[Second Treatise of Government by John Locke]@TWC D-Link book
Second Treatise of Government

CHAPTER
7/16

As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property.

He by his labour does, as it were, inclose it from the common.

Nor will it invalidate his right, to say every body else has an equal title to it; and therefore he cannot appropriate, he cannot inclose, without the consent of all his fellow-commoners, all mankind.

God, when he gave the world in common to all mankind, commanded man also to labour, and the penury of his condition required it of him.
God and his reason commanded him to subdue the earth, i.e.improve it for the benefit of life, and therein lay out something upon it that was his own, his labour.

He that in obedience to this command of God, subdued, tilled and sowed any part of it, thereby annexed to it something that was his property, which another had no title to, nor could without injury take from him.
Sect.33.Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as good left; and more than the yet unprovided could use.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books