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able, or without intending, to pay; to extort from the needy, or those in our power, who cannot resist, and have a right to protection from the hand that oppresses them; to serve the extortioner, or give countenance to the fraudulent and unjust; to help the thief in stealing, or to receive stolen goods; to take undue interest for money lent; to take unfair advantage of private wants, or augment public necessities in a crisis of difficulty; to bribe men to do that, which equity forbids, or demands to be done without a price; to seek gain by pandering to the vices of the wicked; to reduce ourselves and families to want by idleness, waste, or negligence; to commit any of these sins is to break the commandment, and will bring the soul into danger from the wrath of an offended God, even if the character and fortune should escape the indignation of man.

The rights of property seem to be inseparable from society, and to become more extensive in proportion as the social compact is more fully entered into. Two men

cannot live together in the rudest state of savage nature, without each having something that he will call his; and though the spoils of the chase and spontaneous fruits of the forest are their sole means of sustenance, yet each will assert a separate claim to what his dexterity has won, and feel aggrieved if the other should deprive him of what he has gathered for himself. It is true that the land may be their common hunting-field: the birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea, floating in their native elements, belong to neither, and may be the prey of one or the other: but so soon as they are compassed about with a net, or caught with the snare of the fowler, he who has bestowed his labour on their capture will maintain and have a right to their possession, and to dispose of them as he may think fit. Hence in the very earliest ages of the world symptoms of property appear. At the creation God gave man dominion over the fish, and fowl, and every living thing, and gave him

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every herb, and every tree bearing fruit.'1 At the fall the woman took the forbidden fruit, and gave it to her husband. Their son Abel was a keeper of sheep; and that flock, of which he offered the firstlings to the Lord, must have been his. The early patriarchs possessed oxen, and camels, and asses. In the dry and heated plains of Canaan wells were an early object of solicitude, and so of exclusive right: "Isaac's servants digged in the valley, and the herdmen of Gerar did strive with Isaac's herdmen, saying, The water is ours." 2 As population increased, and agriculture occupied attention, estates fell into the hands of individuals, and lands were divided with more precision, than in the days of Lot, when Abraham said, “If thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the right." As civilisation advanced, as the wants of men became more numerous, and the division of la

1 Gen. i. 2 Gen. xxvi. 20.

3 Gen. xiii. 9.

bour more complete, the distinction between what is a man's own, and what is another's, became more nicely defined, and more extensively applicable, until now there are few things in which all have a common right, the very elements are made to belong to some, who bestow labour on the provision of them, and property is fenced about with protections indispensable, because the methods of assailing it are so numerous. The violence of the open robber must be repressed, the cunning of the fraudulent must be met with ingenuity equal to his own, the devices of extortion and oppression must be counteracted by legal intricacies and moral refinements, until the artificial machinery almost hides the divine origin of the principle, and we forget that honesty is a duty we owe to nature and to God.

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Stealing," says Chrysostom, "is one of the effects of idleness." Every man must get a living: and if he does not by honest industry, he must, in many cases, by dishonesty and theft. Therefore the

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Apostle, when he says, "Let him that stole, steal no more," adds, "but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth." St. Paul himself fulfilled the precept; amid the cares of his ministry maintaining himself by a trade, that he might be a burthen to none. To live upon charity, unless forced by relentless necessity, is a species of dishonesty. To obtain alms by false pretences is direct and palpable fraud. To obtain them by any means, is to consume a portion of that bounty, which is not enough to supply the wants of the truly indigent for the poor shall never cease out of the land and to consume that portion, if you are not really in need of it -in a word, if you can do without it is to get what in truth belongs to those who cannot help themselves. Some old laws obliged a man to give account of his earnings, that, if he did not honestly ob

1 Ephes. iv. 28.