32 COBBETT'S [No. 



own well as far as forty cubits. Upon which PLU- 

 TARCH adds, that he judged that necessity was to be 

 relieved, not laziness to be encouraged" 



40. Such is the doctrine of this celebrated civilian. 

 Let us now hear PUFFENDORF ; and'you will please to 

 bear in mind, that both these writers are of the great- 

 est authority upon all subjects connected with the 

 laws of nature and of nations. We read in their 

 works the result of an age of study : they have been 

 two of the great guides of mankind ever since they 

 wrote : and, we are not to throw them aside, in order 

 to listen exclusively to Parson HAY, to HULTON OF 

 HULTON, or to NICHOLAS GRIMSIIAW. They tell us 

 what they, and what other wise men, deemed to be 

 right ; and, as we shall by and by see, the laws of 

 England, so justly boasted of by our ancestors, hold 

 precisely the same language with these celebrated 

 men. After the following passage from PUFFENDORF, 

 I shall show you what our own lawyers say upon the 

 subject; but I request you to read the following pas- 

 sage with the greatest attention. 



41. " Let us inquire, in the next place, whether the 

 necessity of preserving our life can give us any right 

 over other men's goods, so as to make it allowable for 

 us to seize on them for our relief, either secretly, or 

 by open force, against the owner's consent. For the 

 more clear and solid determination of which point, we 

 think it necessary to hint in short on the causes upon 

 which distinct properties were first introduced in the 

 world ; designing to examine them more at large in 

 their proper place. Now the main reasons on which 

 properties are founded, we take to be these two ; that 

 the feuds and quarrels might be appeased which arose 

 in the primitive communion of things, and that men 

 might be put under a kind of necessity of being indus- 

 trious, every one being to get his maintenance by his 

 own application and labour. This division, therefore, 

 of goods, was not made, that every person should sit 

 idly brooding over the share of wealth he had got, 

 without assisting or serving his fellows ; but that any 

 one might dispose of his things how he pleased ; and 



