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CHA P. III.

THE HISTORY OF PROPERTY.

'HE firft objects of property were the fruits

THE

which a man gathered, and the wild animals he caught; next to these, the tents or houses which he built, the tools he made use of to catch or prepare his food; and afterwards weapons of war and offence. Many of the favage tribes in North America have advanced no farther than this yet; for they are faid to reap their harvest, and return the produce of their market with foreigners, into the common hoard or treasury of the tribe. Flocks and herds of tame animals foon became property; Abel, the second from Adam, was a keeper of sheep; fheep and oxen, camels, and affes, compofed the wealth of the Jewish patriarchs, as they do ftill of the modern Arabs. As the world was first peopled in the Eaft, where there exifted a great fcarcity of water, wells probably were next made property; as we learn, from the frequent and ferious men

tion of them in the Old Teftament, the conten

*

tions and treaties about them, and from its being recorded, among the moft memorable atchievements of very eminent men, that they dug or discovered a well. Land, which is now so important a part of property, which alone our laws call real property, and regard upon all occafions with fuch peculiar attention, was probably not made property in any country, till long after the inftitution of many other species of property, that is, till the country became populous, and tillage began to be thought of. The first partition of an eftate which we read of, was that which took place between Abram and Lot; and was one of the fimpleft imaginable: "If thou wilt take the left hand, then "I will go the right; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the left." There are no traces of property in land in Cæfar's account of Britain; little of it in the history of the Jewish patriarchs; none of it found amongst the nations of North America; the Scythians are expressly said to have appropriated their cattle and houses, but to have left their land in common. Property in immovables continued at. first no longer than the occupation; that is, fo

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* Gen. xxi. 25. xxvi. 18.

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long as a man's family continued in poffeffion of a cave, or his flocks depastured upon a neighbouring hill, no one attempted, or thought he had a right, to disturb or drive them out: but when the man quitted his cave, or changed his pasture, the first who found them unoccupied, entered upon them, by the fame title as his deceffor's; and made way in his turn for any one that happened to fucceed him. All more permanent property in land, was probably pofterior to civil government and to laws; and therefore fettled by thefe, or according to the will of the reigning chief.

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VOL. I.

I

CHAP.

CHA P. IV.

IN WHAT THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY IS

FOUNDED.

WE now speak of Property in Land: and

there is a difficulty in explaining the origin of this property, confiftently with the law of nature; for the land was once no doubt common, and the queftion is, how any particular part of it could juftly be taken out of the common, and fo appropriated to the first owner, as to give him a better right to it than others; and, what is more, a right to exclude all others from it.

Moralifts have given many different accounts of this matter; which diversity alone perhaps is a proof that none of them are fatisfactory.

One tells us that mankind, when they fuffered a particular perfon to occupy a piece of ground, by tacit consent relinquished their right to it; and, as the piece of ground belonged to mankind collectively, and mankind thus gave

up

up their right to the first peaceable occupier, it thenceforward became his property, and no one afterwards had a right to moleft him in it.

The objection to this account is, that consent can never be prefumed from filence, where the perfon whofe confent is required knows nothing about the matter; which muft have been the cafe with all mankind, except the neighbourhood of the place where the appropriation was made. And to fuppofe that the piece of ground previously belonged to the neighbourhood, and that they had a just power of conferring a right to it upon whom they pleased, is to suppose the queftion refolved, and a partition of land to have already taken place.

Another fays, that each man's limbs and labour are his own exclufively; that, by occupying a piece of ground a man infeparably mixes his labour with it; by which means the piece of ground becomes thenceforward his own, as you cannot take it from him, without depriving him. at the fame time of fomething, which is indifputably his.

This is Mr. LOCKE's folution; and feems indeed a fair reafon, where the value of the labour bears a confiderable proportion to the value of the thing; or where the thing derives its chief

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