CITATIONS FROM WRITINGS OF JURISTS AND ECONOMISTS. 629 



the labor, is entitled to the ownership of this new value. The reason 

 thereof lies chiefly in that which is common to specification and to occu- 

 pation ; it is evident that no one has a right to the new value, especially 

 a better right than the producer. What is essential, however, is the 

 positivity which specification has over and above occupation, the per- 

 sonal merit which the producer has gained for himself by originating a 

 new good, for which the property therein acquired is his just reward. 

 It is to be carefully observed, however, that labor, as such, is not a 

 basis of property; the norma juris (Rechtsorduung) alone can distribute 

 property. When, however, a normajuris and the institution of property 

 coexist, it is both right and expedient that a normajuris should give to 

 labor the possibility of becoming the basis of the acquisition of property. 

 Only, in order to distribute the reward aright, it is necessary accurately 

 to find out the place where the merit is to be found. External percep- 

 tible labor in physical matter has, in most cases, the least merit and 

 the smallest part in the production of the new value; greatly prepon- 

 derating is the merit in him who, by command and direction, by foresight 

 and genius, by giving auxiliary means and by ingenuity, leads the 

 forces of others to the goal, and assures the success of bodily exertion, 



Coquelin et Guillaumin. Dictionnaire de Veconomie politique, vol. 

 IV, p. 463 et seq., Paris, 1853. 



Ownership has shared in the general progress of civilization. At 

 the same time it has followed a law of development which was peculiar. 

 It has advanced like liberty, like industry and like the Arts in the 

 world. . . Ownership exists among the pastoral people as well as 

 among the nations which have come to the highest point of agricul- 

 tural wealth and industry; but it exists in other conditions. The 

 occupation of the soil began by being annual before it was for life, and 

 it had been for life in the person of the tenant before becoming heredi- 

 tary and in a way perpetual. It had belonged to the tribe before 

 becoming the property of the family, and it had been the common 

 possession of the family before taking on the individual character. 

 The poets, who are the first historians, witness this gradual transfor- 

 mation of inheritances. . . 



Ownership, in undergoing evolutions analogous to those of liberty, 

 spread out, and increased, and has, so to speak, pervaded space. At 

 the beginning of civilization man possessed scarcely anything — some 

 herds, some rude utensils, scarcely a corner of earth which produced 

 grain in the midst of a deserted steppe. He brought into use almost 

 none of the natural agents. The agricultural people who succeeded 

 the pastoral tribes soon had tenfold and a hundredfold the possessions 

 which then attached to the surface of the globe. But it belonged only 

 to the skilful nations to carry industry and commerce to their highest 

 development. As the earth becomes individualized, and as each parcel 

 falls into the possession of an owner who enriches it with his capital 

 and labor, those who find themselves outside this division of the soil, 

 are not on that account excluded from property. 



William Roscher, Property. Principles of Political Economy. Trans- 

 lated by J. J. Lalor from the 13th German Ed., Bk. I., Vol. I, ch. I, 

 sec. 33, p. 12(3. Chicago, 1882. 



Those gifts of external nature which may become objects of private 

 property and at the same time possess sufficient relative scarcity to 

 give them value in exchange are either movable and exhaustible in a 



