Property has been given several origins: _occupation_, _law_, _work_. According to some, property has for its fundamental principle the _right of the first occupant_. It is said that man has the right of appropriating a thing not in possession of some one else; the same as at the theatre, the spectator who comes first has the right to take the best place. (Cicero.) So be it; but at the theatre I occupy only the place occupied by my own body; I have not the right to appropriate the whole theatre, or even the pit. It is the same with the right of the first occupant. I have certainly a right to the place my own body would occupy, but no further: for where would my right then stop? "Will the setting one's foot," says J. J. Rousseau, "on a piece of common ground be sufficient to declare one's self at once the master of it? When Nunez Balboa took on landing possession of the Southern Sea, and of the whole of Southern America in the name of the Crown of Castile, was that enough to exclude from it all the princes of the world? At that rate the Catholic king had but to take all at once possession in his study of the whole universe, relying upon subsequently striking off from his empire what before was in possession of the other princes." (Contrat social, liv. 1er, Ch. ix.) =The law.=--If occupation of itself alone is insufficient in founding the right of property, will it not become legitimate by adding to it _convention_--that is to say, the _law_? Property, we have seen, is necessary; but if every one is free to appropriate to himself what he needs, it becomes anarchy; it is, as Hobbes said, "the war of all against all." It is necessary that the law should fix the property of each in the interest of all. Property, under this new hypothesis, would then mean the part which public authority has fixed or recognized, whether we admit a primitive division made by a magistrate, or a primitive occupation more or less due to chance, but consecrated by law. Certainly, the reason of social utility plays a great part in the establishment and consecration of property; and it would be absurd not to take this consideration into account. Certainly, even if property were but a fact consecrated by time, by necessity, and by law, it would already by that alone have a very great authority; but we believe that that is not saying enough. Property is not only a _consecrated fact_, it is also a _right_. It finds in the law its _guaranty_, but not its _foundation_. The true principle of property is _work_; and property becomes blended with liberty itself: "_liberty_ and _property_," say the English.