ultimately and in the last instance (it matters not how many intermediate links are involved) to rest on the natural right of possession. But what a distance there is, in most cases, between the title-deeds, that belong to our civil life, and this natural right — their original source!

Indeed their connection with the latter is generally either very difficult, or else impossible, to prove. What we hold is ours by inheritance, by marriage, by success in the lottery; or if in no way of this kind, still it is not gained by our own work, with the sweat of the brow, but rather by shrewdness and bright ideas (e.g., in the field of speculation), yes, and sometimes even by our very stupidity, which, through a conjunction of circumstances, is crowned and glorified by the Deus eventus. It is only in a very