[210] This is the case even, as I say, when laws are altered lawfully: still more after any exceptional crisis at which there has occurred a rupture of political order: for then the legal claims arising out of the new order which is thus rooted in disorder conflict with those previously established in a manner which admits of no theoretical solution: it can only be settled by a rough practical compromise. See next chapter, § 3. [211] Book i. chap. vi. § 2. [212] It is characteristic of an unprogressive society that in it these two points of view are indistinguishable; the Jural Ideal absolutely coincides with the Customary, and social perfection is imagined to consist in the perfect observance of a traditional system of rules. [213] This question, how far the conception of Freedom involves unlimited right to limit Freedom by free contract, will meet us again in the next chapter, when we consider the general duty of obedience to Law. [214] It has often been urged as a justification for expropriating savages from the land of new colonies that tribes of hunters have really no moral right to property in the soil over which they hunt. [215] This is the argument used by optimistic political economists such as Bastiat. [216] The further consideration of Political Freedom, with which we shall be occupied in the next chapter, will afford additional illustrations of the difficulties involved in the notion. [217] If the view given in the text be sound, it illustrates very strikingly the difference between natural instincts and moral intuitions. For the impulse to requite a service is, on its emotional side, quite different from that which prompts us to claim the fruits of our labour, or “a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work.” Still, our apprehension of the _duty_ of Gratitude seems capable of being subsumed under the more general intuition ‘that desert ought to be requited.’ [218] It certainly requires a considerable strain to bring the ‘right of First Discovery’ under the notion of ‘right to the produce of one’s labour.’ Hence Locke and others have found it necessary to suppose, as the ultimate justification of the former right, ‘a tacit consent’ of mankind in general that all things previously unappropriated shall belong to the first appropriator. But this must be admitted to be a rather desperate device of ethico-political construction: on account of the fatal facility with which it may be used to justify almost any arbitrariness in positive law.