CHAPTER VII
ON OCCULT COMPENSATION
i. What another owes me in justice I have a right to have, and if he refuses to give it to me, I may compel him by having recourse to law. Sometimes, however, this means of enforcing my rights is uncertain, costly, and accompanied by great inconvenience. Under certain conditions I shall be safe in conscience if I covertly take what belongs to me. If I do this, I only take my own; I only defend myself from a continual injustice which was being inflicted on me by one who detained my property against my reasonable will.
2. Such an act of occult compensation, as theologians call it, may be allowed in conscience on four conditions:
(a) The debt must be morally certain. If I have only a probable right, I may have recourse to the law to have the question decided, but with only a probability on my side I must not deprive another of what he possesses with a probable right on his side. In such a case, melior est conditio possidentis.
(b) There must be a difficulty in vindicating my right by ordinary legal process. For if there be no difficulty, I must not take the law into my own hands; public order and peace require that. Even though from occult compensation there be no fear of a breach of the peace, yet no man is a safe judge in his own case.
(c) I must not secretly take what belongs to me when there is likelihood of being paid after all. By so doing I should wrong my debtor and be paid twice.
(d) I must take compensation in the same kind of property as far as possible; the debtor must not be forced to sell or barter his property against his will. Of these conditions the first is the most important, but all should be loyally and conscientiously observed in those special cases when we may have recourse to occult compensation.
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