ernment; and property rights follow these relations and are modified by them. The patriarch Abraham lived a pastoral life-had no landed property, only the use of such as he occupied from time to time for temporary residence and the feeding of his flocks and herds. When his loved wife Sarah died, Abraham desired to possess for a burial-place a field belonging to Ephron, the Hittite, and for four hundred shekels of silver he bought the field, and the cave therein; and all the trees that were in the field were made sure unto Abraham for a possession, in the presence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city. "And the field and the cave that is therein were made sure unto Abraham, for a possession of a burying-place, by the sons of Heth." (Genesis 23 20.) This is the first recorded instance of the purchase of land for a sum of money. The purchase was made by a man accustomed to a wandering life, of an individual belonging to a people of fixed habitations. The people or children of Heth doubtless had by possession and improvement such title to the land where they lived as qualified them to sell parcels of it for money. This is the right a people or nation has to the land they have taken possession of and occupy. It is a permanent right. The land at first belongs to the people collectively-none to individuals; but the collective body of the people, under the form and institution of civil government, for a valuable consideration, gives title to individuals to certain parcels of land; and thus the individual, the private party, by doing something, or by paying something, for the benefit of the whole people, becomes the owner of a certain tract or certain parcel of land. Also Virgil gives us a brief account of Queen Dido's purchase from the Libyans of the site of Carthage-originally a hide of land-namely, as much land as could be enclosed by a bull's hide. The received explanation as to this measurement of land is that the hide was cut into narrow strips. "Mercatique solum, facti de nomine Byrsam, -Eneid, Bk. I, 367–8. ` And they bought ground, from the name of the act, Byrsa, As much as they were able to encompass with a bullock's hide. This land-sale occurred six hundred to eight hundred years after the land-purchase by Abraham. 52. LAND-TITLE IN THE UNITED States.-The first emigrants from Europe who settled upon the Atlantic coast of North America, bought from time to time of the native Americans, the Indians, their right and title to tracts of country more or less extensive. This Indian right could not be very valuable, as, for the most part, it was only the right of savage men, who lived by hunting and fishing, save some little cultivation of Indian corn, hence the purchase-money or other consideration was small. The Colonial, the State, and the United States Governments that were successively formed or organized by the immigrant colonists and their descendants thus owned in trust for the entire people all the lands so purchased of the Indians, and have good right to sell and dispose of them according to the will of the people, as expressed in laws enacted by representatives; namely, men elected by the people to meet in general assembly or congress, to make laws for the government of the people, and for the disposition of public affairs. Accordingly, by act of Congress, the public lands have been surveyed into townships six miles square, containing thirty-six sections, each a mile square, and each section being subdivided into quartersections of one hundred and sixty acres each; and these subdivisions of land have been disposed of in various ways, under sundry legislative acts. Some of the lands have been set apart and given by the United States to the separate States, as a foundation fund for university and public school education, or for educational institutions of a public character. Many alternate sections on the lines of projected railroads have been conditionally granted in aid of railroad building, for the purpose of opening up to settlement a route or locality otherwise almost inaccessible. Many quarter-sections have been bestowed upon soldiers-one hundred and sixty acres to each soldier -as a bounty for service in the wars of the United States. Many lands have been sold at public sale by auction to the highest bidder, and after a public sale the lands which were not bid off have been on sale, or private entry, at the United States land offices, to anyone who wished to buy at the minimum price, one dollar and twenty-five cents to two dollars and fifty cents an acre. And also many tracts of land-quarter-sections-for a small considerationabout fifteen dollars—have been sold to the first settler thereon, to encourage settlement as well as to assist the citizen of small means to the possession of a home and homestead and its improvement and culture. These several ways of disposing of and giving title to the government lands are legitimate; and hence the title the individual obtains is perfect and absolute. Yet there is danger of unwise, indiscreet legislation and abuse of public trust; and the public lands, in some cases, have been disposed of without due consideration. There are, however, yet left extensive tracts, and it behooves the present and the rising generation to look sharply to legislative acts relating to them. The United States government does very properly reserve mineral lands, and sells timber lands at a higher valuation than farm lands. The main object of this sketch of land-tenure in the United States is to show the legitimacy and certainty of title to every man who has come to be a land-owner--to hold a possession founded in man's social, civil and political institutions in accord with human nature-a title irreversible except by social and national disintegration, and a backward stride into barbarism. A possession, for which he has in some form given "value received," most commonly, has paid money; and money-silver and gold-has cost labor. Thus it is that man's toil and labor enter into every kind of property, and stamp it as a man's own. Yet often the fear of land-monopoly finds expression. There appears to be little danger in the United States that an individual or a corporation will hold on a long time to large tracts of land. Want of money, taxes and other expenses will induce sales. It might, however, be in accord with a sound morality and public policy to limit by law land-acquisitions to a reasonable amount; and to require the equal division of a landed estate among the heirs. But hostile legislation for the purpose of depriv ́ing the individual of his acquired rights, either directly by confiscation, or indirectly by unequal taxation, is robbery, and is in violation of the eighth commandment "Thou shalt not steal," and of the tenth," thou shalt not covet anything that is thy neighbor's." 53. BLACKSTONE on the Right of ProperTY.— Some of the comments of Blackstone on the Right to Property will here be appropriate. "Communion of goods seems not to have been applicable, even in the earliest ages, to aught but the substance of the thing, nor could be extended to the use of it. For by the law of nature and of reason, he who first began to use it, acquired therein a kind of transient property, that lasted so long as he was using it, and no longer; or to speak with greater precision, the right of possession continued for the same time only that the act of possession lasted. 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 spot of it, for rest, |