The number of places being of necessity equal at all times to that of the spectators, no spectator can occupy two places, nor can any actor play several parts; 3.

Whenever a spectator comes in or goes out, the places of all contract or enlarge correspondingly: for, says Reid, "THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY IS NOT INNATE, BUT ACQUIRED;" consequently, it is not absolute; consequently, the occupancy on which it is based, being a conditional fact, cannot endow this right with a stability which it does not possess itself.

This seems to have been the thought of the Edinburgh professor when he added:-- "A right to life implies a right to the necessary means of life; and that justice, which forbids the taking away the life of an innocent man, forbids no less the taking from him the necessary means of life.

He has the same right to defend the one as the other.

To hinder another man's innocent labor, or to deprive him of the fruit of it, is an injustice of the same kind, and has the same effect as to put him in fetters or in prison, and is equally a just object of resentment." Thus the chief of the Scotch school, without considering at all the inequality of skill or labor, posits a priori the equality of the means of labor, abandoning thereafter to each laborer the care of his own person, after the eternal axiom: WHOSO DOES WELL, SHALL FARE WELL.
The philosopher Reid is lacking, not in knowledge of the principle, but in courage to pursue it to its ultimate.