and joined it to something of his own, and thereby makes it his property, and excludes the rights of others therein, where there is enough and as good left for others. (II. 27.) This evidently does not mean that there was an original community of property, for, in the Lockeian sense, property has no existence antecedent to its acquisition by human labor. In Locke's view, bare occupation gives no title to property. Labour alone can give the title. "He who with the power to labour, finds himself upon the earth, has thereby no right to anything upon the earth except through labour." But, if labor gives property rights, it also gives property limits. "As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property." (II. 32. 38.) "It is easy to understand", says Locke, "how labour could at first begin a title of property in the common things of nature, and how the spending of it upon one's uses bound it." (II. 51.) Property in things is limited by use, or the capacity of the individual as a social and intellectual being. Locke lays great stress upon the loss and robbery implied in waste. Nature has set the measure of property by the extent of men's labour and the conveniences of life. (II. 36.) He holds that if this is observed, the rights of individuals cannot conflict, as the labor and necessities of each can demand but a small fraction of the whole. With Locke, labor is not only the foundation of property rights, and the measure of rightful possession, it is also the source of all values. "It is not strange that the property of labour should be able to overbalance the community of land, for it is labour, indeed, that puts the difference of value on everything. .... Consider the difference 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 one 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 lives of men, nine tenths are the effects

of labour. For whatever bread is worth more than acorns, wine than water, and cloth or silk than leaves, skins, or moss, that is wholly owing to labour and industry. From all which it is evident, that though the things of nature are given in common, yet man, by being master of himself, and proprietor of his own person, and the actions or labour of it, had still in himself the great foundation of property." (II. 40. 45.)

But man may not hold property in man. Slavery is excluded by the law of nature. No man may dispose of his freedom to another, nor subject another to his own absolute will. "Slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man, and so directly opposite to the generous temper and courage of our nation, that it is hardly to be conceived that an Englishman, much less a gentleman, should plead for it." (Gov. I. 1.) Locke was the first Englishman who struck directly at the foundations of slavery, and it is noteworthy that his spirit of argument was taken up more than one hundred years later in abolishing property in man in the British Empire.

Locke finds in the natural limitations of property rights, by labor and use, a place for the origin of money, and the extension of personal possessions beyond personal needs. The cardinal evil with Locke is in allowing anything to go to waste, or to be uselessly expended. He who barters plums that would soon rot for nuts which would last for a year, or the nuts for a piece of metall, or a shell, or a diamond, invades not the rights of others, nor wastes the common bounty. The execeding of the bounds of just property do not lie in the largeness of one's possessions, but in the perishing of anything uselessly in it. Thus came in the use of money, some lasting thing that men might keep without spoiling, and that by mutual consent men would take in exchange for the truly useful, but perisable supports of life. (II. 46. 47.) Thus men, finding out something which had the value and use of money among their neighbours, began at once to enlarge their possessions. In

this way, measured for the most part by labor, was tacitly recognized, and in this recognition was also included, the inequality of possessions both in land and goods.

The next stage in the development of the doctrine of property involves its transmission. The social relations, in a state of nature, are those between man and wife, parent and child, master and servant. The duties and rights are here prescribed by the law of nature. Locke objects to Filmer's term, "paternal power", and substitutes for it “parental power", declaring that the father, according to reason and the positive law of God, has no more right over the children than the mother. Children are to honor both father and mother as parents by whom they were begotten, nurtured, and defended. By their dependence upon their parents, and the right they have to be maintained and provided for by the parents, children have a right of inheritance to the property of their parents. It is natural law that all the children share equally in the inheritance. Locke attacks the law of primogeniture, which still obtains in England. The first-born has not a sole or peculiar right by any law of God and nature, the younger children having an equal title with him, founded on the right that they all have to maintenance, support, and comfort from their parents, and on nothing else. On the other hand, if a son die without issue, the father has a right in nature to possess his goods, and inherit his estate.1)

In natural law, unjust force or conquest gives no right, places the conquered under no moral obligation. No promise, obtained by force or fraud is binding. "Who doubts, but the Grecian Christians, descendants of the ancient possessors of that country, may justly cast off the Turkish yoke, which they have so long groaned under, whenever they have an opportunity to do it." Locke argues that in a case of just war, though the power of the conqueror extends to absolute possession over the persons of those who

1) Gov. I. 88. 95. 62. II. 190. Curtis, Locke's Ethical Philosophy.

