By God's giving Adam dominion over the creatures, by the subjection of Eve, and by Adam"s natural paternal rights over his children Locke weaves a well supported treatise on equality, property and Government. A part of Locke"s strategy is to drive wedges between the possession and inheritance of property, and the transfer of paternal (parental) authority and political authority. For example, the right of children to inherit their parents" property stems from their natural right to sustenance by their parents, a right which cannot be supposed to embrace either patriarchal authority or political power. Thus we have a right to life, liberty and property above all other things. This then leads to the equality of all men being that we are born with the same inalienalble rights and an equal facility of reason. As it said at the founding of our country that, "All men are created equal," and these ideas of equality became the basis for our democracy.
The acquisition and protection of property is the primary aspect of human beings which his treatise revolves upon. Possessions are aquired in a state of nature with an act of appropiation, labor, which results in the harvesting of things which are naturally available to all men equally: "this law of reason makes the deer, that Indian's who hath killed it" (Morgan, 232). Such an appropriation is that "every man has a property in his own person", and therefore in "the labour of his body". Thus, he logically shows that whatever a person has "mixed his labour with" is his alone, provided that "there is enough, and as good left in common for others" (Morgan, 632). This principle applies also to the enclosure of land for agriculture, increases its productivity. With land, as in all else, "labour makes the far greatest part of the value of things, we enjoy in this world" (Morgan, 636). Thus, any land that is not contributing to the good of a person or a group of persons is considered "Waste".
