Page:Moraltheology.djvu/263

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(d) No prescription can be had without uninterrupted, open, and peaceable possession. The prescription must be nee vi, nee clam, nee precario. It is precisely the possession for the period required that furnishes the ground for the transference of ownership by prescription. When the term is up the property is vested in the possessor, who acquires also a right to all the fruits, if any, which he has meantime reaped from the property; for what is accessory follows the principal.

(e) Different systems of law require different periods of time for prescription, and the time varies with different kinds of property.

A great change in the ecclesiastical law of prescription was made by the new Code, as is clear from Canon 1508, which is as follows: " The Church accepts for ecclesiastical property prescription as a mode of acquisition and of freeing one's self from burdens as it exists in the civil legislation of each nation respectively, with the exceptions laid down in the following canons." Canon 1509 exempts certain classes of property from prescription, Canon 1510 lays down that sacred things in the possession of private persons can be prescribed by private persons, but that sacred things which are not in the ownership of private persons can only be prescribed by a moral ecclesiastical person against another moral ecclesiastical person. In general one hundred years are required to prescribe against the Apostolic See, and thirty years are required to prescribe against other ecclesiastical moral persons, according to Canon 1511.

The term required by English law for the acquisition of rights by prescription varies according to circumstances. At common law, time immemorial was required to establish a prescriptive right, but the Prescription Act, 1832, provided that with respect to rights of common, and all other profits or benefits to be taken and enjoyed from or upon any land, where there shall have been an enjoyment of them by any person claiming right thereto without interruption for thirty years next before the commencement of any action upon the subject the prescriptive claim shall no longer be defeated by showing only that the enjoyment commenced at a period subsequent to the era of legal memory. It is also provided that the time during which the adverse party shall have been an infant, idiot, non compos mentis, or tenant for life, or during which any action as to the claim shall have been pending and diligently prosecuted, shall be excluded in the computation of the period of thirty years. But where there has been an