[11]
For just take notice what great grants of lands
this reprover of ours endeavours to make by one single word. “Whatever has been
given, or presented, or granted, or sold”—I can bear it; I hear it; what
comes next?—“shall be held as absolute property.” has a tribune
of the people ventured to propose that whatever any one has become possessed of' since the
consulship of Marius and Carbo, he shall hold by the
firmest right that any one can hold private property? Suppose he drove out the former
proprietors by violence? Suppose he became possessed of it in some underhand manner, or only
by some one's permission for a time? By this law then all civil rights, all legitimate
titles, all interdicts of the praetors will be put an end to.
M. Tullius Cicero. The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, literally translated by C. D. Yonge, B. A. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1856.
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