Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Second Treatise of Government by John Locke
page 27 of 157 (17%)
than those which are yielded by an acre of land of an equal richness
lying waste in common. And therefore he that incloses land, and has a
greater plenty of the conveniencies of life from ten acres, than he could
have from an hundred left to nature, may truly be said to give ninety
acres to mankind: for his labour now supplies him with provisions out of
ten acres, which were but the product of an hundred lying in common. I
have here rated the improved land very low, in making its product but as
ten to one, when it is much nearer an hundred to one: for I ask, whether
in the wild woods and uncultivated waste of America, left to nature,
without any improvement, tillage or husbandry, a thousand acres yield the
needy and wretched inhabitants as many conveniencies of life, as ten
acres of equally fertile land do in Devonshire, where they are well
cultivated? Before the appropriation of land, he who gathered as much
of the wild fruit, killed, caught, or tamed, as many of the beasts, as he
could; he that so imployed his pains about any of the spontaneous
products of nature, as any way to alter them from the state which nature
put them in, by placing any of his labour on them, did thereby acquire a
propriety in them: but if they perished, in his possession, without their
due use; if the fruits rotted, or the venison putrified, before he could
spend it, he offended against the common law of nature, and was liable to
be punished; he invaded his neighbour's share, for he had no right,
farther than his use called for any of them, and they might serve to
afford him conveniencies of life.
Sec. 38. The same measures governed the possession of land too:
whatsoever he tilled and reaped, laid up and made use of, before it
spoiled, that was his peculiar right; whatsoever he enclosed, and could
feed, and make use of, the cattle and product was also his. But if
either the grass of his enclosure rotted on the ground, or the fruit of
his planting perished without gathering, and laying up, this part of the
earth, notwithstanding his enclosure, was still to be looked on as waste,
DigitalOcean Referral Badge