Natural Law leaves a thousand conflicting
rights undetermined, which in the interest of society, to save
quarrels, must be determined one way or another.
2. An illustration. It is an axiom of Natural Law, that _res perit
domino_; that is, the owner bears the loss. If an article under sale
perishes before delivery, the loss falls, apart from contracts to the
contrary, upon whichever of the two parties is the owner at the time.
So far nature rules. But who is the owner at any given time, and at
what stage of the transaction does the dominion pass? That can only be
settled by custom and the law of the land. "If I order a pipe of port
from a wine-merchant abroad; at what period the property passes from
the merchant to me; whether upon delivery of the wine at the
merchant's warehouse; upon its being put on shipboard at Oporto; upon
the arrival of the ship in England at its destined port; or not till
the wine be committed to my servants, or deposited in my cellar; all
are questions which admit of no decision but what custom points out."
(Paley, _Mor. Phil_., bk. iii., p. i, c. vii.)
This leads us to remark upon the much admired sentence of Tacitus, _in
corruptissima republica plurimae leges_, that not merely the multitude
of transgressions, but the very complexity of a highly developed
civilization, requires to be kept in order by a vast body of positive
law.
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