Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol II).djvu/15

 Ch. 1. earth ." This is the only true and olid foundation of man's dominion over external things, whatever airy metaphyical notions may have been tarted by fanciful writers upon this ubject. The earth therefore, and all things therein, are the general property of all mankind, excluive of other beings, from the immediate gift of the creator. And, while the earth continued bare of inhabitants, it is reaonable to uppoe, that all was in common among them, and that every one took from the public tock to his own ue uch things as his immediate neceities required.

general notions of property were then ufficient to anwer all the purpoes of human life; and might perhaps till have anwered them, had it been poible for mankind to have remained in a tate of primaeval implicity: as may be collected from the manners of many American nations when firt dicovered by the Europeans; and from the antient method of living among the firt Europeans themelves, if we may credit either the memorials of them preerved in the golden age of the poets, or the uniform accounts given by hitorians of thoe times, wherein "erant omnia communia et indivia omnibus, veluti unum cunctis patrimonium eet ." Not that this communion of goods eems ever to have been applicable, even in the earliet ages, to ought but the ubtance of the thing; nor could be extended to the ue of it. For, by the law of nature and reaon, he who firt began to ue it, acquired therein a kind of tranient property, that lated o long as he was uing it, and no longer : or, to peak with greater preciion, the right of poeion continued for the ame time only that the act of poeion lated. Thus the ground was in common, and no part of it was the permanent property of any man in particular: yet whoever was in the occupation of any determinate pot of it, for ret, for hade, or the like, acquired for the time a ort of ownerhip, from which it would have been unjut, and contrary to the law of nature, to have driven him by force; but the intant that he quitted the ue or occupation of it, Rh