Chapter — Konings, Theologia Moralis
CHAPTER V: ON CENSUS
- Census is the right of receiving an annual pension from a thing or person. Census is:
1° Reservative, that is, an annual pension to be received from a thing, for example fields, houses, as to the property alienated (rent-seck [dry] or barren rent).
2° Consignative, that is, an annual pension to be received from another's thing (rent charge) or from a person (annuity) by title of purchase.
3° Real or personal, according as the pension is constituted in a fruitful thing, or in the labor and industry of a person.
4° Temporary, or perpetual, or for life, according as it is constituted for a time, for example for 20 years, or in perpetuity, or for the life of a man.
5° Redeemable from one or both parties, according as it can be redeemed at the judgment of either or both; or irredeemable, if from the pact the seller or censuary cannot free himself by restitution of the capital: then the buyer, or censualist, necessarily preserves his right to the census.
- Principles. - I. Any reservative census is licit; because anyone, transferring the ownership of his thing, can reserve for himself part of the fruits of it, provided he diminishes the price pro rata of the reservation.
II. Consignative real census, both fruitful and pecuniary, is licit, because it is licit to sell and buy the right to some part of a usufruct, or to an annual pension.
III. The same conditions generally are required by natural law for census as for sale, namely 1° good faith; 2° sufficient assurance on the part of the censuary toward the censualist; 3° a just price, which is determined by law or common estimation.
- Questions. - Query 1° Whether consignative personal census is licit?
Resp. Affirmatively, at least by natural law, provided due conditions are observed; because the right of receiving a pension from another's labor, industry, etc., is as estimable by price as the right of receiving it from a fruitful thing.1
Query 2° Whether REDEEMABLE census is licit?
Resp. Affirmatively, at least on the part of the censuary, just as resale can be licit.
- Query 3° Whether it can be redeemable from BOTH parties?
Resp. Affirmatively, more probably, because it is a true sale, and the buyer ought not to be of worse condition than the seller, provided it is of good faith, and equality otherwise is observed.2
Notes to n. 1030. (1) L. IV. 840. (2) L. IV. 843.
- Query 4° Whether census for life is licit?
Resp. Affirmatively. For it is an aleatory contract, and is in no way repugnant to natural law.
But the following conditions are required.
1° Account must be had of the age or health of the person.
2° The censuary cannot redeem himself except from the will of the censualist; nor can the censualist seek back the capital except insofar as the censuary does not furnish the promised securities.
Note. Among us the contract of census is rare. Kent treats of it, T. II. n. 460 sq.