common right. As setting aside the right of an individual, without his consent, is an injury to him; so setting aside the common claim of mankind, without their consent, is an injury to them: and if an injury cannot be the foundation of a right in one case, it will not be very easy to prove that a like injury may be the foundation of a right in the

other case.

Mr. Locke has applied these principles to explain the introduction of property both in moveable and immoveable goods. And if we go on to examine what he says upon the subject, we shall find that he has mistaken the exercise of a common right, for the exclusive right of property. "He that is nourished," says this writer, "by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself; no body can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask, then, When did they begin to be his? when he digested? or when he eat? or when he boiled? or when he brought them home? or when he picked them up? And it is plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could. That labour put a distinction between them and common: that added something to them, more than nature, the common mother of all, had done; and so they became his private right. And will any one say he had no right to those acorns or apples, he thus appropriated, because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? Was it robbery thus to assume to himself what belonged to all in common?' The answer here is obvious. When those acorns or apples are become a part of his body, we may, if we please, say that they are his: but the right which he then has in them, is the same which he has in his whole son; and is no more to be called a right of property, in the sense that we use this word, when we apply it either to moveable or immoveable goods, than the right which a man has in his leg or his arm, can be called by this name. When he gathered them, or when he boiled them, he had likewise a right in them; but it was just such a right as any one else might have had: a right, as one of the joint commoners, to use as much out of the general stock as he had occasion for. It is by no means necessary either to allow, on the one hand, that he had an exclusive right of property in them; or, on the other hand, to contend that it was robbery, thus to assume to himself what belonged to all in common. There is a middle opinion between these two, which is the opinion already mentioned; that when he gathered them, and was eating them, he exercised his common right of using and enjoying, out of the joint stock, what his occasions called for. Though, therefore, we contend that he could not acquire an exclusive right of property in them, or in any thing else, without the consent of mankind, either express or tacit; yet there is no fear of his being starved whilst he is waiting for this consent; because, in the mean time, the exercise of his common right will sufficiently provide for his subsistence.

per

That it is this common right which a man exercises when he separates a thing for his own use, and claims to use it because he has so separated it, will appear from the limitation which Mr. Locke himself puts upon what he calls property when it is thus acquired. "God has given us all things richly, is the voice of reason, confirmed by in+ Locke ut sup.

Locke's Works, Vol. II. page 181.

spiration. But how far has he given it us? To enjoy. As much as any one can make use of, to any advantage of life, before it spoils, so much he may, by his labour, fix a property in: whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or destroy." But, certainly, to take no more than we want, or no more than we can make use of, before it will be spoiled, is a limitation unknown to property: it belongs only to the exercise of a common right in a joint stock, where no one of the commoners has an exclusive right to keep but all and each of them have a joint right to use.

But Mr. Locke endeavours to take off this limitation, and to show us by what means, upon the same principles, property might be accumulated. "The greatest part of things really useful to the life of man, and such as the necessity of subsisting made the first commoners of the world look after, as it doth the Americans now, are generally things of short duration; such, as if they are not consumed by use, will decay and perish of themselves: gold, silver, and diamonds, are things that fancy or agreement hath put the value on, more than real use, and the necessary support of life. Now of those good things which nature hath provided in common, every one had a right to as much as he could use and property in all he could effect with his labour; all that his industry could extend to, to alter from the state nature had put it in, was his. He that gathered a hundred bushels of acorns, or apples, had thereby a property in them; they were his goods as soon as gathered. He was only to look that he used them before they spoiled, else he took more than his share, and robbed others. And, indeed, it was a foolish thing, as well as dishonest, to hoard up more than he could make use of. If he gave away a part to any body else, so that it perished not uselessly in his possession, then he made use of it. And if he also bartered away plums that would have rotted in a week, for nuts that would last good for his eating a whole year, he did no injury; he wasted not the common stock; he destroyed no part of the portion of goods that belonged to others, so long as nothing perished uselessly in his hands. Again, if he would give his nuts for a piece of metal, pleased with its colour, or exchange his sheep for shells or wool, for a sparkling pebble or a diamond, and keep them by him all his life, he invaded not the rights of others; he might heap up as much of these durable things as he pleased; the exceeding the bounds of his just property not lying in the largeness of his possessions, but the perishing of any thing uselessly in it." But this writer seems here to take for granted the point in question. We contend, and he allows, that the right of him who gathered acorns or plums, extends no farther than to such a quantity of them as he can use before they are spoiled: and in showing how this limitation may be removed, he reasons as if there was no such limitation. How else should he, who had collected more plums than he could use before they were spoiled, or more sheep than he wanted to clothe or to feed himself, barter away the plums for nuts which would keep the year round, or for metal that would keep as long as he lived? The very notion of bartering implies property. Our author, therefore, must suppose the man to have property in what would spoil

