common to every settler. It existed for the use of the whole human
race. The process by which that which was common to all became the
possession of the individual has not been clearly stated. The
earlier settlers were either individuals, families, tribes, or
nations. In some cases they were nomadic, and used the natural
products without taking possession of the land; in others they
occupied districts differently defined. The individual was the unit
of the family, the patriarch of the tribe. The commune was formed
to afford mutual protection. Each sept or tribe in the early
enjoyment of the products of the district it selected was governed
by its own customary laws. The cohesion of these tribes into states
was a slow process; the adoption of a general system of government
still slower. The disintegration of the tribal system, and
dissolution of the commune, was not evolved out of the original
elements of the system itself, but was the effect of conquest; and,
as far as I can discover, the appropriation to individuals of land
which was common to all, was mainly brought about by conquest, and
was guided by impulse rather than regulated by principle.

Mr. Locke thinks that an individual became sole owner of a part of
the common heritage by mixing his labor with the land, in fencing
it, making wells, or building; and he illustrates his position by
the appropriation of wild animals, which are common to all
sportsmen, but become the property of him who captures or kills
them. This acute thinker seems to me to have fallen into a mistake
by confounding land with labor. The improvements were the property
of the man who made them, but it by no means follows that the
expenditure of labor on land gave any greater right than to the
labor itself or its representative.