The labour
that was mine, removing them out of that common state they were
in, hath fixed my property in them.
Sec. 29. By making an explicit consent of every commoner,
necessary to any one's appropriating to himself any part of what
is given in common, children or servants could not cut the meat,
which their father or master had provided for them in common,
without assigning to every one his peculiar part. Though the
water running in the fountain be every one's, yet who can doubt,
but that in the pitcher is his only who drew it out? His
labour hath taken it out of the hands of nature, where it was
common, and belonged equally to all her children, and hath
thereby appropriated it to himself.
Sec. 30. Thus this law of reason makes the deer that
Indian's who hath killed it; it is allowed to be his goods, who
hath bestowed his labour upon it, though before it was the common
right of every one. And amongst those who are counted the
civilized part of mankind, who have made and multiplied positive
laws to determine property, this original law of nature, for
the beginning of property, in what was before common, still
takes place; and by virtue thereof, what fish any one catches in
the ocean, that great and still remaining common of mankind; or
what ambergrise any one takes up here, is by the labour that
removes it out of that common state nature left it in, made his
property, who takes that pains about it.
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