Page:Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne.djvu/205

Rh or to beat them—and force them, for such periods as I may judge necessary, to any kind of irksome labour: and on occasion of desperate resistance, to hang or shoot them. But I will not sell them.

150. Bodies of men, or women, then (and much more, as I said before, their souls), must not be bought or sold. Neither must land, nor water, nor air, these being the necessary sustenance of men's bodies and souls.

Yet all these may, on certain terms, be bound, or secured in possession, to particular persons under certain conditions. For instance, it may be proper, at a certain time, to give a man permission to possess land, as you give him permission to marry; and farther, if he wishes it and works for it, to secure to him the land needful for his life; as you secure his wife to him; and make both utterly his own, without in the least admitting his right to buy other people's wives, or fields, or to sell his own.

151. And the right action of a State respecting its land is, indeed, to secure it in various portions to those of its citizens who