Spencer Heath Archive

Item 564..

No date

Original is in item 558.

There are among men two kinds of authority or juris­diction: that which is exercised over persons, and that which is exercised over things as property. The first is called jus in personam — the imperium; the second is called jus in rem — the proprium. The one is political, exercised by governments over persons and over the property of persons who are thereby subordinate and held under compulsion as subjects or slaves; the other is proprietary instead of political, consensual and contractual instead of coercive and governmental, and it is exercised not over persons but only over property by those who are its rightful owners.

These two kinds of jurisdiction are incompatible. They more or less overlap, but the more there is of the one the less there can be of the other. The progress of civiliza­tion lies in the progress of proprietary and thereby contractual jurisdiction with a corresponding and incidental regress of the political and coercive.

Government has no income but by force or stealth…