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monopoly is guarded by positive laws and artificial reason. The active,
insatiate principle of self-love can alone supply the arts of life and
the wages of industry; and as soon as civil government and exclusive
property have been introduced, they become necessary to the existence
of the human race. Except in the singular institutions of Sparta, the
wisest legislators have disapproved an agrarian law as a false and
dangerous innovation. Among the Romans, the enormous disproportion of
wealth surmounted the ideal restraints of a doubtful tradition, and an
obsolete statute; a tradition that the poorest follower of Romulus had
been endowed with the perpetual inheritance of two _jugera_; a statute
which confined the richest citizen to the measure of five hundred
jugera, or three hundred and twelve acres of land. The original
territory of Rome consisted only of some miles of wood and meadow along
the banks of the Tyber; and domestic exchange could add nothing to the
national stock. But the goods of an alien or enemy were lawfully exposed
to the first hostile occupier; the city was enriched by the profitable
trade of war; and the blood of her sons was the only price that was paid
for the Volscian sheep, the slaves of Briton, or the gems and gold of
Asiatic kingdoms. In the language of ancient jurisprudence, which was
corrupted and forgotten before the age of Justinian, these spoils were
distinguished by the name of _manceps_ or _mancipium_, taken with
the hand; and whenever they were sold or _emancipated_, the purchaser
required some assurance that they had been the property of an enemy,
and not of a fellow-citizen. A citizen could only forfeit his rights by
apparent dereliction, and such dereliction of a valuable interest
could not easily be presumed. Yet, according to the Twelve Tables, a
prescription of one year for movables, and of two years for immovables,
abolished the claim of the ancient master, if the actual possessor had
acquired them by a fair transaction from the person whom he believed
to be the lawful proprietor. Such conscientious injustice, without any
mixture of fraud or force could seldom injure the members of a small
republic; but the various periods of three, of ten, or of twenty years,
determined by Justinian, are more suitable to the latitude of a great
empire. It is only in the term of prescription that the distinction of
real and personal fortune has been remarked by the civilians; and
their general id