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 a robbery thus to assume to himself
what belonged to all in common? If such a consent as that was
necessary, man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given
him. We see in commons, which remain so by compact, that it is the
taking any part of what is common, and removing it out of the state
Nature leaves it in, which begins the property, without which the
common is of no use. And the taking of this or that part does not
depend on the express consent of all the commoners. Thus, the grass my
horse has bit, the turfs my servant has cut, and the ore I have digged
in any place, where I have a right to them in common with others,
become my property without the assignation or consent of anybody.
The labour that was mine, removing them out of that common state
they were in, hath fixed my property in them.
28. By making an explicit consent of every commoner necessary to any
one's appropriating to himself any part of what is given in common.
Children or servants could not cut the meat which their father or
master had provided for them in common without assigning to every
one his peculiar part.
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