this fort of property obtain in a fmall degree, the inhabitants, for want of a more fecure and regular establishment of it, are driven ofttimes by the fcarcity of provifion to devour one another.

II. It preferves the produce of the earth to maturity.

We may judge what would be the effects of a community of right to the productions of the earth, from the trifling fpecimens, which we fee of it at prefent. A cherry-tree in a hedge-row, nuts in a wood, the grafs of an unftinted pafture, are feldom of much advantage to any body, because people do not wait for the proper feafon of reaping them. Corn, if any were fown, would never ripen; lambs and calves would never grow up to fheep and cows, because the first person that met them would reflect, that he had better take them as they are, than leave them for another.

III. It prevents contests.

War and wafte, tumult and confufion, muft be unavoidable and eternal, where there is not enough for all, and where there are no rules to adjust the division.

IV. It improves the conveniency of living.

This it does two ways. It enables mankind to divide themselves into distinct profeffions; which is impoffible, unless a man can exchange the productions of his own art for what he wants from others; and exchange implies property. Much of the advantages of civilized over favage life depends upon this. When a man is from neceffity his own tailor, tentmaker, carpenter, cook, huntfman, and fifherman, it is not probable that he will be expert at any of his callings. Hence, the rude habitations, furniture, clothing, and implements of favages; and the tedious length of time which all their operations require.

It likewise encourages thofe arts, by which the accommodations of human life are fupplied, by ap

propriating to the artift the benefit of his discoveries and improvements; without which appropriation, ingenuity will never be exerted with effect.

Upon these feveral accounts we may venture, with a few exceptions, to pronounce, that even the pooreft and the worst provided, in countries where property and the confequences of property prevail, are in a better fituation, with refpect to food, raiment, houses, and what are called the neceffaries of life, than any are, in places where moft things remain in common.

The balance, therefore, upon the whole, muft preponderate in favour of property with manifeft and great excefs.

Inequality of property in the degree in which it exifts in most countries in Europe, abftractedly confidered, is an evil: but it is an evil, which flows from those rules concerning the acquifition and disposal of property, by which men are incited to industry, and by which the object of their industry is rendered fecure and valuable. If there be any great inequality unconnected with this origin, it ought to be corrected.

Chapter III.

THE HISTORY OF PROPERTY.

THE firft objects of property were the fruits which a man gathered, and the wild animals he caught; next to thefe, the tents or houses which he built, the tools he made ufe of to catch and 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 harveft, 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 fecond from Adam, was a keeper of fheep; 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 firft peopled in the Eaft, where there existed a great scarcity of water, wells probably were next made property; as we learn, from the frequent and ferious mention of them in the Old Teftament, the contentions and treaties about them, and from its being recorded, among the moft memorable achievements of very eminent men, that they dug or difcovered a well. Land, which is now fo 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 fpecies of property, that is, till the country became populous, and tillage began to be thought of. The firit partition of an estate 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 to 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 Cafar's account of Britain; little of it in the hiftory of the Jewis patriarchs; none of it found amongst the nations of North America; the Scythians are exprefsly faid to have appropriated their cattle and houses, but to have left their land in common. Property in immoveables continued at firft no longer than the occupation; that is, so long as a man's family continued in poffeffion of a cave, or his flocks depaftured upon a neighbouring hill, no one attempted, or thought he had a right, to difturb or drive them out: but when the man quitted his cave, or chang ed his pasture, the first who found them unoccupied, entered upon them, by the fame title as his predeceffor's; and made way in his turn, for any one that

* Gen. xxi. 25. xxvi. 18.

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.

Chapter IV.

IN WHAT THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY IS FOUNDED.

WE now fpeak of Property in Land: and there is a difficulty in explaining the origin of this proper ty, confiftently with the law of nature; for the land was once no doubt common, and the question 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 then others; and what is more, a right to exclude all others from it.

Moralifts have given many different accounts of this matter; which diverfity 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 confent relinquished their right to it; and as the piece of ground belonged to mankind collectively, and mankind thus gave up their right to the first peaceable occupier, it thenceforward became his property, and no one afterwards had a right to mo. left him in it.

The objection to this account is, that confent 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 juft power of conferring a right to it upon whom they pleased, is to fuppofe 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 reason, where the value of the labour bears a confiderable proportion to the value of the thing; or where the thing derives its chief use and value from the labour. Thus, game and fish, though they be common, whilft at large in the woods or water, instantly become the property of the perfon who catches them; because an animal, when caught, is much more valuable than when at liberty; and this increase of value, which is infeparable from and makes a great part of the whole value, is ftrictly the property of the fowler, or fisherman, being the produce of his perfonal labour. For the fame reafon, wood or iron, manufactured into utenfils, become the property of the manufacturer; because the value of the workmanship far exceeds that of the materials. And upon a fimilar principle, a parcel of unappropriated ground, which a man fhould pare, burn, plough, harrow, and fow, for the production of corn, would juftly enough be thereby made his own. But this will hardly hold, in the manner it has been applied, of taking a ceremonious poffeffion of a tract of land, as navigators do of new discovered iflands, by erecting a standard, engraving an inscription, or publishing a proclamation to the birds and beasts; or of turning your cattle into a piece of ground, fetting up a land mark, digging a ditch, or planting a hedge round it, Nor will even