The Religion of Nature Delineated William Wollaston (my reading book .TXT) 📖

no right, interferes with proposition III, for it must certainly be inconsistent with the peace and happiness of mankind in general to be left in endless wars and struggles for that which no man can ever have any right to. And yet, thus it must be if that doctrine was true: because it has been demonstrated that power confers no right, and therefore the first right to many things can only accrue from the first possession of them.

If B should endeavor by force (or fraud) to eject C out of the possession of anything which C enjoys (and obtained without expelling or disturbing anybody), he would certainly do that which he himself would judge unreasonable, were he in C’s place. Therefore, he acts as if that was not reason with respect to C, which would be reason in respect of B; contrary to the nature of reason, and to proposition IV.

To endeavor to turn a man violently out of his possessions is the same as to command him to leave them, upon pain of suffering for non-obedience. But this is usurping a dominion which he has no right to, and is contrary to section V, proposition V.

No man can expel another out of his possession without beginning to interrupt his happiness; nor can anyone do this without contravening the truth contained in proposition VI. This therefore secures the possessor in his possession forever: that is, it confirms his right to the thing possessed.

Lastly, the first possessor, of whom I have been speaking, has undoubtedly a right to defend his person, and such other things as can only be his, against the attempts of any aggressor (see proposition II); therefore, these no one can have a right to violate. And therefore again, if he cannot be forcibly dispossessed without violence offered to these, no one has any right to dispossess him. But this must be the case, where the possessor does not quit his possession willingly. The right, consequently, must remain solely in him, unless he consents to quit it.

Note: The successors of an invader, got into possession wrongfully, may acquire a right in time,363 by the failure of such as might claim under him who had the right. For he who happens to be in possession, when all these are extinct, is in the place of a prime occupant.

IX. A title to many things may be transferred by compact or donation.364 If B has the sole right in lands, or goods, nobody has any right to the disposal of them besides B⁠—and he has a right. For disposing of them is but using them as his. Therefore the act of B in exchanging them for something else, or bestowing them upon C, interferes not with truth: and so B does nothing that is wrong. Nor does C do anything against truth, or that is wrong, in taking them, because he treats them as being what they are: as things which come to him by the act of that person in whom is lodged the sole power of disposing of them. Thus C gets the title innocently.

But in the case of compact, the reason on which this transaction stands is more evident still. For the contractors are supposed to receive, each from other, the equivalent of that which they part with, or at least what is equivalent to them retrospectively, or perhaps by each party preferable. Thus neither of them is hurt; perhaps both advantaged. And so each of them treats the thing, which he receives upon the innocent exchange, as being what it is: better for him, and promoting his convenience and happiness. Indeed he who receives the value of anything, and what he likes as well, in effect has it still. His property is not diminished: the situation and matter of it is only altered.

Mankind could not well subsist without bartering one thing for another; therefore, whatever tends to take away the benefit of this intercourse is inconsistent with the general good of mankind, etc. If a man could find the necessaries of life without it, and by himself, he must at least want many of the comforts of it.

X. There is, then, such a thing as property, founded in nature and truth:365 or, there are things which one man only can, consistently with nature and truth, call his: by propositions II, VIII, IX.366

XI. Those things which only one man can truly and properly call his, must remain his till he agrees to part with them (if they are such as he may part with) by compact or donation; or (which must be understood) till they fail, or death extinguishes him and his title together, and he delivers the lamp to his next man. Because no one can deprive him of them without his approbation, but the depriver must use them as his when they are not his, in contradiction to truth. For,

XII. To have the property of anything and to have the sole right of using and disposing of it are the same thing: they are equipollent expressions. For, when it is said that P has the property, or that such a thing is proper to P, it is not said, that P and Q, or P and others, have the property (proprium limits the thing to P only); and when anything is said to be his, it is not said that part of it only is his. P has therefore the all or all-hood367 of it, and consequently all the use of it. And then, since the all of it to him, or all that P can have of it, is but the use and disposal of it,368 he who has this has the thing itself, and it is his.369

Laws, indeed,