The ground was in common and no part of it was the permanent property of any man in particular; yet whoever was in occupation of any determined spot of it, for rest, for shade or the like, acquired for the time a sort of ownership, from which it would have been unjust and contrary to the law of nature to have driven him by force; but the instant that he quitted the use or occupation of it another might seize it without injustice.
— SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, Commentaries, Book II., Chap. I, p. 3.
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