the whole apparatus of courts, magistrates, and judicial procedure are a dead letter; they benefit, it is true, from the protection they afford, but their own personal conduct is quite unaffected by their operations. Can the same be said of morals and manners? Certainly not. No one can pass through life without being gratified or annoyed by the good or ill demeanour of his neighbours, friends, and acquaintance. The relative importance then of laws, morals, and manners, must be evident; good laws are of contingent benefit to some; correct morals and manners of interest to all. The second observation applies to the different powers for enforcing the several obligations we have been considering. Laws are enforced by the state; morals and manners by individuals; a breach of one is penal, the other only disgraceful; fear upholds one, honour the other. These different species of coercion readily account for the different degress of restraint imposed by laws and manners, on the mean and high-minded, the cultivated and uncultivated portions of mankind.

CHAP. VII.

RIGHTS OF PROPERTY.

In the cultivation of the earth, two modes may be adopted; either it may be cultivated in common or individually; the disadvantage of the former is that it makes no distinction between the weak and strong, the idle and industrious: for superior exertion and ability there is no superior reward. Under this system, the world would not be reclaimed-men will not willingly labour for others; to stimulate exertion, rewards must in some degree be proportioned to desert. Appropriation, therefore, or the right of every one to enjoy the produce of his industry, became necessary to the effective cultivation of the earth; each man having a portion of land allotted to him in which he vested his labour, became entitled to its produce. This was probably the foundation of property in the soil. By its introduction, no man's natural rights can be said to have been extinguished or encroached upon; the earth before lay common to all, but unprofitable to all-by appropriation it has been made valuable to all. Farther than this it does not appear necessary to inquire into the origin of the rights of property; their obvious utility must have forced themselves on every people on first emerging from the barbarous state.

A state of society in which there is equality of possessions, in which each man tills his own land, and raises the food and clothing necessary to his

wants, appears at first sight very fascinating. It favours that feeling of independence so dear to the human heart. But if we reflect on the tendency of such a mode of social or rather anti-social existence, we shall find it pregnant with misery.

In the first place, the mere labour of society would be greatly augmented. As each person's means would not exceed his current necessities, they would not exceed the amount essential to the maintenance of himself and family, the idea of capitalists is precluded, and consequently no expedient for saving labour by machinery or otherwise, could be employed. All would be engaged in spade husbandry or other manual occupation. Such Such a disadvan→ tageous mode of exertion would obviously be very unproductive; it would yield none of the luxuries, and barely the comforts, of life; people would hardly be better off than the cotter peasantry of Ireland, or the pauper colonists of Holland; and the whole of society would be literally brought under the primitive curse inflicted on our first parents. If the physical wants were supplied with so much difficulty, the mental ones would be totally neglected. As each would be fully occupied in providing sustenance, there would be no spare time to any for intellectual pursuits. If science, philosophy, and the arts had existed, they would speedily fall into disuse and oblivion. Ignorance and barbarism would overspread the land. Men would become unacquainted with themselves and with the natural phe. nomena by which they are surrounded. Their past

history and future destiny would be alike shut from view; they would move, as it were, in darknessthe victims of suspicion, of mutual mistrust and superstitious fears-a prey to all those calamities which are known to be inseparable from savage life when divested of the illusions of the imagination.

From such a state of universal toil and dreariness, one naturally turns to the more cheerful appearance which actual society presents, and one of whose chief advantages is derived from the circumstance that certain classes are exempt from at least the necessity of bodily labour. Now this advantage could not be possessed without a certain degree of inequality in men's fortunes; in other words, the existence of a proprietary class. Property is not a free gift of Nature; the value even of landed property is chiefly a product of labour; it is almost entirely capital, or the produce of anterior industry. But if this capital or property did not exist, there would be no fund in reserve to maintain a class of persons occupied in what have been very inaccurately termed unproductive employments: all would be engaged in procuring food or raiment, and none could exclusively devote themselves to the pursuits of literature, science, and legislation.

Besides augmenting the produce of the earth, and creating a surplus beyond the wants of the producers, the rights of property have other advantages; they preserve it to maturity. "We may judge," says Dr. Paley, "what would be the effects of a community of right to the productions of the earth,

from the trifling specimens we see of it at present. A cherry-tree in a hedge-row, nuts in a wood, the grass of an unstinted pasture, are seldom of much advantage to any body, because people do not wait for the proper season of reaping them. Corn, if any were sown, would never ripen; lambs and calves would never grow up to sheep and cows, because the first person that met them would reflect, that he had better take them as they are than leave them to another."

Property also prevents contests. War and waste, tumult and confusion, must be unavoidable and eternal where there is not enough for all, and where there are no rules to adjust the division.

Further it improves the conveniency of living by facilitating the division of employments. Without property this would be impossible, for there could be no exchanges of commodities; in a community of goods, every thing would belong to every body; no one would have any production which he could call his own, and which he would be entitled to exchange for the production of another man. We should thus be deprived of one of the chief advantages of civilized life. When a man is from necessity his own tailor, tent-maker, carpenter, cook, huntsman, and fisherman, it is not probable that he will be expert at any of his callings. Hence the rude habitations, furniture, clothing, and implements of savages; and the tedious length of time all their operations require.

Upon these several accounts, we may venture, with few exceptions, to pronounce, that even the