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It is true there is a general obligation not to assail a man's person or property; but this is an obligation common to all persons, and is of a negative, not of a positive, character, and does not bind one determinate person to another determinate person. On the contrary, it is obligatory upon all persons towards one another.. It is called social duty, and is only the respect due to real rights.

1. Quasi-contracts are the lawful and purely voluntary acts of a man, from which there results any obligation whatever to a third person, and sometimes a reciprocal obligation between the parties.

This class of obligation arises from lawful acts, and not from agreements. Illustrations of quasi-contracts are the obligations arising when a man, of his own accord, undertakes the management of the affairs of another, under circumstances from which no agency can be inferred. His obligations as negotiorum gestor are those of a quasi-contract; the obligation to restore money paid or received in error is a quasi-contract; all the equitable doctrine that no man shall enrich himself at the expense of another comes under this head. An heir benefited by a third person's payment of his ancestor's debts, although payment is not made at the request of the heir or ancestor, is bound by a quasi-contract to reimburse the amount so paid. Hence it is perceived the quasi-contract is not the implied contract of the common law, which presupposes the request of the party who receives the benefit. The obligation of the quasi-contract results from benefit actually received from a lawful act done without request.

2. An offense is an illegal act done, with intent to injure. 3. A quasi-offense is an unlawful act done unintentionally, the result of negligence or imprudence.

The injury resulting from an offense or quasi-offense gives rise to an obligation to repair it. The code sententiously

declares that "every act whatever of man that causes damage to another obliges him by whose fault it happened to repair it."

4. Illustrations of obligations resulting from the operation of the law are the obligation to pay taxes, and in Louisiana the obligation to allow your neighbor, in cities, to rest nine inches of his wall on your land.

It is considered by civilians, that the classification I have mentioned embraces every conceivable condition of fact giving rise to civil obligations.

I pretermit also the doctrine of privileges, a privilege being a right which the nature of the debt gives to the creditor, and which entitles him to be preferred to other creditors, even those who have mortgages. It is conferred by law, and cannot be created by contract.

The privilege is either general-that is to say, it affects all the property of the debtor, or all his movables—or is special that is to say, is applicable to a particular object, as in the case of the vendor, who has a privilege on the thing sold for the unpaid price.

While a privilege may affect movables, a mortgage cannot; for movables are not susceptible of mortgage.

The general privileges on all the property of the debtor are funeral charges, judicial charges, expenses of the last illness, wages of servants, and salaries of clerks for the year past, and so much as is due for the current year.

The dotal, but not the paraphernal, rights of the wife are secured by a general privilege on all the movables of the husband.

A debt for supplies of provisions to the debtor or his family during the last six months by retail dealers is entitled to a similar privilege. In addition to the privilege given to the vendor for the unpaid price of the object sold, the law implies in the contract of sale, and in every commutative or

synallagmatic contract, a resolutory condition, which gives either party the right to sue for a revocation of the contract in case the other fails to comply with his engagements. Both the privilege of the vendor and the resolutory condition were unknown to the Roman law; for after delivery, that law abandoned the vendor selling on credit to the good faith of the purchaser, and refused a resolution of the sale for non-payment of the price, unless the pactum commissorium had been expressly stipulated.

The privilege of the vendor and the resolutory condition are the conception of the modern civilians, who say that both rights are visceral to the contract of sale (adhærent visceribus rei), and therefore exist, unless renounced in terms not to be mistaken.

In conclusion, I must barely allude to the third mode of acquisition-the operation of the law.

Under this head is embraced acquisition by accession, occupancy, prescription, and the perception of fruits by a bona fide possessor. The Code of 1808 admitted seven modes of acquisition. The existing code has included in one class, "the operation of the law," all other modes than succession and the effect of obligations.

The right of accession is the right of the owner of a thing to all that it produces, or becomes united to or incorporated with it, either naturally or artificially; as, for instance, fruits, accretions, or the union of two things by adjunction, as a picture to a frame; or by specification, as where a block of marble has been converted into an Apollo by a sculptor; or by commixtion or confusion, as in the case of the mixture of wines belonging to different proprietors.

Acquisition by occupancy requires no comment, nor does that by prescription. I should remark, however, that there are two kinds of prescription: one termed liberative, which discharges a person from debt; the other called acquisitive,

because thereby property is acquired. The liberative prescription differs from the common law Statute of Limitations in this, that it is extinctive in its character, and therefore is defined in the code as one of the modes of extinguishing obligations. Hence it is not the debtor alone who can plead prescription, as is the case at common law, but creditors, and all other persons who may have an interest in acquiring an estate or extinguishing an obligation may plead it, even though the debtor should refuse to make the plea or renounce it.

The perception of fruits by a bona fide possessor is a mode of acquisition, because, although he is not owner, yet, believing himself to be so, the law gives him the fruits of the thing in his possession, while he is ignorant of the defects of his title.

REPORT

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON JURISPRUDENCE AND LAW REFORM.

TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION:-The Committee on Jurisprudence and Law Reform respectfully report as follows, in reference to the several subjects confided to them. by the Association:

I-THE FORM OF ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS OF DEEDS AND OTHER INSTRUMENTS AFFECTING REAL ESTATE, AND THE MODE OF EXECUTING AND ATTESTING WILLS.

At the first Annual Meeting of the Association, held August, 1878, this committee was instructed to inquire. into and report upon the present condition of the law touching the acknowledgment of instruments relating to real estate, with such suggestions as they might deem expedient, looking to greater uniformity in the forms of acknowledgment and the certification thereof, and also to make like inquiry and report in reference to the laws of the several states relating to the execution of wills.

The committee reported at length on the above subjects at the Annual Meeting held in August, 1879, and a resolution recommended by the committee was adopted by the Association, declaring its judgment in favor of the desirability of securing, by legislation in the several states, uniformity in the acknowledgment and authentication of instruments relating to real estate, and in the mode of exe

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