consists in the encouragement given to industry and labour.

Perhaps too, private humanity towards the possessor concurs, in
this instance, with the other motives, and engages us to leave
with him what he has acquired by his sweat and labour; and what
he has flattered himself in the constant enjoyment of. For though
private humanity can, by no means, be the origin of justice;
since the latter virtue so often contradicts the former; yet when
the rule of separate and constant possession is once formed by
the indispensable necessities of society, private humanity, and
an aversion to the doing a hardship to another, may, in a
particular instance, give rise to a particular rule of property.

I am much inclined to think, that the right succession or
inheritance much depends on those connexions of the imagination,
and that the relation to a former proprietor begetting a relation
to the object, is the cause why the property is transferred to a
man after the death of his kinsman. It is true; industry is more
encouraged by the transference of possession to children or near
relations: but this consideration will only have place in a
cultivated society; whereas the right of succession is regarded
even among the greatest Barbarians.

Acquisition of property by accession can be explained no way but
by having recourse to the relations and connexions of the
imaginations.

The property of rivers, by the laws of most nations, and by the
natural turn of our thoughts, is attributed to the proprietors of
their banks, excepting such vast rivers as the Rhine or the