614 CITATIONS FROM WRITINGS OF JURISTS AND ECONOMISTS. 



food, they all possess a natural right to inhabit it, and to derive from 

 it whatever is necessary for their subsistence, and suitable to their 

 wants. But when the human race became extremely multiplied, the 

 earth was no longer capable of furnishing spontaneously, and without 

 culture, sufficient support for its inhabitants; neither could it have 

 received proper cultivation from wandering tribes of men continuing 

 to possess it in common. It therefore became necessary that those 

 tribes should fix themselves somewhere and appropriate to themselves 

 portions of land, in order that they might without being disturbed in 

 their labor, or disappointed of the fruits of their industry, apply them- 

 selves to render those hinds fertile, and thence derive their subsistence. 

 Such must have been the origin of the rights of property and dominion: 

 and it was a sufficient ground to justify their establishment. Since 

 their introduction, the right which was common to all mankind is indi- 

 vidually restricted to what each lawfully possesses. 



Caulfetld Heron, L. L. D., An Introduction to the History of Juris* 

 py/nlcucc, Bk. I, eh. IV, p. 71, London, 1800. 



Property is the right of using. The right of property is founded 

 upon its subserviency to the subsistence and well-being of mankind. 

 The institution of property is necessary for social order. The exclusive 

 appropriation of things is essential for the full enjoyment of them. . . 

 It is the principal foundation of social improvement; it leads to the cul- 

 tivation of the earth, the institution of government, the establishment 

 of justice. In the right of property Bentham includes four things: 

 1. The right of occupation; 2. The right of excluding others; 3. The 

 right of disposition; 4. The right of transmission. 



George Bowyer, D. G. L., Commentaries on the Constitutional Laic 

 of England, 2d ed., London, 1840, p. 427. 



III. The third primary inherent right of the citizen is that of property, 

 which consists in the free use, enjoyment and disposal of all that is his, 

 without any control or diminution, save by the law of the land. The 

 institution of property, that is to say, the appropriation to particular 

 persons and uses of things which were given by God to all mankind, 

 is of natural law. The reason of this is not difficult to discover, for 

 the increase of mankind must soon have rendered community of goods 

 exceedingly inconvenient or impossible consistently with the peace of 

 society; and indeed by far the greatest number of things cannot be 

 made fully subservient to the use of mankind in the most beneficial 

 manner unless they be governed by the laws of exclusive appropriation. 



Be Bayneval, Institutions du Droit de la Nature et des Gens, ed. 1803, 

 sect. 2, p. 96. 



Property did not exist in the primitive state of the world, and it is 

 no more inherent in human nature than heredity. Originally men did 

 not possess more than the animals possess to-day. The earth was 

 common to all and belonged to no one. When agriculture became 

 necessary for the sustenance of man, each was partial naturally to the 

 earth which he had cleared by the sweat of his brow, and which offered 

 him the fruit and the recompense of his labor; whence the first idea of 

 preservation and property; whence also, the quarrels which the exclu- 

 sive right must have caused upon the ground that it was invoked for 

 the first time. These quarrels must have.finally led to compromises; 

 these compromises introduced the right to enjoy exclusively the land 



