82 ARGUMENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 



ui)on the subject of our discussion, it should receive corresponding at- 

 tention. In the rude ages of society there was but little occasion to 

 assert a right of property beyond the few necessary things which life 

 required, and these were mostly held in immediate possession, which 

 could be defended by individual power. Clothing was upon the per- 

 son, and the weapons for the chase, and the few agricultural imple- 

 ments were within immediate reach. The stock of cattle and any 

 surplus stores of food were the property of the community or tribe. But, 

 upon the change to private property, individuals, in pursuance of nat- 

 ural desires, would seek to provide themselves with increased abun- 

 dance of cattle and agricultural products as stores for the future. In 

 this and manifold other ways there arose a need for protection to these 

 accumulations when beyond the immediate possession of the producer. 

 If they were taken by another, the attempt would be made to regain 

 them by force; and the disposition to produce and save would be dis- 

 couraged by the difficulty and danger. The same necessities out of 

 which property arose, namely, the peace and order of society and its 

 advancement, forced a development in the conception, and gave birth 

 to the idea of ownership as distinct from and independent of actual 

 possession. Society came to the aid of individual power, and under- 

 took to guaranty to the individual the peaceful enjoyment of what he 

 had produced by stamping upon it his personality. 



We thus perceive that the idea of ownership as distinct from posses- 

 sion is not an original conception. It is the product of an evolution in 

 thought, which has accompanied the progress of man. An able Eng- 

 lish writer, in the course of an interesting sketch of the successive 

 stages of this development observes : 



The fact or institution of ownership is such an indispensable condi- 

 tion to any material or social progress that, even throughout the 

 period during which the attention of law is concentrated upon family 

 and village ownership, the ownership on the part of individual persons, 

 of those things which are needed for the sustenance of physical life, 

 becomes increasingly recognized as a possibility or necessity. One of 

 the most important steps out of savagery into civilization is marked 

 by the fact that the security of tenure depends upon some further con- 

 dition than the mere circumstance of possession. 



The use of the products of the earth, and still more, the manufac- 

 ture of them into novel substances, consists, generally, of continuous 

 processes extending over a length of time during which the watchful 

 attention of the worker can only be intermittently fixed upon all the 

 several points and stages. The methods of agriculture and grazing, 

 as well as the simplest applications of the principle of division of labor, 

 similarly presuppose the repeated absence of the farmer or mechanic 

 from one part of his work, while he is bestowing undistracted toil upon 



