' It was
winter, and some days after the same fellow sent to Mr. _Mason_ to
borrow his bellows, but Mr. _Mason_ said to his pupil, 'I am loth to
lend my bellows out of my chamber, but if thy tutor would come and
blow the fire in my chamber, he shall as long as he will.'
In the next page is a note on the _Nature of Property_, in the
perspicuous style of a master-mind:
"There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination, and
engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property; or that
sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over
the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of
any other individual in the universe. And yet there are very few
that will give themselves the trouble to consider the original and
foundation of this right. Pleased as we are with the possession, we
seem afraid to look back to the means by which it was acquired, as
if fearful of some defect in our title; or at best we rest satisfied
with the decision of the laws in our favour, without examining the
reason and authority upon which those laws have been built. We think
it enough that our title is derived by the grant of the former
proprietor, by descent from our ancestors, or by the last will and
testament of the dying owner; not caring to reflect that (accurately
and strictly speaking) there is no foundation in nature, or in
natural law, why a set of words upon parchment should convey the
dominion of land; why the son should have a right to exclude his
fellow creature from a determinate spot of ground, because his
father had so done before him; or why the occupier of a particular
field, or of a jewel, when lying on his death bed, and no longer
able to maintain possession, should be entitled to tell the rest
of the world which of them should enjoy it after him.
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