Part II, Chapter XXIV

OF THE NOURISHMENT AND PROCREATION OF A COMMON-WEALTH

The Nourishment of a Common-wealth Consists in the Commodities

Of Sea and Land

The nourishment of a Common-wealth consists in the abundance and distribution of materials that sustain life; in their digestion, or preparation; and, once digested, in their conveyance through suitable channels to public use.

As for the abundance of material, nature limits it to those commodities which God ordinarily gives freely, or sells for labor, to humankind from land and sea, the two breasts of our common mother.

For the materials of this nourishment—animals, plants, and minerals—God has freely placed before us, in or near the earth’s surface; nothing is needed but the labor and industry to gather them. Thus abundance depends, next to God’s favor, solely on human labor and industry.

This material, commonly called commodities, is partly native and partly foreign: native if it can be had within the territory of the Common-wealth, foreign if imported from outside. Since no territory under one Common-wealth’s dominion, unless it is very extensive, produces everything needed to sustain and move the whole body, and few territories fail to produce something beyond their needs, commodities in surplus at home cease to be surplus when they supply domestic wants through the importation of what can be had abroad, whether by exchange, by just war, or by labor. For a man’s labor, like anything else, is a commodity exchangeable for benefit. Some Common-wealths have possessed no more territory than they needed for habitation, yet have not only maintained but increased their power, partly by the labor of trading from place to place, partly by selling manufactured goods whose materials were brought in from elsewhere.

The distribution of the materials of this nourishment establishes mine, yours, and his—in a word, property—and in every kind of Common-wealth belongs to the Soveraigne power. For where there is no Common-wealth there is, as already shown, perpetual war of every man against his neighbor. Everything therefore belongs to whoever takes it and holds it by force; and that is neither property nor common ownership, but uncertainty. This is so evident that even Cicero, a passionate defender of liberty, attributed all property to civil law in a public speech: “Let civil law be abandoned, or merely guarded negligently—not to say oppressed—and nothing remains that anyone can be sure of receiving from his ancestors or leaving to his children.” And again: “Take away civil law, and no man knows what is his own and what belongs to another.” Since the introduction of property is thus an effect of the Common-wealth, which can act only through the person who represents it, it is an act of the Soveraigne alone, and consists in laws that no one without Soveraigne power can make. The ancients knew this well: they called what we call law nomos, meaning distribution, and defined justice as distributing to each man his own.

In this distribution, the first law concerns the division of the land itself: the Soveraigne assigns each man a portion according to what he, not any subject or number of subjects, judges consistent with equity and the common good. The children of Israel were a Common-wealth in the wilderness, but lacked the earth’s commodities until they mastered the promised land. The land was then divided among them not at their own discretion, but at the discretion of Eleazar the priest and Joshua their general. Though they made thirteen tribes from twelve by subdividing the tribe of Joseph, they made only twelve portions of land; to the tribe of Levi they assigned no land, but gave it a tenth of all the fruits. That division was therefore discretionary. And although a people who gain possession of a land by war do not always exterminate its ancient inhabitants, as the Jews did, but leave many, most, or all of them their estates, it is clear that they thereafter hold those estates by the victors’ distribution, as the people of England held all theirs from William the Conqueror.

From this we may infer that a subject’s property in his lands consists in a right to exclude all other subjects from their use, but not to exclude the Soveraigne, whether an assembly or a monarch. For since the Soveraigne—that is, the Common-wealth whose person he represents—is understood to act only for the common peace and security, the distribution of land must be understood to serve that same end. Consequently, any distribution he makes to its detriment is contrary to the will of every subject who entrusted his peace and safety to the Soveraigne’s discretion and conscience, and must therefore, by the will of each, be regarded as void. It is true that a Soveraigne monarch, or the majority of a Soveraigne assembly, may ordain many things in pursuit of their Passions, against their own consciences; this is a breach of trust and of the Law of Nature. Yet it does not authorize any subject to make war on the Soveraigne, or even to accuse him of injustice or speak ill of him in any way, because they authorized all his actions and, in conferring Soveraigne power, made those actions their own. The cases in which a Soveraigne’s commands conflict with equity and the Law of Nature will be considered elsewhere.

