Scholion. On High or Eminent Ownership

I. High ownership is the faculty of the prince of disposing of the goods of citizens, insofar as this is necessary or at least very useful for the common good. From the definition it is clear that high ownership is not ownership properly so called, but the power of jurisdiction. For ownership properly so called involves the faculty of disposing of a thing and its fruits for one's own advantage. But the prince cannot dispose of the goods of citizens so as to provide for his own good, but only so as to provide for the common good.

II. That high ownership belongs to the commonwealth follows from the fact that otherwise it would not be sufficiently equipped for attaining its end, which is the common good.

III. In order that the prince may dispose of the goods of citizens, there is required necessity or a great utility that is sufficiently common. For the commonwealth exists for the common good; moreover, by easily restricting the rights of individuals and families, rather than protecting them, it would harm the common good more than consult it.

Corollary. When necessity or great utility demands it, the commonwealth can deprive someone of some thing by way of expropriation, as it is called, in which case, however, the owner is to be rendered unharmed; likewise, by way of prescription, it can transfer the ownership of one person to another, and so forth. Nevertheless the high ownership of the civil State does not comprehend sacred things, nor temporal things which have been referred by ecclesiastical authority to a supernatural end.

IV. Annexed or akin to high ownership is the faculty of determining whose goods are, or will be, things belonging to no one, such as a treasure to be found; likewise goods not yet existing, such as the fruits of some thing. Now laws looking to this matter, as otherwise the obvious sense of the dispositions sufficiently signifies, are presumed to constitute true and strict rights. Make an exception if the nature of the thing suggests that the disposition of the law rather has the character of a penalty; in that case, before the sentence of a judge, obligation is lacking, but through the sentence of a judge the right is determined. We shall apply these things in their own place to different cases.

Question. Whether the commonwealth also enjoys the so-called right of colonization.

Resp. Colonization is distinguished as twofold, absolute and qualified. Absolute colonization is that by which an external region perfectly depends on a state of higher culture. Qualified colonization is that by which a society of higher culture subjects another to itself, insofar as subjection is necessary for fittingly distributing the goods of the other. Colonization differs from a protectorate or mandate, to which a foreign region is subject, as Egypt and Syria are with respect to Britain and France.

The question regards an unwilling region; for nothing prevents subjection from being constituted by a free contract. Now:

I say first. Absolute colonization is opposed to the right of a foreign region, as is clear.

I say second. Qualified colonization seems lawful; for each state has some right to the goods of the world, since they have been created for the human race. Hence if some uncultivated nation altogether neglects the riches of its region, and impedes other nations from their use and exchange, and refuses and prohibits social life, its subjection in a qualified sense seems lawful.

Corollary I. Colonization established solely for the sake of profit and dominion is not legitimately constituted. From this, however, it does not follow that colonizations constituted in this way must be dissolved at once; for by this manner of acting the colonies would be reduced by rampant communism and other commonwealths into a much worse state, indeed even into extreme misery. Besides, it could have happened that subjection, at first tolerated by unwilling persons, has now been legitimated by free consent.

Corollary II. The duty belongs to the colonizing state of procuring, in its own way, the riches of the region, profitable cultivation, and the goods of the Christian faith for the subject nation.