SECTION VIII.
How is the Right of Property Transferred?
From the very nature of the right of property, that right can be transferred, from the proprietor, only by his own consent. What is the right of property? It is, as has before been explained, a right of control, of dominion. If, then, a man’s property be taken from him without his consent, his right of control, or dominion over it, is necessarily infringed; in other words, his right of property is necessarily violated.
Even to use another’s property, without his consent, is to violate his right of property; because it is for the time being, [*30] assuming a dominion over wealth, the rightful dominion over which belongs solely to the owner.
These are the principles of the law of nature, relative to all property. They are as applicable to intellectual, as to material, property. The consent, or will, of the owner alone, can transfer the right of property in either, or give to another the right to use either.
If it be asked, how is the consent of a man to part with his material property to be proved? The answer is, that it must be proved, like all other facts in courts of justice, by evidence that is naturally applicable to prove such a fact, and that is sufficient to satisfy the mind of the tribunal that tries that question.
SECTION IX.
Conclusions from the Preceding Principles.
The conclusions, that follow from the principles now established, obviously are, that a man has a natural and absolute right- and if a natural and absolute, then necessarily a perpetual, right- of property, in the ideas, of which he is the discoverer or creator; that his right of property, in ideas, is intrinsically the same as, and stands on identically the same grounds with his right of property in material things; that no distinction, of principle, exists between the two cases. [*31]
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