KANDOM THOUGHTS ON HU-XTISG. 287 



The land which he has purchased with the pro- 

 ceeds of his industry and for which he pays tax 

 to the State is no longer his (except in a qualified 

 sense) unless he incloses it. In other respects, it is 

 his neighbors', or anybody's. It is true, that he 

 may proceed against another who cuts his timber, 

 though it lies beyond his inclosure, as a trespasser 

 yet the same man may turn a drove of cattle on 

 these lands, and browse on, and trample them, to 

 the destruction of a hundred times the value with- 

 out risk to himself, or leaving any chance of redress 

 to the proprietor and tax-payer. In like manner 

 may a man's land be "harried/' and not only his 

 game, but sheep and other stock, be worried by 

 the dogs of hunters, traversing his unin closed 

 grounds at discretion, without his being able to 

 protect himself, as matters now stand, or obtaining 

 any legal redress for the injury. It seems a ques- 

 tionable policy in a country peculiarly situated as 

 ours is thus, by construction of law, to diminish 

 the value of land, and the inducement to hold it, by 

 limiting and narrowing the rights of proprietors. 

 Yet the poor man, who owns no land, is slow to 

 perceive the beauty or fitness of the common law 

 maxim ; and the demagogue is not the man to point 

 it out. He lias but one purpose to gain thefavoi* 

 of the people ! his means, not the elevation of 



