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 basis of possession. But we have no right to throw back our modern views and expect people many centuries ago to act in accordance with them. If it can be shown that those who originally acquired property did so by carrying out what was then considered to be the business and duty of a public-spirited man, then they surely earned their reward according to the views which were then current. It may be argued that when feudal tenure ceased and armies were raised by different methods, those who had held the land as a reward for military service ought to have been made to surrender it or pay rent for it to the State. But in fact all these arguments and imaginings about the origin of various forms of property, in the ages when the world was first being settled, or conquered by invading hordes who seized the property of its inhabitants, are to a great extent irrelevant.

If land were still in the hands of the descendants of the original pioneers, or, in the case of England, of the descendants of the Norman captains among whom William the Conqueror parcelled out the land, it might then possibly be worth while to enquire, in the light of equity, into the title-deeds of these gentlemen. But we know that much of this property has changed