Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 8.djvu/321

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HARVARD LAW REVIEW.

include an implied authority to deprive him of its control, possession and use. His appointment of them as his managing agents does not alienate his right to be the principal in the management, and does not confer the power of alienation on them, or on any branch of the government.

A sale or lease of the farm by B and C may not terminiate its cultivation. They may become the agents of D, the purchaser or lessee, and carry it on for him. The same crops may be raised, the same stock kept, the same tools used, and the same work done. There may be no change in the character or extent of the business, and no other innovation than the substitution of D for A as the principal. But the validity of this exchange de- pends upon its being held that A's involuntary abandoinment of his business is not, for him, a fundamental change of business, anid that B and C can sell or let his farm, because a sale or lease will work no essential alteration in his legal and actual position as the principal in carrying it on. In an action brought by A against D to recover possession, the question of the agents' authority would be presented by a plea that the cultivation, continued by D, left A's calling substantially unchanged, and that A's agents carried on hiis farming business for him by transferring it from him to another principal. If the transfer were by a lease for ninety-nine years, the plea could also set forth the fact that a remainder is left in A which he can dispose of by a deed or will giving the grantee or devisee (his heirs and assigns) a right of possession and use at a remote period in the future. But A's dominion over his land, to-day, and during the remainder of his life, is a material part of his title. When the occupation is transferred to D by a valid lease, the lessee takes the land for the stipulated term, and for a use that is either public or private. The Legislature cannot authorize him to take it for a private use without A's consent. Against A's ob- jection, D cannot be authorized to take it for a public use without a judicial ascertainment[1]and a prepayment of a sum of money equal to the value of what he takes. A conveyance of the land to him by B and C for a term of years at an annual, semi-annual, or quarterly rent, is not a provision for the prepayment of the judicially ascertained value of the whole term. On the question of the validity of the conveyance, it is not material whether the number of generations of evicted proprietors is three, or thirty, or one.


  1. Cooley, Const. Lim 563.