tate of nature governed only by his needs, desires, impulses and physical limitations (Rousseau, 88). Natural law therefore recognized a man's power to preserve and protect his property from encroachment by others (See Locke, Ch. 7). But when men left their solitude and began forming communities, they necessarily relinquished the right to punish such offenses to the community.
Locke asserts that those who are united into one community with an common established law to govern and mediate its disputes are "one with another" in a civil society (Ch. 7). In other words, when men agree to allow a government to represent them in property disputes, then each man has an equal right to seek the application and protection of the law when he feels himself injured. Consequently, each man in equal under the law. Consider, however, the effect if any man who is governed by the community cannot enforce the protection of the law when he feels himself injured. In such a case, that man would not have prot
...