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that even Cicero, a passionate defender of liberty, in a public pleading, attributeth all propriety to the law civil. "Let the civil law," saith he, "be once abandoned, or but negligently guarded, not to say oppressed, and there is nothing, that any man can be sure to receive from his ancestor, or leave to his children." And again; "Take away the civil law, and no man knows what is his own, and what another man's." Seeing therefore the introduction of "propriety" is an effect of commonwealth, which can do nothing but by the person that represents it, it is the act only of the sovereign; and consisteth in the laws, which none can make that have not the sovereign power. And this they well knew of old, who called that Νόμος, that is to say, "distribution," which we call law; and defined justice, by "distributing" to every man "his own."

In this distribution, the first law, is for division of the land itself wherein the sovereign assigneth to every man a portion, according as he, and not according as any subject, or any number of them, shall judge agreeable to equity, and the common good. The children of Israel, were a commonwealth in the wilderness; but wanted the commodities of the earth, till they were masters of the Land of Promise; which afterwards was divided amongst them, not by their own discretion, but by the discretion of Eleazar the Priest, and Joshua their General, who, when there were twelve tribes, making them thirteen by subdivision of the tribe of Joseph, made nevertheless but twelve portions of the land; and ordained for the tribe of Levi no land; but assigned them the tenth part of the whole fruits; which division was therefore arbitrary. And though a people coming into possession of a land by war, do not always exterminate the ancient inhabitants, as did the Jews, but leave to many, or most, or all of them their estates; yet it is manifest they hold them afterwards, as of