The distribution of the materials of this nourishment, is the constitution of _mine_, and _thine_, and _his_; that is to say, in one word _propriety_; and belongeth in all kinds of commonwealth to the sovereign power. For where there is no commonwealth, there is, as hath been already shown, a perpetual war of every man against his neighbour; and therefore every thing is his that getteth it, and keepeth it by force; which is neither _propriety_, nor _community_; but _uncertainty_. Which is so evident, that even Cicero, a passionate defender of liberty, in a public pleading, attributeth all propriety to the law civil. _Let the civil law_, saith he, _be once abandoned, or but negligently guarded, not to say oppressed, and there is nothing, that any man can be sure to receive from his ancestor, or leave to his children_. And again; _Take away the civil law, and no man knows what is his own, and what another man’s_. Seeing therefore the introduction of _propriety_ is an effect of commonwealth, which can do nothing but by the person that represents it, it is the act only of the sovereign; and consisteth in the laws, which none can make that have not the sovereign power. And this they well knew of old, who called that Νόμος, that is to say, _distribution_, which we call law; and defined justice, by _distributing_ to every man _his own_. [Sidenote: All private estates of land proceed originally from the arbitrary distribution of the sovereign.] In this distribution, the first law, is for division of the land itself: wherein the sovereign assigneth to every man a portion, according as he, and not according as any subject, or any number of them, shall judge agreeable to equity, and the common good. The children of Israel, were a commonwealth in the wilderness; but wanted the commodities of the earth, till they were masters of the Land of Promise; which afterward was divided amongst them, not by their own discretion, but by the discretion of Eleazar the Priest, and Joshua their General, who, when there were twelve tribes, making them thirteen by subdivision of the tribe of Joseph, made nevertheless but twelve portions of the land; and ordained for the tribe of Levi no land; but assigned them the tenth part of the whole fruits; which division was therefore arbitrary. And though a people coming into possession of a land by war, do not always exterminate the ancient inhabitants, as did the Jews, but leave to many, or most, or all of them their estates; yet it is manifest they hold them afterwards, as of the victors’ distribution; as the people of England held all theirs of William the Conqueror. [Sidenote: Propriety of subject excludes not the dominion of the sovereign, but only of another subject.]