§. 31. But the chief matter of property being now not the fruits of the earth
and the beasts that subsist on it, but the earth itself, as that which takes in
and carries with it all the rest, I think it is plain that property in that too
is acquired as the former. 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.
