ciple of natural justice, without any consent or compact, sufficient of itself to gain a title; a dispute that savours too much of nice and scholastic refinement! However, both sides agree in this, that occupancy is the thing by which the title was in fact originally gained; every man seizing to his own continued use such spots of ground as he found most agreeable to his own convenience, provided he found them unoccupied by any one else.-Commentaries.

[WILLIAM PALEY, D.D. 1743-1805.] THE ORIGIN OF PROPERTY. IF you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn, and if-instead of each picking where and what it liked, taking just as much as it wanted, and no moreyou should see ninety-nine of them gathering all they got into a heap, reserving nothing for themselves but the chaff and the refuse, keeping this heap for one, and that the weakest, perhaps worst pigeon of the flock; sitting round, and looking on all the winter, whilst this one was devouring, throwing about, and wasting it; and if a pigeon, more hardy or hungry than the rest, touched a grain of the hoard, all the others instantly flying upon it and tearing it to pieces: if you should see this, you would see nothing more than what is every day practised and established among men. Among men you see the ninety-and-nine toiling and scraping together a heap of superfluities for one, and this one too, oftentimes, the feeblest and worst of the whole set-a child, a woman, a madman, or a fool-getting nothing for themselves all the while but a little of the coarsest of the provision which their own industry produces; looking quietly on while they see the fruits of all their labour spent or spoiled; and if one of the number take or touch a particle of the hoard, the others joining against him, and hanging him for the theft.

There must be some very important advantages to account for an institution which, in the view of it above given, is so paradoxical and unnatural.

The principal of these advantages are the following:

:

I. It increases the produce of the earth. The earth, in climates like ours, produces little without cultivation; and none would be found willing to cultivate the ground, if others were to be admitted to an equal share of the produce. The same is true of the care of flocks and herds of tame animals.

Crabs and acorns, red deer, rabbits, game, and fish, are all which we should have to subsist upon in this country, if we trusted to the spontaneous productions of the soil; and it fares not much better with other countries. A nation of North American savages, consisting of two or three hundred, will take up and be half starved upon a tract of land which in Europe, and with European management, would be sufficient for the maintenance of as many thousands.

In some fertile soils, together with great abundance of fish upon their coasts, and in regions where clothes are unnecessary, a considerable degree of population may subsist without property in land, which is the case in the islands of Otaheite; but in less-favoured situations, as in the country of New Zealand, though this sort of property obtain in a small degree, the inhabitants, for want of a more secure and regular establishment of it, are driven oftentimes by the scarcity of provision to devour one another.

II. It preserves the produce of the earth to maturity.

We may judge what would be the effects of a community of right to the productions of the earth from the trifling specimens which we see of it at present. A cherrytree in a hedgerow, nuts in a wood, the grass of an unstinted pasture, are seldom of much advantage to anybody, 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 for another.

III. It prevents contests.

War and waste, tumult and confusion,

G G

must be unavoidable and eternal where there is not enough for all, and where there are no rules to adjust the division.

IV. It improves the conveniency of living.

This it does two ways. It enables mankind to divide themselves into distinct professions, which is impossible, unless a man can exchange the productions of his own art for what he wants from others, and exchange implies property. Much of the advantage of civilised over savage life depends upon this. 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 which all their operations require.

It likewise encourages those arts by which the accommodations of human life are supplied, by appropriating to the artist the benefit of his discoveries and improvements, without which appropriation, ingenuity will never be exerted with effect.

Upon these several accounts we may venture, with a few exceptions, to pronounce that even the poorest and the worst provided, in countries where property and the consequences of property prevail, are in a better situation with respect to food, raiment, houses, and what are called the necessaries of life, than any are in places where most things remain in common.

The balance, therefore, upon the whole, must preponderate in favour of property with a manifest and great excess.

Inequality of property, in the degree in which it exists in most countries of Europe, abstractedly considered, is an evil; but it is an evil which flows from those rules concerning the acquisition and disposal of property, by which men are incited to industry, and by which the object of their industry is rendered secure and valuable. If there be any great inequality unconnected with this origin, it ought to be corrected.—Moral Philosophy.

[SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. 1765—1832.]

CHIVALRY AND MODERN
MANNERS.

In reply to Mr. Burke.

THE collision of armed multitudes [in Paris] terminated in unforeseen excesses and execrable crimes. In the eye of Mr. Burke, however, these crimes and excesses assume an aspect far more important than can be communicated to them by their own insulated guilt. They form, in his opinion, the crisis of a revolution far more important than any change of government-a revolution in which the sentiments and opinions that have formed the manners of the European nations are to perish. "The age of chivalry is gone, and the glory of Europe extinguished for

ever."

He follows this exclamation by an eloquent eulogium on chivalry, and by gloomy predictions of the future state of Europe, when the nation that has been so long accustomed to give her the tone in arts and manners is thus debased and corrupted. A caviller might remark, that ages much more near the meridian fervour of chivalry than ours have witnessed a treatment of queens as little gallant and generous as that of the Parisian mob. He might remind Mr. Burke that, in the age and country of Sir Philip Sidney, a queen of France, whom no blindness to accomplishment, no malignity of detraction, could reduce to the level of Maria Antoinette, was, by "a nation of men of honour and cavaliers," permitted to languish in captivity, and expire on a scaffold; and he might add, that the manners of a country are more surely indicated by the systematic cruelty of a sovereign, than by the licentious frenzy of a mob. He might remark, that the mild system of modern manners which survived the massacres with which fanaticism had for a century desolated and almost barbarised Europe, might perhaps resist the shock of one day's excesses committed by a delirious populace.

But the subject itself is, to an enlarged thinker, fertile in reflections of a different That system of manners which

nature.

[RICHARD HOOKER, D.D. 1554-1600.] THE VALUE AND BEAUTY OF CHURCH MUSIC.

TOUCHING musical harmony, whether by instrument or by voice, it being but of high and low in sounds a due proportion able disposition, such notwithstanding is the force thereof, and so pleasing effects it hath in that very part of man which is most divine, that some have been thereby induced to think that the soul itself by nature is, or hath in it, harmony; a thing which delighteth all ages, and beseemeth all states; a thing as seasonable in grief as in joy; as decent, being added unto actions of greatest weight and solemnity, as being used when men most sequester themselves from action. The reason hereof is an admirable facility which music hath to express and represent to the mind, more inwardly than any other sensible mean, the very standing, rising, and falling, the very steps and inflections every way, the turns and varieties of all passions whereunto the mind is subject; yea, so to imitate them, that whether it resemble unto us the same state wherein our minds already are, or a clean contrary, we are not more contentedly by the one confirmed, than changed and led away by the other. In harmony, the very image and character even of virtue and vice is perceived, the mind delighted with their resemblances, and brought by having them often iterated into a love of the things themselves. For which cause there is nothing more contagious and pestilent than some kinds of harmony;

than some, nothing more strong and And that there is potent unto good. such a difference of one kind from another, we need no proof but our own experience, inasmuch as we are at the hearing of some more inclined unto sorrow and heaviness, of some more mollified and softened in mind; one kind apter to stay and settle us, another to move and stir our affections; there is that draweth to a marvellous grave and sober mediocrity; there is also that carrieth, as it were, into ecstacies, filling the mind with a heavenly joy, and for the time in a manner severing it from the body; so that, although we lay altogether aside the consideration of ditty or matter, the very harmony of sounds being framed in due sort, and carried from the ear to the spiritual faculties of our souls, is, by a native puissance and efficacy, greatly available to bring to a perfect temper whatsoever is there troubled; apt as well to quicken the spirits as to allay that which is too eager; sovereign against melancholy and despair; forcible to draw forth tears of devotion, if the mind be such as can yield them; able both to move and to moderate all affections. The prophet David having, therefore, singular knowledge, not in poetry alone, but in music also, judged them both to be things most necessary for the house of God, left behind him to that purpose a number of divinely-indited poems, and was further the author of adding unto poetry melody in public prayer; melody, both vocal and instrumental, for the raising up of men's hearts, and the sweetening of their affections