^V I trines. The characteristically modern traits of ^r j the doctrine of natural rights are of English deri-
jvation. This is peculiarly true as regards the Inatural right of ownership. The material, historical basis of this English right of ownership, considered as a habit of thought, is given by the modern economic factors of handicraft and trade, in contrast with the mediceval institutions of status and prowess. England, as contrasted with the Continent, during modern times rapidly substituted the occupation of the merchant and the ubiquitous free artisan as the tone-giving factors of her everyday life, in place of the prince, the soldier, and the priest. With this change in the dominant interests of everyday life came a corresponding change in the discipline given by the habits of everyday life, which shows itself in the growth of a new range of ideas as to the meaning of human life and a new ground of finality for human institutions. New axioms of right and truth supplant the old as new habits of thought supersede the old.
This process of substitution, as a struggle between rival concepts of finality in political theory, reached a dramatic climax in the revolution of iJL ^f^'i'lGSS. As a battle of axioms the transition comes ' rt^€' to a head in the controversy between John Locke
and Sir Robert FUmer. Filmer was the last effective spokesman of the mediaeval axiom of devolution. Locke's tracing of natural rights, the right of property among the rest, back to the workmanlike performance of the Creator, marks the form in which, at the point of transition, the modern view pays its respects to the superseded axiom of devohition and takes leave of it.
The scope given to the right of ownership in later modern times is an outgrowth of the exigencies of mercantile traffic, of the prevalence of