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that the popular impression in reference to the part 

 played by Occupancy in the first stages of civiliza- 

 tion directly reverses the truth. Occupancy is the 

 advised assumption of physical possession ; and the 

 notion that an act of this description confers a title 

 to " res nullius," so far from being characteristic of 

 very early societies, is in all probability the growth 

 of a refined jurisprudence and of a settled condition 

 of the laws. It is only when the rights of property 

 have gained a sanction from long practical invio- 

 lability , and when the vast majority of the objects of 

 enjoyment have been subjected to private ownership, 

 that mere possession is allowed to invest the first 

 possessor with dominion over commodities in which 

 no prior proprietorship has been asserted. The 

 sentiment in which the doctrine originated is 

 absolutely irreconcileable with that infrequency and 

 uncertainty of proprietary rights which distinguish 

 the beginnings of civilization. Its true basis seems 

 to be, not an instinctive bias towards the institution 

 of Property, but a presumption arising out of the { 

 long continuance of that institution, that every thing / 

 ought to have an owner. When possession is taking / 

 of a a res nullius," that is, of an object which is not, 

 or has never been, reduced to dominion, the possessor 

 is permitted to become proprietor from a feeling 

 that all valuable things are naturally the subjects of 

 an exclusive enjoyment, and that in the given case 

 there is no one to invest with the right of property 



