Having considered at large the question of the person entitled to the use of the means of benefit or pleasure, it is time that we proceed to the second question, of the person in whose hands the preservation and distribution of any of these means will be most justly and beneficially vested. An interval must inevitably occur between the production of any commodity and its consumption. Those things which are necessary for the accommodation of man in society cannot be obtained without the labour of man. When fit for his use, they do not admit of being left at random, but require that some care and vigilance should be exerted to preserve them, for the period of actual consumption. They will not, in the first instance, fall into the possession of each individual, in the precise proportion necessary for his consumption. Who then is to be the factor or warehouseman that is to watch over their preservation, and preside at their distribution?
This is strictly speaking the question of property. We do not call the person who accidentally takes his dinner at my table the proprietor of what he eats, though it is he, in the direct and obvious sense, who receives the benefit of it. Property implies some permanence of external possession, and includes in it the idea of a possible competitor.
Of property there are three degrees.
The first and simplest degree is that of my permanent right in those things the use of which being attributed to me, a greater sum of benefit or pleasure will result than could have arisen from their being otherwise appropriated. It is of no consequence, in this case, how I came into possession of them, the only necessary conditions being their superior usefulness to me, and that my title to them is such as is generally acquiesced in by the community in which I live. Every man is unjust who conducts himself in such a manner respecting these things as to infringe, in any degree, upon my power of using them, at the time when the using them will be of real importance to me.