Locke ut sup. page 186.

before he can use it; or else he could not suppose him to barter it away: that is, since this contrivance of bartering was introduced, to show how property might be accumulated, or to take off the limitation of appropriating no more than can be used whilst it is good; in order to apply this contrivance, he must suppose the limitation to be taken off already, and the man to have property in plums or sheep, which he does not want, and which he could not use before they would perish in his hands. Indeed, if mankind would consent and submit thus to barter one with another, this consent would be sufficient to take off the limitation, and to introduce a true right of property. For if I knowingly and willingly bargain with another about my own goods, which are in his possession, as if they were his, this act of mine may well be construed as a tacit consent to make them his. And if, in like manner, mankind would bargain with one another about goods which belonged to all in common, as if they were the property of the possessor, they tacitly give up their claim to those goods, and so they become his property. But property, when introduced after this manner, is introduced by consent of parties, and not by the labour which the possessor or occupant has employed in separating the things which he possesses from the common stock.

In Mr. Locke's opinion, property in immoveable goods, such as the earth or soil, is acquired in the same manner and is governed by the same measure as property in moveable goods. "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." But what is this again, but the exercise of a common right, instead of such an exclusive right as property is. For not to insist here upon the limitation of having property only in so much land as we can use, let us try the effects of this right, and see whether they are the same with the effects of property. Suppose then, that the man, after he has for some time tilled the land and cultivated it, was either by age or sickness to become incapable of tilling and cultivating it any longer: if the mixing his labour with it was his whole title to it; when his labour ceases, his title to the land must cease with it; the land can be his no longer than he can cultivate it; and when he is disabled for labouring, he cannot sell or let it to any other person: that is, it was his to labour in, but not his to dispose of as he pleases; and consequently his right could only be a right to use, and not an exclusive right of property. This Mr. Locke might have been sensible of, if he had attended to his own reasoning. "He," says this author, "that in obedience to the command of God to improve the earth to the benefit of life, 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. 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 for could use." If then his title to the land which he occupies, rests upon this principle, that there was enough for others, besides what he had taken for his own use, it is plain that, unless there had enough for others, his title would not have been a good one: and

been

Locke ut sup. page 182.

† Locke ut sup. page 182.

from hence it follows, that all his title is no more than a common right to use what he wants, and not an exclusive right of property; because the right of property does not at all depend upon the convenience of others.

