Des choses communes à tous les hommes.

CHAP. 6: On things common to all men.

AMONG the things necessary for our preservation, there are a certain number that exist in such great quantity that they are inexhaustible, and that everyone can use them without causing them to undergo any sensible diminution; there are others that exist in less considerable quantity, and which can satisfy the needs of only a certain number of persons: the ones are called common, the others particular.

The first, among which must be placed the air, the light of the stars, the seas, the water that flows in the rivers, are common to all men, because all have equal need of them, and because each can make use of them without harming the enjoyment of others.

The first right that each of us holds from his nature is, in effect, that of employing for his preservation and his well-being the things in the midst of which nature has placed him, and of which he can enjoy without harming in any way the preservation or the well-being of his fellow men. If this right, which is but a consequence of the laws of our nature and of the equality that exists between men, were not admitted, there is none whose existence it would be possible to establish.

The things that exist in such great quantity that each can make use of them without in any way harming the enjoyments of others should never, it would seem, give rise to disputes between men. There would be, in effect, a kind of madness in disputing with one's neighbor the air he needs, not only for his respiration, but also for a multitude of other uses. Who is he who would permit himself to seriously contest a man's right, for example, to employ the air to maintain a forge, to turn a mill, or to push a ship on the waves of the sea? Who is he who would dare to claim in this regard a right that all did not possess?

However, although men do not dispute the exclusive possession of the good most indispensable to life, although none of them claims in this regard any privilege over his fellow men, it often happens that some disturb others in the enjoyment of this good. It is clear, for example, that he who infects the air that one breathes in his vicinity, by means of certain animal, vegetable, or mineral matters, by letting marshy waters assemble there, by engaging in certain manufactures there, by that very fact alters a thing that belongs equally to all; he brings to his neighbors a damage analogous to that which he would cause them, if he mixed with their food or with the water necessary for their drink, unhealthy or poisoned matters.

Thus, what distinguishes a well-ordered country from a country that is not, is above all the care that is taken to prevent a person, in enjoying a common thing, from harming the enjoyment of others. A nation that suffers each of its members to alter or degrade the things that are necessary for the existence or the well-being of all, has not yet completely emerged from barbarism; it does not know how to guarantee all kinds of property. It does not suffice for a people, to ensure to each the free enjoyment of common things, to forbid their alteration or abuse; it must, moreover, leave to every person whose enjoyment has been injured, the faculty of pursuing the reparation of the damages that are caused to him. Individual properties would not be guaranteed, or would be poorly so, if the proprietors did not have the faculty of bringing to justice the men who infringe upon them; how would it be possible, then, to believe in the guarantee of common properties, where persons whose enjoyment of these properties has been injured would have no action against the authors of the injury they had experienced?The seas hold, among the things common to all peoples, a very considerable place; they are useful to them as means of transport, and as containing alimentary substances. Considered from the first point of view, the utility they have for nations is not the work of any of them; and the use that each makes of them, however extensive one may suppose it, can in no way diminish the enjoyment of others. They are natural roads broad enough not to be subject to congestion, and so well constructed as to never need repairs. As it is in the power of no one either to degrade them or to make them better, and as they owe nothing to human industry, none can lay claim to a right that would not belong to all.

If one considers the seas as vast storehouses of subsistence, they are spacious enough for everyone to be able to engage in fishing there without disturbing anyone. The fish they contain are not the product of human labor; no one can therefore claim them as being the results of his industry. There are no other means of appropriating them than to take them, and he who takes possession of them first has a title to which no other can be opposed.

There are, however, peoples who have had the pretension of being proprietors of certain seas: the Portuguese, for example, formerly called themselves proprietors of the seas of Guinea and the East Indies; but these pretensions, combated by Grotius, have never been admitted by the other nations.

One conceives, moreover, that the use of the seas must be regulated by treaties from nation to nation, and by the principles of international law; but that it could not be by the laws of any particular people, unless that people were the sovereign of all the others; I therefore do not have to occupy myself with it here in a special manner.

It will be seen, however, further on that all modern maritime peoples consider as a part of their national domain the waters of the sea that bathe their territory. In speaking of this kind of property, I will indicate what extent usage has given it.

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