The Sun.
London, England, 1841-02-08 00:00:00

of Commons, or by referring to the authOrity of,
PALEY that property is the creature of law.
We had occasion to 'shoW- on Thursday—in an
article on the proposed reform of the jurisdiction in
-e-quily=lhat-Atife gesal trat-of- ail-our-institution&
is to administer. juStee ; and as about nine-tenths
of the business of.7:(11 Courts, relates to proper;-,
it follows that threat object. of our IAwS is 'to
protect property; A. much, greater number of
tags, too; is made in relation to property thaniti
relation to personS:. Thtis it may be unhesita-
tingly affirmed that the great mass of our insti-
tutions relate to property, and it is equally un-
seemly in the Post to tell us that on such a sub- ,
ject the Parliament may be contented, with the
brief, vague, and incorrect definition of BLACK-
STONE, and in Mr. MACAULAY to base an elabo-
borate argument on a definition ofproperty,with-
out an attempt to prove it, which he knows
is
contrary to that of our best writers. Considering
the .right of property to be the key-stone of all
social institutions, we shall endeavour to show
that Mr. MAcA (MAY'S assertion, that property •is
the. creature of law, is erroneous.
We quoted a passage from Mr. LOCKE on
Thursday, which expressly states that " the chief'
end of men's uniting into commonwealths, and
putting themselves under Government, is the
preservation of their property, to which, in the
state of nature, there are many things wanting."
That great philosopher, then, admits that
property existed antecedent to Government and
antecedent to human law. It was not to have a
right of property created, but to preserve their
.
property previously in existence, to the preser-
vation of which, not to the creation of which, in
Mr. LOCKE'S opinion, there are many things
wanting in a state of nature, that men united under
Governinent. If men have no natural rights,
and if property be not one of them, they are.
altogether at the mercy of the law-maker, who,
instead of having to make his laws, as BLACK-
STONE says, to accord with the laws of nature,
will have no other guide for his conduct than his
own wild imaginations or dreaming fancies.
Mr. MACAULAY says expediency, or public
utility, is the basis of the legal right of property.
'But how could the utility or the eipedincy of
4 law be ascertained, before it was made ?
Every day convinces us that legislatorS' know
little or nothing before-hand of what , will
be the effects of any enactment.- They
must have waited for the experience of
the laws, creating property before they could,
from such a motive, have passed them. They
could have known nothing of public utility and
of' public expediency,' When they made laws
'establishing property:: In fact, .the theory of
expediency or 'public utility is a modern inven-
tion, brought forward by interested men to justify
existing institutions, and was wholly unknown to
those who took possession of the soil by the sword,
and made- laws, as was stated in the Edinburgh
Review, by the sword to support their posSession.
Public good and general expediency are con-
venient names, behind which landlords and
others hide the most selfish -Motives ; but they
are not very easily .appreciable by the highest
faculties with which any human being was ever
endOvied, and certainly are not to be measured
by .the _herd of hereditary ig,noramusses,
plodding, lawyers, cunning merchants, and un-
licked youths, the younger sons ofthe -
who compose our Legislature. We must prefer
Mr. LOCKE'S opinion of the origin of the right of
property to that of Mr. -MACAULAY, and Mr.
LOCKE'S opinion.is as:follows :
" Every man," he Says,' " has a property in his own
person that nobody has any 'right to but himself. The
labour of his body and the work ef'his hand are his pro-
perty. Whatsoever, then, be removes out of the state
that nature h'eth provided and left it in, he hathlmized his
labour with it and joined -to something that is his own, and'.
thereby makes it- hiwproperty. It being by him removed
from the common state nature bath placed it is, it bath by
this labour-something annexed to it-that excludes the com-
mon right of other men. For the labour being the unques-
tionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have
a right to what that is joined to—at least, where there is
enough and as good left in common for others."
" He that' is nourished by the acorn he picked up under
an oak, or the apple he gathered from the trees in the
wood, has certainly appropriated thenf to himself. No-
