n a popular basis. Then he proceeds in his argument
to say that the human positive law by which private property was
introduced was made by the people themselves, and that the right or
power by which this was done was transferred by them to the Emperor
along with the imperial dignity.

Louis, therefore, had the same right to undo what they had done, for in
him all their powers now resided. This, of course, formed an excellent
principle from which to argue to his right to dispossess the Church of
its superfluous wealth--indeed of all its wealth. But it could prove
equally effectual against the holding by the individual of any property
whatever. It made, in effect, private ownership rest on the will of the
prince.

Curiously, too, in quite another direction the same form of argument had
been already worked out by Nicole Oresme, a famous Bishop of Lisieux,
who first translated into French the _Politics_ of Aristotle, and who
helped so largely in the reforms of Charles V of France. His great work
was in connection with the revision of the coinage, on which he composed
a celebrated treatise. He held that the change of the value of money,
either by its deliberate depreciation, or by its being brought back to
its earlier standard of face value, carried such widespread consequences
that the people should most certainly be consulted on it. It was not
fair to them to take such a step without their willing co-operation. Yet
he admits fully that, though this is the wiser and juster way of acting,
there was no absolute need for so doing, since all possession and all
property sprang from the King. And this last conclusion was advocated by
his rival, Philip de Meziers, whose advice Charles ultimately followed.
Philip taught that the king was sole judge of whatever was for public
use.

But there was a further point in the same question which afforded matter
for an interesting discussion among the lawyers. Pope Innocent IV, who
had first been famous as a canonist, and retained as Pontiff his old
love for disputations of this kind, developed a theory of his own on the
relation between the right of the individual to possess and the right
of the State over that possession. He distinguished carefully between
two entirely different concepts, namely, the right and its exercise. The
first he admitted to be sacred and inviolable, because it sprang from
the very nature of man. It could not be disturbed or in any way
molested; the State had th