For this "labor" being the unquestionable property of the laborer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, it hath by this labor something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labor with it, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. The "labor" of his body and the "work" of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a "property" in his own "person." This nobody has any right to but himself. The fruit or venison which nourishes the wild Indian, who knows no enclosure, and is still a tenant in common, must be his, and so hisi.e., a part of him, that another can no longer have any right to it before it can do him any good for the support of his life. And though all the fruits it naturally produces, and beasts it feeds, belong to mankind in common, as they are produced by the spontaneous hand of Nature, and nobody has originally a private dominion exclusive of the rest of mankind in any of them, as they are thus in their natural state, yet being given for the use of men, there must of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other before they can be of any use, or at all beneficial, to any particular men. The earth and all that is therein is given to men for the support and comfort of their being. God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life and convenience. To understand political power aright, and derive it from its original, we must consider what estate all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man.Ī state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction, is reciprocal, no one having more than another, there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of Nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another, without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty. The colonists readily accepted Locke's theory, but it would be a later generation of provincials who would apply this revolutionary concept. In his second treatise, the one excerpted here, he promulgated the idea that government rests in the will of the people, thus those people have the right to challenge and change their rulers and government. The philosopher John Locke (1632≡704), a supporter of the Glorious Revolution that deposed King James II, enthroned William and Mary, and established the supremacy of Parliament, attacked the divine right of kings in his first treatise on civil government. The Second Treatise on Civil Government (1689), John Locke The Second Treatise on Civil Government (1689), John Locke
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