In distributing land, one may imagine the Common-wealth itself receiving a portion, possessing and improving it through its representative, and that portion being made sufficient to sustain the whole expense necessarily required for common peace and defense. This would indeed be true if we could imagine a representative free of human Passions and frailties. But human nature being what it is, setting aside public land or any fixed revenue for the Common-wealth is futile; it tends toward the dissolution of government and a return to the condition of mere nature and war as soon as Soveraigne power comes into the hands of a monarch or assembly either too careless of money or too willing to risk the public stock in a long or costly war. Common-wealths cannot be put on a diet: their expenses are limited not by their own appetite, but by external accidents and the appetites of their neighbors; public wealth therefore cannot be bounded except by the demands of emergencies as they arise. In England the Conqueror reserved various lands for his own use, besides forests and hunting grounds for his recreation or the preservation of woods, and reserved various services from the lands he gave his subjects. Yet these appear to have been reserved for his maintenance in his natural, not his public, capacity: he and his successors nevertheless imposed taxes at their discretion on all subjects’ land when they judged it necessary. Or, if these public lands and services were intended to maintain the Common-wealth sufficiently, the arrangement defeated the purpose of its institution: the taxes imposed afterward showed it was insufficient, and the Crown’s recent revenue shows it was subject to alienation and diminution. It is therefore futile to allot a portion to the Common-wealth, which can sell or give it away, and does so whenever its representative does.

As the distribution of lands at home belongs to the Soveraigne, so does the determination of the places where, and commodities in which, subjects may trade abroad. For if private persons could decide for themselves, some would be drawn by profit to furnish an enemy with the means to injure the Common-wealth, and to injure it themselves by importing things that please men’s appetites but are harmful to them, or at least of no use. It therefore belongs to the Common-wealth—that is, to the Soveraigne alone—to approve or disapprove both the places and the goods of foreign trade.

Further, a Common-wealth cannot be sustained merely by giving each man property in a portion of land, in a few commodities, or in some useful craft naturally his own; and there is no craft in the world that is not necessary to the existence or well-being of almost every individual. Men must therefore distribute what they can spare and mutually transfer property in it by exchange and contract. Thus the Common-wealth—that is, the Soveraigne—must determine how every kind of contract between subjects, such as buying, selling, exchanging, borrowing, lending, leasing, and hiring, is to be made, and which words and signs make it valid. This is enough on the materials and distribution of nourishment to the several members of the Common-wealth, given the design of the whole work.

By digestion I mean converting all commodities not consumed immediately, but reserved for future nourishment, into something of equal value and portable enough not to hinder people moving from place to place, so that a man may obtain whatever nourishment a place affords wherever he goes. This is nothing other than gold, silver, and money. Gold and silver, being highly valued in nearly every country of the world, happen to offer a convenient measure of the value of all other things in trade between nations; and money, whatever its material, coined by a Common-wealth’s Soveraigne, sufficiently measures the value of other things among its subjects. By these measures, all commodities, movable and immovable, can accompany a man wherever he goes, within and beyond his usual residence. Money passes from man to man within the Common-wealth, circulating and nourishing every part as it goes; this digestion is, as it were, the making of the Common-wealth’s blood. Natural blood is likewise made from the fruits of the earth, and nourishes every member of the human body as it circulates.

Because silver and gold derive their value from their material, they enjoy, first, the privilege that neither one nor a few Common-wealths can change their value, since they are a common measure of commodities everywhere. Base money, however, can easily be raised or lowered in value. Second, they enable Common-wealths, when necessary, to move and extend their arms into foreign countries and supply provisions not only to traveling subjects but to whole armies. Coin valued not for its material but for the stamp of its place of origin cannot endure a change of air: it works only at home, where it is also subject to changes in law that diminish its value, often to the detriment of its holders.

The channels and paths by which nourishment is carried to public use are of two kinds: one conveys it to the public treasury; the other sends it out again for public payments. The first consists of collectors, receivers, and treasurers; the second, again, of treasurers and the officers appointed to pay various public or private ministers. Here, too, the artificial man resembles the natural one: his veins receive blood from the several parts of the body and carry it to the heart; there it is made vital, and the heart sends it out through the arteries to give life and motion to all the body’s members.

The offspring, or children, of a Common-wealth are what we call settlements or colonies: groups of people sent out from the Common-wealth under a leader or governor to inhabit a foreign country, either previously without inhabitants or made so by war. Once a colony is established, its people either form a Common-wealth of their own, released from subjection to the Soveraigne who sent them, as happened with many ancient Common-wealths—in which case the Common-wealth they left was called their metropolis, or mother, and asks no more of them than fathers ask of children emancipated from household rule: honor and friendship—or they remain united to their metropolis, as did the colonies of Rome, and are then not Common-wealths in their own right but provinces and parts of the Common-wealth that sent them. Thus the rights of colonies, apart from honor and alliance with their metropolis, depend wholly on the license or letters by which their Soveraigne authorized their settlement.

