The
destruction of a year's product or two (for it seldom reaches
four or five) is the utmost spoil that usually can be done: for
as to money, and such riches and treasure taken away, these are
none of nature's goods, they have but a fantastical imaginary
value: nature has put no such upon them: they are of no more
account by her standard, than the wampompeke of the Americans to
an European prince, or the silver money of Europe would have been
formerly to an American. And five years product is not worth the
perpetual inheritance of land, where all is possessed, and none
remains waste, to be taken up by him that is disseized: which
will be easily granted, if one do but take away the imaginary
value of money, the disproportion being more than between five
and five hundred; though, at the same time, half a year's product
is more worth than the inheritance, where there being more land
than the inhabitants possess and make use of, any one has liberty
to make use of the waste: but there conquerors take little care
to possess themselves of the lands of the vanquished, No damage
therefore, that men in the state of nature (as all princes and
governments are in reference to one another) suffer from one
another, can give a conqueror power to dispossess the posterity
of the vanquished, and turn them out of that inheritance, which
ought to be the possession of them and their descendants to all
generations.
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