "Just as property," he writes, "gave rise to the action for
revendication, so possession--the _jus possessionis_--was the cause
of possessory interdicts.... There were two kinds of interdicts,--the
interdict _recuperandae possessionis_, and the interdict _retinendae
possessionis_,--which correspond to our _complainte en cas de saisine
et nouvelete_. There is also a third,--_adipiscendae possessionis_,--of
which the Roman law-books speak in connection with the two others.
But, in reality, this interdict is not possessory: for he who wishes
to acquire possession by this means does not possess, and has not
possessed; and yet acquired possession is the condition of possessory
interdicts." Why is not an action to acquire possession equally
conceivable with an action to be reinstated in possession? When the
Roman plebeians demanded a division of the conquered territory; when
the proletaires of Lyons took for their motto, _Vivre en travaillant, ou
mourir en combattant_ (to live working, or die fighting); when the most
enlightened of the modern economists claim for every man the right to
labor and to live,--they only propose this interdict, _adipiscendae
possessionis_, which embarrasses M. Troplong so seriously. And what is
my object in pleading