CHAPTER XXV. OF COUNSEL

On the nourishment and reproduction of a commonwealth

The nourishment of a commonwealth consists of goods

From sea and land

A commonwealth is nourished by having enough materials to sustain life and by distributing them. It must also process or prepare them. Once prepared, it must carry them through suitable channels for public use.

The supply of materials is limited by nature to the goods that God usually gives us freely, or sells us in return for labor, from land and sea, the two breasts of our common mother.

These materials are animals, plants, and minerals. God has placed them freely before us, in or near the surface of the earth. All that remains is the work and effort of gathering them. So, after God's favor, the supply depends entirely on human work and effort.

These materials, commonly called goods, are partly domestic and partly foreign. Domestic goods come from within a commonwealth's territory. Foreign goods are imported from outside. Unless a territory ruled by one commonwealth is very large, it cannot produce everything needed to maintain and move its whole body. Yet few territories produce nothing beyond what they need. Their surplus is no longer surplus when it is used to meet needs at home through imports obtained by exchange, just war, or labor. A person's labor is a good that can be exchanged for benefits, like anything else. Some commonwealths have had no more land than they needed to live on. Yet they have maintained and even increased their power, partly by trading from place to place and partly by selling manufactured goods made with materials brought from elsewhere.

Distributing these materials means establishing what is mine, yours, and his—in one word, property. In every kind of commonwealth, this belongs to the sovereign power. Where there is no commonwealth, as I have already shown, everyone is constantly at war with their neighbors. Anything belongs to whoever can seize and hold it by force. This is neither private property nor common ownership, but uncertainty. The point is so clear that even Cicero, an ardent defender of liberty, said in a public speech that all property depends on civil law: “Once civil law is abandoned, or even carelessly guarded, let alone suppressed, no one can be sure of receiving anything from an ancestor or leaving anything to their children.” And again: “Take away civil law, and no one knows what is their own and what belongs to another.” Property comes into being through a commonwealth, which can act only through the person representing it. Establishing property is therefore the sovereign's act alone. It consists of laws, which only someone with sovereign power can make. People in ancient times understood this when they called what we call law nomos, meaning distribution, and defined justice as giving everyone what is their own.

In this distribution, the first law divides the land itself. The sovereign gives each person a portion according to what the sovereign, not any subject or group of subjects, judges fair and good for everyone. The children of Israel formed a commonwealth in the wilderness. But they lacked the goods of the earth until they took possession of the Promised Land. Its division was decided not by the people themselves but by Eleazar the priest and Joshua their general. They made the twelve tribes into thirteen by dividing the tribe of Joseph, yet made only twelve portions of land. They gave no land to the tribe of Levi, instead assigning it a tenth of all the produce. This division was therefore made at their discretion. A people who take land through war do not always wipe out its former inhabitants, as the Jews did. They may leave many, most, or all of them with their estates. But those people then hold their estates by the victors' allotment, just as the people of England held their land from William the Conqueror.

We can conclude that a subject's property in land gives that subject the right to keep all other subjects from using it, but not the sovereign, whether the sovereign is an assembly or a monarch. The sovereign is the commonwealth's representative and is understood to act only for the common peace and safety. Its distribution of land must therefore be understood as serving those purposes. Any distribution that harms them goes against the will of every subject who entrusted their peace and safety to the sovereign's judgment and conscience. By their will, such a distribution must therefore be considered void. A sovereign monarch, or the majority of a sovereign assembly, may indeed order many things in pursuit of their passions, against their consciences. That breaks trust and the Law of Nature. But it does not give any subject the authority to wage war on the sovereign, accuse the sovereign of injustice, or even speak ill of the sovereign. Subjects authorized all the sovereign's actions and, by granting sovereign power, made those actions their own. I will consider elsewhere the cases in which a sovereign's commands conflict with fairness and the Law of Nature.

