554 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



be revived as industrialism further develops. The regime of 

 contract, at present so far extended that the right of property 

 in movables is recognized only as having arisen by exchange 

 of services or products under agreements, or by gift from those 

 who had acquired it under such agreements, may be further 

 extended so far that the products of the soil will be recog 

 nized as property only by virtue of agreements between indi 

 viduals as tenants and the community as landowner. Even 

 now, among ourselves, private ownership of land is not abso 

 lute. In legal theory landowners are directly or indirectly 

 tenants of the Crown (which in our day is equivalent to the 

 State, or, in other words, the Community); and the Community 

 from time to time resumes possession after making due com 

 pensation. Perhaps the right of the Community to the 

 land, thus tacitly asserted, will in time to come be overtly 

 asserted ; and acted upon after making full allowance for the 

 accumulated value artificially given. 



541. The rise and development of arrangements which 

 fix and regulate private possession, thus admit of tolerably 

 clear delineation. 



The desire to appropriate, and to keep that which has been 

 appropriated, lies deep, not in human nature only, but in 

 animal nature : being, indeed, a condition to survival. The 

 consciousness that conflict, and consequent injury, may pro 

 bably result from the endeavour to take that which is held 

 by another, ever tends to establish and strengthen the custom 

 of leaving each in possession of whatever he has obtained by 

 labour ; and this custom takes among primitive men the shape 

 of an overtly-admitted claim. 



This claim to private ownership, fully recognized in respect 

 of movables made by the possessor, and fully or partially 

 recognized in respect of game killed on the territory over 

 which members of the community wander, is not recognized 

 in respect of this territory itself, or tracts of it. Property is 

 individualized as far as circumstances allow individual claims 



