Sec. 28. 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. No body 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 it
is 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
it is 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 any body.
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