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, enclose it
from the common. Nor will it invalidate his right to say everybody
else has an equal title to it, and therefore he cannot appropriate, he
cannot enclose, 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.
32. 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. So that,
in effect, there was never the less left for others because of his
enclosure for himself.
Pages:
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39