ardians; a sex created to
please and obey was never supposed to have attained the age of reason
and experience. Such, at least, was the stern and haughty spirit of
the ancient law, which had been insensibly mollified before the time of
Justinian.

[Footnote 136: See the article of guardians and wards in the Institutes,
(l. i. tit. xiii.--xxvi.,) the Pandects, (l. xxvi. xxvii.,) and the
Code, (l. v. tit. xxviii.--lxx.)]

[Footnote 1361: Gibbon accuses the civilians of having "rashly fixed
the age of puberty at twelve or fourteen years." It was not so;
before Justinian, no law existed on this subject. Ulpian relates the
discussions which took place on this point among the different sects
of civilians. See the Institutes, l. i. tit. 22, and the fragments of
Ulpian. Nor was the curatorship obligatory for all minors.--W.]

II. The original right of property can only be justified by the accident
or merit of prior occupancy; and on this foundation it is wisely
established by the philosophy of the civilians. [137] The savage who
hollows a tree, inserts a sharp stone into a wooden handle, or applies
a string to an elastic branch, becomes in a state of nature the just
proprietor of the canoe, the bow, or the hatchet. The materials
were common to all, the new form, the produce of his time and simple
industry, belongs solely to himself. His hungry brethren cannot, without
a sense of their own injustice, extort from the hunter the game of the
forest overtaken or slain by his personal strength and dexterity. If his
provident care preserves and multiplies the tame animals, whose nature
is tractable to the arts of education, he acquires a perpetual title
to the use and service of their numerous progeny, which derives its
existence from him alone. If he encloses and cultivates a field for
their sustenance and his own, a barren waste is converted into a fertile
soil; the seed, the manure, the labor, create a new value, and the
rewards of harvest are painfully earned by the fatigues of the revolving
year. In the successive states of society, the hunter, the shepherd, the
husbandman, may defend their possessions by two reasons which forcibly
appeal to the feelings of the human mind: that whatever they enjoy is
the fruit of their own industry; and that every man who envies their
felicity, may purchase similar acquisitions by the exercise of similar
diligence. Such, in truth, may be the freedom and plenty of a small
colony cast on a fruit