600 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 
direct contact with communities of agricultural Redskins of the Muscogean 
stock, and consequently one of the first to be confronted with any worse problems 
of expropriation than those which had been described by Heylin.! 
In the very next section * he is confronted with another question of natural 
law on which the experience of the colonists was modifying opinion profoundly. 
‘It is not every compact that puts an end to the state of Nature between men, 
but only this one of agreeing together mutually to enter into one community 
and make one body politic: other promises and compacts men may make with 
one another, and yet still be in the state of Nature. The promises and bargains 
for truck, &c., between the two men in Soldania, or between a Suris and an 
Indian in the woods of America are binding to them though they are perfectly 
in a state of Nature in reference to one another ; for truth and keeping of faith 
belongs to men as men, and not as members of society.’ Here we have a clear 
anticipation of Montesquieu’s position: * ‘The law of Nature is naturally founded 
upon this principle, that the various nations ought to do one another as much 
good as possible in peace, and as little harm as possible in war, without 
damage to their true interests. . . . All nations have a law of nations. Even 
the Iroquois, who eat their prisoners, have one. They send and receive em- 
bassies ; they recognise laws of war and laws of peace. The only trouble is 
that this law of nations is not founded on the right principles.’ Montesquieu, it 
will be observed, recurs here, like Locke, to the ‘ Indian in the woods of America ’ ; 
and we shall see presently that there is an historical reason for this prominence 
of the Redskin in such a context. 
One of Locke’s main advances upon the position taken up by Hobbes is in 
his treatment of the Right of Property.t ‘Though the earth and all inferior 
creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person. 
This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work 
of his hands we may say are properly his. . . . The fruit or venison which 
nourishes the wild Indian, who knows no enclosure, and is still a tenant in common, 
must be his ; and so his—+.e. a part of him—that another can no longer have any 
right to it before it can do him any good for the support of his life.’ Here Locke’s 
ethnological position becomes clearer still, He is familiar with the hunting and 
berry-eating Redskin of the New England forests; but he is not yet brought 
into contact with the agricultural communities of the south-east ; and still less 
is he aware of the paradoxical behaviour of the later-discovered Indians of the 
Chaco, where precisely that observance holds of which he denies the existence— 
namely, that the actual hunter has no recognised right to his game, and sits out, 
' Heylin, Microcosmus, Oxford, 1636, An advertisement to the reader concerning 
America in general. ‘He that travelleth in any Part of America not inhabited by the 
Europeans shall find a world very like to that we lived in, in or near the times of 
Abraham the Patriarch about three hundred years after the flood. The lands lie in 
common to the Natives and all Comers, though some few small parcels are sown, yet the 
Tiller claims no right in them when he has reaped hiscrop once. Their Petty Kings 
do indeed frequently sell their kingdoms, but that in effect is only the taking Money 
for withdrawing and going further up the Country, for he is sure never to want land 
for his subjects because the country is vastly bigger than the Inhabitants, who are 
very few in proportion to its greatness and fertility. . . . Sometimes whole Nations 
change their Seats, and go at once to very distant places, Hunting as they go for a 
Subsistance, and they that have come after the first discoverers have found those 
places desolate which the other found full of inhabitants. This will show that we 
have done them no Injury by settling amongst them; we rather than they being 
the prime Occupants, and they only Sojourners in the land: we have bought however 
of them the most part of the lands we have, and have purchased little with our 
Swords but when they have made war upon us.’ 
ge ES 3 Esprit des Lois, I. iii. 
‘Ch. V. 27. Though the ‘Two Treatises on Government’ were published simul- 
taneously in 1690, it must be remembered that the first of them was written in reply 
to Filmer’s tract of 1680, and bears evident marks of earlier composition. It was 
indeed already out of date in 1690; but for our present purpose it is this very 
circumstance which gives it value as evidence for the growth of Locke’s knowledge 
and thought. : 
