University of Virginia Library

7052. PROPERTY, Rescue of.—

Nature
has given to all men, individual or associated,
the right of rescuing their own property
wrongfully taken. In cases of forcible entry
on individual possessions, special provisions,
both of the common and civil law, have
restrained the right of rescue by private
force, and substituted the aid of the civil
power. But no law has restrained the right
of the nation itself from removing by its own
arm, intruders on its possessions.—
To Governor Claiborne. Washington ed. v, 518.
(M. 1810)