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Property In John Locke's Provisos

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Property In John Locke's Provisos
John Locke was an English philosopher who had the idea that all people have natural rights. Their natural rights included that of life, liberty and property and the idea of these rights being held by each individual is often said to be the primary influence of the American Declaration of Independence. Locke further explains his rationale behind natural rights in Two Treatises of Government and particularly property right in his “Provisos,” stating the conditions the make property public or private. Locke’s “Provisos” discusses the idea that property becomes private when a person labors upon the property. His reasoning that the land becomes the person’s private property is that a person has the right to the fruits of his labor, and he also has the right to the resource that bore his fruits, in this case the property. As Locke says, “He by his labor does, as it were, enclose it from the common” (page 437). By this he means that by laboring …show more content…
The Native Americans had worked the land and made it suitable to support their lifestyle and in the quest to achieve Manifest Destiny, nothing would hinder the determined minds of the Americans. According to Locke, the land rightfully belonged to the Native Americans because they had labored on the land to make it prosperous. They did not exploit it; they used the resources wisely and nothing went to waste with their minimalist lifestyle. With the Indian Removal Act that President Andrew Jackson signed into effect, all Native Americans had to be relocated to areas west of the Mississippi River. The Native Americans were removed on the basis that American colonizers needed the land and wanted to achieve Manifest

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