The learned men tell us that, at the death of the occupant, his own family, _his own children_, being naturally the first who would know that he was dead, _were naturally the first who would take possession after his death_. Therefore, the sons of the deceased tenant always became the first occupants of the vacant land which had been left vacant by the death of their father. This succession of the sons to the fathers becoming universal, was finally recognized by the law of the tribe; and in the course of time it was recognized further in the law which allowed the tenant to make a will and to say who should take his property after his death. Thus by slow and almost imperceptible degrees, the tribe recognized, first, the right of the man who had made a farm to hold it as long as he lived; second, the right of his children to follow in his footsteps and to receive the benefit of that which their father had created by his labor; third, and last, came the law of wills and testaments which allowed the tribesman to say what should go with his property after his death. If the occupant died without heirs and without having made a will, the land went back to the tribe, or the state, to be disposed of as public property. This principle is recognized to this day in the doctrine of escheats. Property in land differs in nowise from property in horses and cows. The law of property is the same naturally in real estate as in personal estate, and I can conceive of no revenue in any community which is so just as that which lays itself with an equal burden upon all kinds of property in proportion to the amount thereof. In the beginning, one tribesman, like Abraham or Lot, might have his cattle browsing upon a thousand hills, while another tribesman might have made a little farm in some secluded valley, or upon some thirsty, rocky mountain-side where vines were planted, or where olive trees bore their fruit to the industrious citizen who had year in and year out watched and tended their growth. Would there be any justice in compelling those little farmers to supply the revenue for the common purpose of the tribe, and not compel a contribution _pro rata_ from the men who owned “exceeding many flocks and herds”? The trouble about these doctrinaires is that they start at the present day and reason backward, while I start at the fountain head and reason down. I take things as history shows them to have been; they take things as they think they ought to have been.