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dominion over the whole earth; and the natural right which all men are supposed to have, to draw a subsistence from any part of the earth (the common gift of God to the human family) which is not occupied by another. The right arising from mere discovery as a substantive right in itself, to be asserted, on that ground alone, against the aboriginal occupants of the newly discovered country, is a right which derives no manner of countenance from any writer of respectable authority. Neither [Grotius?], [Pustendorf?], [Vattel?], nor Locke, nor [Montesquise?], nor [Marteus?], seems to have dreamed of any such right as that which the potentates of Europe have pretended to this country, growing out of the mere right of discovery. It is time that writers on natural law, looking at men in a state of nature and consequently anterior to the formation of political society, hold that each individual has a right to occupy so much of the earth only as is necessary to his own subsistence, and consequently has no right to exclude any other individual from a similar occupancy for the same purpose. But none of them has held that a nation, on the discovery of a country new to them, has a right, on the ground of that discovery, to eject the ancient inhabitants, though they be heathens and hunters. Note. Here follows two broken lines, which are marked out.