re now exists, according
to our constitution, no difference.

41 And ownership is transferred whether the motive of the delivery
be the desire to make a gift, to confer a dowry, or any other motive
whatsoever. When, however, a thing is sold and delivered, it does not
become the purchaser's property until he has paid the price to the
vendor, or satisfied him in some other way, as by getting some one else
to accept liability for him, or by pledge. And this rule, though laid
down also in the statute of the Twelve Tables, is rightly said to be a
dictate of the law of all nations, that is, of natural law. But if the
vendor gives the purchaser credit, the goods sold belong to the latter
at once.

42 It is immaterial whether the person who makes delivery is the owner
himself, or some one else acting with his consent.

43 Consequently, if any one is entrusted by an owner with the management
of his business at his own free discretion, and in the execution of his
commission sells and delivers any article, he makes the receiver its
owner.

44 In some cases even the owner's bare will is sufficient, without
delivery, to transfer ownership. For instance, if a man sells or makes
you a present of a thing which he has previously lent or let to you or
placed in your custody, though it was not from that motive he originally
delivered it to you, yet by the very fact that he suffers it to be
yours you at once become its owner as fully as if it had been originally
delivered for the purpose of passing the property.

45 So too if a man sells goods lying in a warehouse, he transfers the
ownership of them to the purchaser immediately he has delivered to the
latter the keys of the warehouse.

46 Nay, in some cases the will of the owner, though directly only
towards an uncertain person, transfers the ownership of the thing, as
for instance when praetors and consuls throw money to a crowd: here they
know not which specific coin each person will get, yet they make the
unknown recipient immediately owner, because it is their will that each
shall have what he gets.

47 Accordingly, it is true that if a man takes possession of property
abandoned by its previous owner, he at once becomes its owner himself:
and a thing is said to be abandoned which its owner throws away with the
deliberate intention that it shall no longer be part of his property,
and of which, consequently, he immediately ceases to be the owner.

48 It is otherwise with things