Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

If a medicinal fpring were discovered in a piece of ground which was private property, copious enough for every purpose which it could be applied to, I would award a compenfation to the owner of the field, and a liberal profit to the author of the difcovery, especially, if he had bestowed pains or expence upon the fearch; but I queftion, whether any human laws would be juftified, or would juftify the owner, in prohibiting mankind from the use of the water, or setting such a price upon it, as would almost amount to a prohibition.

If there be fisheries, which are inexhaustible as the cod-fishery upon the Banks of Newfoundland, and the herring-fishery in the British feas are said to be; then all those conventions, by which one or two nations claim to themselves, and guarantee to each other, the exclufive enjoyment of these fisheries, are so many encroachments upon the general rights of mankind.

Upon the fame principle may be determined a queftion, which makes a great figure in books of natural law, utrum mare fit liberum? that is, as I understand it, whether the exclufive right of navigating particular feas, or a control over the navigation of these feas, can be claimed, confiftently with the law of nature, by any nation? What

H 3

What is neceffary for each nation's fafety we allow; as their own bays, creeks, and harbours, the sea contiguous to, that is, within cannon fhot, or three leagues of their coaft: and, upon this principle of fafety (if upon any principle) must be defended, the claim of the Venetian state to the Adriatic, of Denmark to the Baltic fea, and of Great Britain to the seas which inveft the island. But, when Spain asserts a right to the Pacific ocean, or Portugal to the Indian feas, or when any nation extends its pretenfions much beyond the limits of its own territories, they crect a claim, which interferes with the benevolent designs of Providence, and which no human authority can juftify.

may

be called a ge

III. Another right, which neral right, as it is incidental to every man who is in a fituation to claim it, is the right of extreme neceffity: by which is meant, a right to ufe or deftroy another's property, when it is neceffary for our own prefervation to do so; as a right to take, without or against the owner's leave, the firft food, clothes, or shelter we meet with, when we are in danger of perishing through want of them; a right to throw goods overboard, to fave the fhip; or to pull down a houfe, in order to ftop the progrefs of a fire;

and

and a few other inftances of the fame kind. Of which right the foundation seems to be this, that, when property was first instituted, the inftitution was not intended to operate to the deftruction of any: therefore when such consequences would follow, all regard to it is fuperfeded. Or rather, perhaps, these are the few cafes, where the particular confequence exceeds the general confequence; where the remote mifchief refulting from the violation of the general rule, is over-balanced by the immediate advantage.

Reftitution however is due, when in our power; because the laws of property are to be adhered to, so far as confifts with safety; and because restitution, which is one of those laws, fuppofes the danger to be over. But what is to be reftored? not the full value of the property deftroyed, but what it was worth at the time of deftroying it; which, confidering the danger it was in of perishing, might be very little.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

IF you should fee a flock of pigeons in a field

of corn; and if (inftead of each picking where, and what it liked, taking juft as much as it wanted, and no more) you should fee ninety-nine of them gathering all they got into a heap; referving nothing for themselves, but

the

« AnteriorContinuar »