Paine is unequivocal that in the state of nature “there can be no such thing as landed property originally .” People in the state of nature could occupy land, but they did not have the right to own the land as their own forever. Rather, “the land is the free gift of the Creator in common to the human race .” Land belongs to every person, and in the state of nature no one has the right to claim any particular part of that divine inheritance as their own. Paine notes that God did telegram data not “ open a land office, from which the first titles of property should be derived.” For Paine, there are two main types of property: natural property, which includes “the earth, the air, the water,” and artificial property (meaning private property), which is created by humans.
Paine sees the invention of private property as an inseparable result of the development of agriculture. The English philosopher John Locke —whose writings had a huge influence on the American revolutionaries—argued that when a person worked on the land by plowing, fencing, or developing any kind of improvement on a plot of land, he or she by his or her labor legitimately owned private property.
Yes, improving land for cultivation was useful and people would have a right to the fruits of their labor. However, Paine also believed that “it is only the value of the improvement, and not the land itself, that is individual property.” This was not an easily discernible distinction. Because of the “impossibility of separating the improvement produced by cultivation from the land itself” there was confusion and the common right of all was replaced with the right of particular individuals to own land in perpetuity.