When land is divided, we might imagine that the commonwealth could keep a portion, hold it through its representative, and use it to pay all the necessary costs of public peace and defense. That would be true if we could imagine a representative free of human passions and weaknesses. But given human nature, setting aside public land or any fixed income for the commonwealth is useless. It leads to the collapse of government and a return to the natural condition of war as soon as sovereign power falls to a monarch or assembly that is either too careless about money or too willing to risk public funds in a long or costly war. Commonwealths cannot live on a fixed diet. Their costs are set not by their own appetites but by outside events and the appetites of their neighbors. Public wealth can therefore have no fixed limit other than what new needs require. In England, the Conqueror reserved various lands for his own use, along with forests and hunting grounds for recreation or to preserve timber. He also reserved various services from land he gave his subjects. But these seem to have supported him as a private person, not in his public role. He and his successors still imposed taxes at their discretion on all subjects' land whenever they thought it necessary. Or, if the public lands and services were meant to support the commonwealth adequately, this went against the purpose of setting them aside. Later taxes showed that they were inadequate, and recent income of the Crown shows that they could be sold off or reduced. So it is useless to allot land to the commonwealth. It can sell or give that land away, and does so when its representative sells or gives it away.

Just as the division of land at home belongs to the sovereign, so does the decision about where subjects may trade abroad and which goods they may trade. If private people were free to decide for themselves, some would be drawn by profit to supply the enemy with means to harm the commonwealth. They might also harm it themselves by importing goods that please people's appetites but are harmful, or at least useless. Therefore only the commonwealth, meaning the sovereign, may approve or reject the places and goods involved in foreign trade.

A commonwealth cannot be sustained merely by giving each person property in some land or a few goods, or by letting each person retain their natural ownership of a useful skill. Almost every skill is needed for nearly every person's survival or well-being. People therefore have to distribute what they can spare and transfer ownership to one another through exchange and mutual agreement. The commonwealth, meaning the sovereign, must therefore set the rules for making every kind of agreement between subjects, including buying, selling, exchanging, borrowing, lending, renting out, and hiring. It must also say what words and signs make these agreements valid. That is enough about the materials of nourishment and their distribution among the members of a commonwealth, given the plan of this work.

By processing, I mean converting goods that will not be consumed immediately, but are saved for later nourishment, into something of equal value that is also portable enough for people to move from place to place. In this way people can obtain whatever nourishment each place offers, wherever they are. This portable value is simply gold, silver, and money. Gold and silver happen to be highly valued in almost every country. They are therefore convenient measures of the value of other things in trade between nations. Money, whatever it is made of, is a sufficient measure of the value of other things among a commonwealth's subjects when its sovereign coins it. With these measures, movable and immovable goods can accompany people wherever they go, both inside and outside their usual home. The money passes from person to person throughout the commonwealth, nourishing each part as it circulates. In this sense, processing is like making blood for the commonwealth. Natural blood is likewise made from the earth's produce and nourishes every part of the human body as it circulates.

Because gold and silver owe their value to the material itself, they have a first advantage: one or a few commonwealths cannot change their value, since they provide a shared measure for goods everywhere. Inferior coinage, by contrast, can easily be raised or lowered in value. Their second advantage is that they allow commonwealths to move and reach out into foreign countries when needed. They can supply not only traveling private subjects but whole armies. Coins valued for their local stamp rather than their material cannot survive a change of air: they work only at home. Even there, changes in law can reduce their value, often harming the people who hold them.

There are two kinds of channels carrying this wealth for public use. One carries it into the public treasury; the other pays it out again for public expenses. Collectors, receivers, and treasurers belong to the first kind. Treasurers also belong to the second, along with officials assigned to pay various public or private servants. Here too the artificial person resembles a natural one. Veins collect blood from the body's parts and carry it to the heart. There it becomes life-giving, and the heart sends it through the arteries to give every part life and the power to move.

A commonwealth's offspring are what we call settlements or colonies. These are groups of people sent from a commonwealth, under a leader or governor, to live in another country. That country may have been empty already or have been emptied by war. Once established, a colony may become its own commonwealth, released from obedience to the sovereign who sent it. Many ancient commonwealths did this. In that case, the state it came from is called its metropolis or mother. It asks no more of the colony than parents ask of children they free from household rule: honor and friendship. Or the colony may remain united with its metropolis, as the Roman people's colonies did. Then it is not a commonwealth of its own, but a province and part of the state that sent it. Thus the rights of colonies, apart from honor and their alliance with their metropolis, depend entirely on the license or letters by which their sovereign authorized them to settle.

Chapter XXV. On counsel