body can' der y but the nourishment is his. I ask, then,
when they began to be his? When ha digested? Or
when he eat, or when he boiled ? Or when he brought
them Lome? Or when he picked them up? And,
it is plain, . that if the, first gathering made them not his
nothing else could. That labour put a distinction between
them and common, that added something to them more
than nature—the common mother of all—had done, and
so they became his private right."
" Thus the law of reason makes the deer that In-
dian's who bath killed it ; it is allowed to be his
goods who bath bestowed his labour upon it, though
before it was the common right of every one. And
amongst those who are accounted the civilised part of
mankind—who have made and multiplied laws to deter-
mine property—this original law of nature for the begin-
nifty of property in what was before common, still takes
vlace ; and by virtue thereof, what fish any one catches in
the ocean—that great and still remaining common of man.
ltind,--or what ambergris any one takes up here, is, by the
labour that removes it out of the common state nature left
it, made his property who takes that pains about it."*
" But the chief matter of property being now," he goes
on, ‘• not Ile fruits of the earth and the beasts that sub-
sist on it, but the earth itself as that which takes
and carries with it all the rest, I think it plain that
property in that too is (ought to be ?) acquir,d
as the former. As much land as a man
plants, cultivates, and can use the products of, so much
is his property. He, by his labour, does, as it were,
inclose it from the common.'l
According to Mr. LOCKE, then, labour, which
ADAM SMITH calls the only original purchase-
money of all wealth, is the source of the natural
right of property ; that ;the existing right
of pr( perry does not correspond thereto, with
all its, lava of succession, is no proof, as
Mr. MACAULAY seems to consider it, that such a
right Las no existence, but merely that the exist-
ing right of property requires some revision, in
order to be brought into harmony with the natu-
ral right of property. It suits bread-taxing
landowners, pension-eating sinecurists, and tithe-
fed priests to contend that there is no natural right
of property, because that is a convenient theory
for their exactions; but the industrious classes
cannot admit it, without justifying all that legal
plunder of which they now incessantly com-
plain. They may admit, indeed they must ad-
mit, that the right of the landowners to re-
ceive an additional rent from taxing the
bread of the poor, that the right of the
tithe-owner to receive a large portion of
the produce of other mens' industry, and the right
of the pensioner to be maintained out of the
taxes, are all created by the law, and, therefore,
they must admit, -so .fitr as these rights are
called a right of property,' that the rights of pro-
perty is created by the law ; but that right of
property the industrious classes are, prepared to
assert, whatever Mr. MACAULAY may say, is
wither expedient nor useful.':.
* Of Civil Government, book ii., chap. 5, sec. 28.
Of Civil Government, book ii., chap. 5, sec. 30.

The public may find pleasure n perusing Mr.
GILBART'S graphic description, inserted in al.-
other part ofThe Sun, of the,tactics which should
be pursued by Joint-stock and Private Banks, in
opposing the formation of one National Bank of
Issue, should such a project be entertained. We
have heard too much of the evil consequences of
the contest in the United States, between the
'Banking power and the Government, to wish
for any such contest iii England; but, supposing

it to arise, Mr. GILBAuT's tactics seem well cal-
culated to make the issue doubtful for the Go-
vernment.

We beg our readers not to suppose that by

inserting Mr. GILBART'S remarks we assent to
all his conclusions. Like other men, he speaks
'for himself and his own interest; and we
no more wish to see Joint-stock bankers
making laws for the community than land-
lords. Our laws must not be made to give
predominancy to those who, as we stated the
other day on Mr. HARDCASTLE'S authority, hav-
ing before stated it on our own, receive,interest
on their debts. It ought never to be forgotten
that a banker's promise to pay on demand, ,by
which he pretends to assist ti4fie is, in :fuck a
loan from the public. Now, the law. 'bust on no
account be made to give prirkles and itninur
miles to such borroweisl: ThePoiver of,borrow-
mg ought on no aeqount to be kited by laim,

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