community of interest; this course of united feeling and action being fraught with most beneficial consequences.

But, fraught as this union of labour and of interest is with convenience and advantage, it is fraught also with important and unseverable obligations; for, by it, a solemn engagement of working one for another has been entered into, the effect of which engagement is, that the proceeds of this working, or the property acquired by it, are to be accounted for, by each acquirer, to the party or parties FOR whom it was acquired; one portion only being held for the enjoyment of him by whose labour it was acquired. So that the producer of a commodity under that compact which the constitution of human society necessarily involves, has not an absolute right of appropriation of the matter produced by himself; he has only an absolute right over that part or fraction of it which is applicable to his own consumption and which, from the first, was reserved by him for that purpose. It is this peculiar characteristic, which, lying at the root of all social construction, imparting vitality to all its elements, and being inherent in the constitution of all property, is designed for operating most importantly on the condition and interests of man. It is a characteristic, the discovery of which, though very nearly approached by some writers who have undertaken to treat minutely as well as systematically on the elementary principles involved in the social organisation of man, has not been attained by them.

As the writers to whom I allude, are held deservedly in high estimation, it will be interesting and important to show the extent to which their concurrence goes in the reasoning which I have employed, and in the doctrine which I have educed by it. This being shown, it will be an easy course for the reader to compare the premises laid down by these writers with the premises laid down by me, and when these premises

or foundations shall have been found to possess an analogous constitution, then to advance from them onwards, through inductions, to the great general conclusion which I have to establish. The writer whose evidence I will adduce first, in corroboration of that which I have advanced, is Locke. This ingenious and profound writer, in his treatise on civil government, has reasoned minutely on the elementary principles applicable to the appropriation by man of the matter which the world contains, which appropriation he denominates "property." His doctrine is laid down as follows:"Whether we consider natural reason, which tells us, that men, being born, have a right to their preservation, and consequently to meat and drink, and such other things as nature affords for their subsistence; or Revelation, which gives us an account of those grants God made of the world to Adam and to Noah and his sons, 'tis very clear that God, as King David says, has given the earth to the children of men; given it to mankind in common. But this being supposed, it seems to some a very great difficulty, how any one should ever come to have a property in anything. I will not content myself to answer, that if it be difficult to make out property, upon a supposition that God gave the world to Adam and his posterity in common; it is impossible that any man, but one universal monarch, should have any property, upon a supposition that God gave the world to Adam and his heirs in succession, exclusive of all the rest of his posterity. But I shall endeavour to show him, men might come to have a property in several parts of that which God gave to mankind in common, and that without any express compact of all the commoners."

"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. The earth, and all that is therein,

is given to men for the support and comfort of their being. 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 man, 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 man. The fruit or venison which nourishes the wild Indian, who knows no inclosure, and is still a tenant in common, must be his, and so his, i.e., a part of him, that another can no longer have any right to it, before it can do any good for the support of his life."

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'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 labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left in it, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. For this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, 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."

"He that is nourished 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. Nobody 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 'tis 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 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 'tis 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."

"Nor is it so strange, as, perhaps, before consideration it may appear, that the property of labour should be able to overbalance the community of land. For 'tis labour, indeed, that puts the difference of value on everything; 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 it will be but a very modest computation to say, that

of the products of the earth useful to the life of man, ninetenths 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 hundredths are wholly to be put on the account of labour."

"There cannot be a clearer demonstration of anything, than several nations of the Americans are of this, who are rich in land, and poor in all the comforts of life, whom nature having furnished as liberally as any other people with the materials of plenty, that is, a fruitful soil, apt to produce in abundance, what might serve for food, raiment, and delight; yet, for want of improving it by labour, have not onehundredth part of the conveniences we enjoy; and a king of a large and fruitful territory there, feeds, lodges, and is clad worse than a day-labourer in England."

"To make this a little clearer, let us but trace some of the ordinary provisions of life through their several progresses before they come to our use, and see how much they receive their value from human industry. Bread, wine, and cloth, are things of daily use and great plenty; yet, notwithstanding, acorns, water, and leaves or skins, must be our bread, drink, and clothing, did not labour furnish us with these more useful commodities. For whatever bread is more worth than acorns, wine than water, and cloth or silk than leaves, skins or moss, that is wholly owing to labour and industry. The one of these being the food and raiment which unassisted nature furnishes us with; the other provisions which our industry and pains prepare for us, which how much they exceed the other in value, when any one hath computed, he will then see, how much labour makes the far greatest part of the value of things we enjoy in this