The property which is called copyright or patent is not strictly property. It consists in a power to do certain acts, as to produce and sell a certain work or print or machine ; and the power or faculty is made effective by the duty im posed on everybody else of abstaining from making and selling such things. The things that are produced by virtue of such a power are objects of property, but the copyright or patent right is merely a power or faculty which is given exclusively to a determinate person or persons for a determinate time.
The notion of property is universal, though the particular rules as to property vary in different countries. Society rests on two things chiefly, marriage and the notion of property. The notion of mar riage varies in different countries. but there is perhaps no set of among whom it does not exist in some form. It is the foundation of the notion of a family, an essential element of a State. In fact the notion of marriage implies a species of property, which consists in the exclusive dominion which a man thereby obtains over a woman's person, and over the children which are the fruit of their union. A community of women is a thing as impossible as a community of property, to which the mass of mankind have an invincible repugnance founded on the natural desire of man to appropriate things to his own use. Fixed rules then for the acquisition and maintenance of property are essential to the existence of society and of government : without such rules there would be anarchy. Those who are suffering from abject poverty, and those who wish to enjoy without labour, may not recognise the necessity of these fixed rules : they have often a vague notion that they would gain some thing by the destruction of all existing appropriations of the wealth of society. But all or nearly all who have any pro perty cannot fail to see that they would certainly lose something by such a change and might gain nothing. Those who
see still more clearly into the nature of human society, know that there can be no increase of the national wealth, of which all industrious people receive a share, if those who labour are not secured in the enjoyment of that which they obtain by their labour. The enor mous disparities which exist in most countries between the wealth of thou "rho have more than they can use and the pittance of the great mass who live by their daily toil, often make even reflecting people for a moment imagine that things might be better arranged. But careful consideration finally establishes a general conviction that hard and stern as the laws are which punish all infringement of the rights of property, they are absolutely essential to the existence and well-being of society. The degree of the penalties and punishments which are inflicted on those who break the rules which guard each man's property, may often be ex cessive, and property may be better main tained by moderate than by excessive punishment. But all experience and all sound reason combine to prove that the maintenance of the most unbounded wealth that an individual can acquire is us much the interest of every member of society as the maintenance to the poorest man of his daily earnings. No limits can consistently with the general interest be placed on a man's power to acquire property by the employment of his capital, his industry. and his skill. Some limits may be properly put, but it is very diffi cult to say what they should be, on his power of giving that which he has ac quired, and on his power of making dis positions of it which shall extend beyond his own life. [PRIMOGENITURE.]