ription, if admissible at all,
presupposes equality of property.

This demonstration will be neither long nor difficult. I need only to
call attention to the reasons why prescription was introduced.

"Prescription," says Dunod, "seems repugnant to natural equity, which
permits no one either to deprive another of his possessions without his
knowledge and consent, or to enrich himself at another's expense. But as
it might often happen, in the absence of prescription, that one who had
honestly earned would be ousted after long possession; and even that
he who had received a thing from its rightful owner, or who had been
legitimately relieved from all obligations, would, on losing his title,
be liable to be dispossessed or subjected again,--the public welfare
demanded that a term should be fixed, after the expiration of which no
one should be allowed to disturb actual possessors, or reassert rights
too long neglected.... The civil law, in regulating prescription, has
aimed, then, only to perfect natural law, and to supplement the law of
nations; and as it is founded on the public good, which should always be
considered before individual welfare,--_bono publico usucapio introducta
est_,--it should be regarded with favor, provided the conditions
required by the law are fulfilled."

Toullier, in his "Civil Law," says: "In order that the question of
proprietorship may not remain too long unsettled, and thereby injure the
public welfare, disturbing the peace of families and the stability of
social transactions, the law has fixed a time when all claims shall be
cancelled, and possession shall regain its ancient prerogative through
its transformation into property."

Cassiodorus said of property, that it was the only safe harbor in
which to seek shelter from the tempests of chicanery and the gales of
avarice--_Hic unus inter humanas pro cellas portus, quem si homines
fervida voluntate praeterierint; in undosis semper jurgiis errabunt_.

Thus, in the opinion of the authors, prescription is a means of
preserving public order; a restoration in certain cases of the original
mode of acquiring property; a fiction of the civil law which derives
all its force from the necessity of settling differences which otherwise
would never end. For, as Grotius says, time has no power to produce
effects; all things happen in time, but nothing is done by time.
Prescription, or the right of acquisition through the lapse of time, is,
therefore,