man value ten thousand, or an hundred thousand acres of excellent land,
ready cultivated, and well stocked too with cattle, in the middle of the
inland parts of America, where he had no hopes of commerce with other
parts of the world, to draw money to him by the sale of the product? It
would not be worth the enclosing, and we should see him give up again to
the wild common of nature, whatever was more than would supply the
conveniencies of life to be had there for him and his family.
Sec. 49. Thus in the beginning all the world was America, and more so
than that is now; for no such thing as money was any where known. Find
out something that hath the use and value of money amongst his
neighbours, you shall see the same man will begin presently to enlarge
his possessions.
Sec. 50. But since gold and silver, being little useful to the life
of man in proportion to food, raiment, and carriage, has its value only
from the consent of men, whereof labour yet makes, in great part, the
measure, it is plain, that men have agreed to a disproportionate and
unequal possession of the earth, they having, by a tacit and voluntary
consent, found out, a way how a man may fairly possess more land than he
himself can use the product of, by receiving in exchange for the overplus
gold and silver, which may be hoarded up without injury to any one; these
metals not spoiling or decaying in the hands of the possessor. This
partage of things in an inequality of private possessions, men have made
practicable out of the bounds of society, and without compact, only by
putting a value on gold and silver, and tacitly agreeing in the use of
money: for in governments, the laws regulate the right of property, and
the possession of land is determined by positive constitutions.
Sec. 51. And thus, I think, it is very easy to conceive, without any
difficulty, how labour could at first begin a title of property in the
common things of nature, and how the spending it upon our uses bounded
it. So that there could then be no reason of quarrelling about title,