Second way of acquiring Property: Accession

The right of accession is not so much founded in its utility as in the impropriety of not joining it to that object on which it has a dependence.

The milk of a cow I have purchased may not be of great value, but it is very improper that another person should have a right to bring up his calf upon it.

The most important accessions are in land property. Land property is founded on division or an assignation by the society to a particular person of a right to sow and plant a certain piece of ground.

In consequence of this right he must also have a right to whatever it produces, trees, fruit, minerals, &c.

Alluvions made by any river naturally belong to the proprietor of the adjacent territory; but when the additions are very large, as is often the case in low countries, the government claims them, and the proprietor of the adjacent estate must purchase it before he possess it.

The principal dispute concerning accession is, when does the principal belong to me, and the accession to another, or, if they be mixed, to whom does the whole belong?

It is a maxim in law that no person be a gainer by another’s loss. If a man build a house by mistake upon my ground, though the materials be his, it is but reasonable that I should have the house, or be indemnified for my loss. In general the accession follows the principal, though in some cases, as where the workmanship is of more value than the materials, substantia cedet formae.

The lawyers were, however, unwilling directly to contradict their general and established maxim, and therefore evaded it by giving the principal to the proprietor of the accession when it became a new species, that is, when it received a new form and a new name.

This, however, was liable to exceptions.

A picture and the board on which it was painted were in Latin of the same species; each was a tabula, and therefore the picture by this amendment still belonged to the proprietor of an insignificant board.

The most general rule with regard to accessions is= when the thing can be reduced to its primitive form without lessening its value or without any great loss to the proprietor of the accession, the proprietor of the principal may justly claim it, but when this cannot be done, the law justly favours the proprietor of the accession, and obliges him only to content the original proprietor for his property.