To strengthen this opinion, concerning the introduction of property, and to answer an objection which has been hinted at already, Mr. Locke compares the value of labour with the value of land; in order to show that the property which a man has in his labour, when he has mixed that labour with the land, overbalances the value of the land with which it is so mixed. "Nor is it," says he, "so strange, as perhaps before consideration it may appear, that the property of labour should be able to balance the community of land. For it is labour, indeed, that puts the difference of value on every thing; and let any one consider what the difference is between an acre of land planted with tobacco or sugar, sown with wheat or barley; and an acre of the same land lying in common without any husbandry upon it, and he will find that the improvement of labour makes the far greater part of the value. I think, as he goes on, it will be but a very modest computation to say, that of the products of the earth, useful to the life of man, nine-tenths are the effects of labour: nay, if we will rightly estimate things as they come to our use, and cast up the several expenses about them, what in them is purely owing to nature and what to labour, we shall find that in most of them ninety-nine parts in a hundred are wholly to be put on the account of labour." But we may ask in return, what the value of pure labour is when considered merely as the personal act of the labourer? If neither the timber of his plough, nor the horses that draw it, nor the meat which they eat, nor the manure which he lays upon his land, nor the grain with which he sows it, are his own, what will you rate his labour at? Certainly you rate it much too high, if, upon comparing it with the value of the land, you set it at ninety-nine parts in a hundred, or even at nine parts in ten. But you will suppose all these materials to be his own. I ask, therefore, how he gained property in them? You answer, by his labour; and explain this labour to be only the act of taking them, or separating them from the common stock. Now this labour is of little or no value at all; and consequently you cannot say, in this instance, that the common right of mankind is overbalanced by the labour of the occupant. And if, in one instance, a labour, which is worth nothing when compared with the thing acquired, will give the occupant property, then we can have no reason to imagine that it is the high rate of labour, when compared with the value of land, which so overbalances the common right of mankind to the land as to give the labourer an exclusive right to it. You have only dazzled our eyes with this high account of the value of labour; since you must, in order to give it so high a value, suppose property to have been introduced beforehand by a labour which is of little or no value at all. We may go one step farther. The property of labour, you say, overbalances the community of land: because the value of it, when compared with the value of land, is worth ninety-nine parts in a hundred. Now if, by saying, that the property of labour overbalances the community of land, you only mean that labour is worth much.

Locke ut sup. page 184.

more than uncultivated land, we might allow it. But if you mean, that, because the value of labour is so much greater than the value of land, the labour of one man will overrule or set aside the common claim of all mankind, we must deny it. For suppose the labour of him who cultivates the land, to be worth ninety-nine parts in a hundred of the whole value of the land after it is cultivated, all that could be due to the labourer, upon this supposition, would be no more than the produce of his own labour: the ninety-nine parts which belong to him, would not swallow up the hundredth part which he had originally no exclusive right to. This hundredth part, that is, the land itself, must therefore still remain in common as it was before; he might labour in it again, if he pleased, as one of the joint commoners, but he would have no property in it. Let us try this reasoning in another instance. The landlord, as we call him, or the owner of the soil, after property has been introduced, has an exclusive right to some certain quantity of land; suppose, for instance, to an acre which bears twenty bushels of wheat: the tenant ploughs and sows this land; and besides the mere personal act of labour, he uses his own materials in cultivating the land. Now the labour of the occupier puts the chief value upon the land, and without this labour it would be worth little; for it is to this that we owe all its useful production. For whatever the straw, bran, bread, &c. of that acre of wheat is worth more than the product of an acre of as good land, which lies waste, is all the effects of labour. You see then how much the property of labour overbalances the property of land. But no one will be led to conclude from hence, that because, according to this reckoning in the value of an acre of land, ninety-nine parts in a hundred are owing to the labour of the occupier, the property, which he has in his own labour, will swallow up the property which the landlord has in the soil; and that the land, because he has cultivated it, will for the future become his own. But if the right of property in the soil, which in estimating the value of land, is but one part in a hundred, is not overruled or set aside by the overbalance in the value of labour, I can see no reason why the same overbalance should be supposed to set aside the common claims of mankind to land which was never appropriated. Let the right be what it will, whether it is a right of property or of common claim, if an overbalance in the value of the labour, which is joined to it, will not swallow up one of them, no good reason can be given why it should swallow up

the other.

XI. The most natural claim to a thing seems to arise Making a thing from our having made it: for no one appears to have so produces no propeculiar a right in it as he who has been the immediate perty but by occucause of its existence. This opinion, if it was true in pancy.

the full extent of it, would overturn our general position, that division and occupancy are the only ways of introducing property. But it is to be observed, that when we make a thing we do not produce the materials: these existed before, and all that we do is to give a new shape or form to them. Now the materials out of which a thing is made, are either our own property, or they are the property of some other person; or they are the property of no one, but are in common to

Grot. Lib. II. Cap. III. § III.