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put themselves in a state of war, it does not extend beyond these persons to their estates. The reason is, that the innocent are not to be made to suffer with the guilty. A violent father may forfeit his own life, but that does not involve his children in his guilt or destruction. The case comes to this; "The conqueror has a title to reparation for damages received; the children have a title to their father's estate for subsistence, the wife also may have a title either by labour or compact. What must be done in this case? I answer, the fundamental law of nature being, that all, as much as may be, should be preserved, it follows that if there be not enough fully to satisfy both, viz, for the conquerors, losses, and the children's maintenance, he that hath and to spare, must remit something of his full satisfaction, and give way to the pressing and preferable title of those who are in danger to perish without it." (Gov. II. 176. 186-192. 207.)

In the year 1776, two events brought Locke's political doctrines into prominence. The one was the founding of the American Republic upon the cardinal principles of freedom, equality, and inalienable rights; the other was the publication of the "Wealth of Nations", which made the doctrine of Labor its basal principle, and demanded, in the interests of all, the free economic action of each. Hallam, (Lit. of Eu. IV. 371.), says, “the chapter on property would be sufficient, if all Locke's other writings had perished, to leave him a high name in philosophy". Hobbes had indeed suggested that labor is the foundation of property, but Locke was the first to place the doctrine in a clear light.) It

1) De Cive XIII. 14. Lev. II. 24. "plenty dependeth, next to God's favour, merely on the labor and industrie of men". See also Roscher: Grundlagen der Nationalökonomie. 18te Auflage. p. 110. Note (6). Sir William Petty: "On Taxes”, 1679, says, “Labor is the father and active principle of wealth, as lands are the mother. Land and labor together are the sources of all wealth". Roscher says of Locke, "Er ist der Gegner alles volkswirthschaftlichen Aberglaubens! Während aber die meisten früheren Nationalökonomen nur ganz einzelne, praktische Fragen erörterten, warf sich

has been questioned by James Mill whether Adam Smith had as correct an understanding of the doctrine as did Locke, and M'Culloch asserts, "he all but established the fundamental principle which lies at the bottom of the science of wealth". While Grotius and Pufendorf based property upon occupation, Locke held that labor only, gives a just title. Later, Montesquieu and Bentham declared property to be a crea tion of civil law, failing to distinguish between the creation of a thing and its protection. Locke declared the whole institution of property to be antecedent to, and independent of, civil society, and that civil law can no more create property than it can create a loaf of bread, land or labor. While holding that it is the function of government to protect property, he holds that government is so far from originating property, that it is itself the creation of property and for property. If civil law can create property, and property rights, then it can dispense with them, can deprive individuals of them with the same freedom that it created them. "Private property is goods acquired by virtue of the laws: the law alone constitutes property", cried Mirabeau to the Constituent Assembly, and Robespierre echoed, "Property is the right that each citizen has to the enjoyment of that portion of goods guaranteed to him by the laws". But this was corrected by the Constitutional Assembly, in 1793, in the famous Declaration of Rights, which propounds the rational guarantee of property, as well as a just recognition of its existence, independent of civil society. Article 16 declares, "The right of property is the right belonging to every citizen of using and disposing as he likes of his goods, his revenues, of the fruits of his labor and his industry", and Article 19, "No one shall be deprived of the

Locke mit besonderem Interesse auf die allgemeinsten theoretischen Grundlagen der Wissenschaft, auf diejenigen Theile der Nationalökonomie, welche zunächst an das Gebiet der Psychologie angrenzen, und er behandelt sie mit überraschender Vollständigkeit. Locke ist der früheste grosse Systematiker der Volkswirthschaft, und insofern ein würdiger Vorläufer von Adam Smith." Zur Gesch. der englischen Volkswirthschaftslehre. p. 93.