character.

I do not pretend to great originality in my views. My efforts have
been to collect the scattered rays of light, and to bring them to
bear upon one interesting topic. The present is the child of the
past. The ideas of bygone races affect the practices of living
people. We form but parts of a whole; we are influenced by those
who preceded us, and we shall influence those who come after us.
Men cannot disassociate themselves either from the past or the
future.

In looking at this question there is, I think, a vast difference
which has not been sufficiently recognized. It is the broad
distinction between the system arising out of the original
occupation of land, and that proceeding out of the necessities of
conquest; perhaps I should add a third--the complex system
proceeding from an amalgamation, or from the existence of both
systems in the same nation. Some countries have been so repeatedly
swept over by the tide of conquest that but little of the
aboriginal ideas or systems have survived the flood. Others have
submitted to a change of governors and preserved their customary
laws; while in some there has been such a fusion of the two systems
that we cannot decide which of the ingredients was the older,
except by a process of analysis and a comparison of the several
products of the alembic with the recognized institutions of the
class of original or of invading peoples.

Efforts have been made, and not with very great success, to define
the principle which governed the more ancient races with regard to
the possession of land. While unoccupied or unappropriated, it was