own, a barren waste is converted into a fertile soil; the seed, the
manure, the labor, create a new value, and the rewards of harvest are
painfully earned by the fatigues of the revolving year.

In the successive states of society the hunter, the shepherd, the
husbandman, may defend their possessions by two reasons which forcibly
appeal to the feelings of the human mind: that whatever they enjoy is
the fruit of their own industry; and that every man who envies their
felicity may purchase similar acquisitions by the exercise of similar
diligence. Such, in truth, may be the freedom and plenty of a small
colony cast on a fruitful island. But the colony multiplies, while the
space still continues the same; the common rights, the equal inheritance
of mankind, are engrossed by the bold and crafty; each field and forest
is circumscribed by the landmarks of a jealous master; and it is the
peculiar praise of the Roman jurisprudence that it asserts the claim of
the first occupant to the wild animals of the earth, the air, and the
waters. In the progress from primitive equity to final injustice, the
steps are silent, the shades are almost imperceptible, and the absolute
monopoly is guarded by positive laws and artificial reason. The active,
insatiable principle of self-love can alone supply the arts of life and
the wages of industry; and as soon as civil government and exclusive
property have been introduced, they become necessary to the existence of
the human race.

Except in the singular institutions of Sparta, the wisest legislators
have disapproved an agrarian law as a false and dangerous innovation.
Among the Romans the enormous disproportion of wealth surmounted the
ideal restraints of a doubtful tradition and an obsolete statute; a
tradition that the poorest follower of Romulus had been endowed with the
perpetual inheritance of two jugera; a statute which confined the
richest citizen to the measure of five hundred jugera, or three hundred
and twelve acres of land. The original territory of Rome consisted only
of some miles of wood and meadow along the banks of the Tiber, and
domestic exchange could add nothing to the national stock. But the goods
of an alien or enemy were lawfully exposed to the first hostile
occupier; the city was enriched by the profitable trade of war, and the
blood of her sons was the only price that was paid for the Volscian
sheep, the slaves of Britain, to the gems and gold of Asiatic kingdoms.
In th