Spencer Heath Archive

Item 633

Random taping by Spencer MacCallum from conversation with Heath.

December, 1955

    Would all the police in the world and all the armies in the world force any ownership such as we do have? See, it is the common law that determines ownership, not the statutory law. Statutory law breaks up ownership; it doesn’t create it.

     A deed to property is called a deed because it is a thing done. /Chuckling/ It’s funny, when I studied law, I saw all these curious things. Most of the students just learned the words, you know. And that’s all they ever did know — words. A title deed to property is called a title deed not just accidentally or for no reason at all. It’s called a title deed because it is the writing which records a thing done. And the thing done was to place another person in jurisdiction over the property.

     In ancient times there was no writing, so something had to be done if some other new owner was to take the place of the present owner. The thing that was done was to call a meeting by announcing it around by a town crier or otherwise, and doing it in the open and above-board and having the per­son called the donee present and having the person called the donor present and say to him that he now gives to the donee this land upon whatever the consideration may be — maybe he’s married his daughter or something of the sort or given him a bag of gold or whatever it might be. And to show that there should be no misunderstanding about it, it was the custom for the donor to dig up a piece of the turf of the soil that was of the property involved, and in their most ceremonious fashion to present this and give it to the donee. And this was the thing done.

     Now ages afterwards when writing came into vogue, this gave a permanent record. There was no permanent record that this thing had been done; it had to be in the memory of men and depended on the common knowledge of the people. But when writing came into the picture, then there could be what was called a title, or a title-deed, and it was called a deed because it took the place of the thing that was done; it perpetuated this thing. And these deeds were often called muniments of title, because it comes from the same word as community, communitas. It was how a man defended himself in his possession — by his possession of these deeds to show that he was entitled to possession of this property. It was his defense against any person who raised a question about his ownership, his right of exercising jurisdiction over the property.

So, like many words that we have become accustomed to using and that would seem to have no special significance in the word, yet when we stop to think about it, when we look back into history we find that the word has a very definite derivation from the historical actualities behind it.