CITATIONS FROM WRITINGS OF JURISTS AND ECONOMISTS. 619 



person desires to fix a property which can bring- him nothing but bur- 

 then and expense in defending it; though to render a thing capable of 

 being appropriated it is not strictly necessary that we should inclose 

 it, or be able to inclose it within artificial bounds, or such as are differ- 

 ent from its own substance; it is sufficient if the compass and extent 

 of it can be any way determined. 



Ibid., Vol. II, ed. 1729, Bk. IV, ch. v, sec. 12, p. 370. (English transla- 

 tion.) 



There are things which as they afford us different uses may in regard 

 to some uses be spent and exhausted, and yet in regard to other uses 

 yield a never-tailing abundance. Now as on the one side there is no 

 reason why such things as those should not be brought under property, 

 so, on the other side, the law of kindness and humanity forbids us to 

 deny the inexhaustible use of them to any person that in a friendly 

 and peaceable manner desires it. 



Sheldon Amos, A Systematic Yieic of the Science of Jurisprudence 

 London, 1872, ch. x, p. 122. 



It is scarcely possible to picture a condition of human life in which 

 the fact of ownership is not even dimly and imperfectly recognized. 

 In the most barbarous condition it seems to be essential to the possi- 

 bility of preserving human life that there should be found a prevalent 

 acknowledgment of the claims of individual persons to enjoy the undis- 

 turbed use of the materials they need for their support; of the weapons 

 wanted for defence against beasts of prey, and of the instruments re- 

 quired for providing these materials and weapons It is true, also, that 

 this dawning fact of ownership expresses something more than a mere 

 condition precedent to material progress, though the fact owes its most 

 conspicuous development to the obvious convenience of enforcing and 

 extending proprietary claims in such a way as to encourage agriculture 

 by cherishing a habit of reliance on the future fruits of present labor; 

 to favour the division of labour; and to promote the practices of self- 

 restraint, of saving, and of continuous accumulation, apart from which 

 industry and commerce could never advance beyond an embryonic 

 stage. The fact of ownership, however, beyond all this, has its exact 

 correlative in the dignity and independence of the human spirit itself. 

 It represents and enforces by an objective symbolism in the world with- 

 out the true relation in which man ever stands to his fellows; at every 

 moment of his career he is called upon to abstain from intruding npon 

 the realm of unfettered action within which each one of his fellows 

 moves at large." Each of these, also, is called by an equally peremptory 

 mandate to display the like abstinence in respect of him. The phys- 

 ical objects around, the soil, the streams, the products of the mines, the 

 beasts of the field, and especially all things wrought or changed by 

 human hands present the earliest, and at one epoch, the only materials 

 on behalf of which the competitive and endless spiritual struggle cease- 

 lessly rages. It is only at the last climax of civilization that the truth 

 begins to be apprehended, that the only justification of proprietary 

 claim is a special call to a more devoted and concentrated service on 

 behalf of those who do not share in it. Between this last and the 

 primitive epoch mankind passes with respect to the fact of ownership 

 through all the vicissitudes of (1) simple occupation, (2) rude rivalry, 

 (3) tolerated privilege, (1) selfish absorption, (o) sharp legal distribu- 

 tion, (6) revolutionary communism, terminating finally in the last stage 

 of, (7) appropriation recognized solely as a trust for humanity. 



