all Europe, Asia, and Northern Africa, are traceable, more or less remotely, to a source equally cruel and unjust! Thus there is an end pretty much to all honesty, as to the possessions of the civilized world! Surely, the absurdity of this conclusion is sufficient to invalidate the soundness of the doctrine from which it arises. Now we are far from affirming that _wrong_--which is the negative of _right_--can ever become, by circumstances or any thing else, otherwise than it is, that is, _wrong_, namely, not _right_. But the _state_ or _thing_ which, under one set of circumstances, is _wrong_, may, under other circumstances, become _right_. It is not the _wrong_ in itself which, in such a case, changes to right; but, by a change of circumstances, the _wrong_ no longer inheres, but the right inheres in that which formerly involved the wrong; and therefore the state or thing which was before wrong, now becomes _right_. Hence, although it be admitted that the land-titles of the civilized world were originally founded in _wrong_, and therefore were unjust titles, it may not follow that those who now hold them, do so by an unjust title, because the original title was unjust. The facts may be thus stated in regard to the most of them. The titles were originally acquired by _wrong_; in many instances, _cruel wrong_! The authors of these wrongs were usually the heads of government, who, in their circumstances, were beyond control. _They_ did the wrong. The ultimate results of their doings, by the lapse of time with its perpetual changes, upset all the existing relations of society, merged the descendants of the actors and sufferers in these wrongs into the mass of society, beyond the power of just discrimination, and introduced an altogether new state of things. Under these circumstances, the original wrong was ultimately placed beyond all remedy. The restoration of the lands to the original and lawful owners became an impossibility. To attempt such a work could only be followed by the grossest injustice to all the parties concerned. In this state of things, the question of title--Who shall own these lands? becomes an original question. And in this state of the case, the simple fact of present _possession_--there being no one to claim antecedent possession--according to the fundamental belief of all mankind, confers moral title, and should therefore be made legal. Hence the title is just, because the idea of the _right_ in itself--that which is good--now inheres in the man who holds property under such circumstances. The argument authorizes this prescriptive principle in political science: _That when the original_ _wrong cannot be remedied, without inflicting greater injury_, ON ALL THE PARTIES CONCERNED, _than to permit the existing state of things to remain, in this state of the case, the existing state of things is in itself_ RIGHT, _and should be permitted to remain_.