" have here rated the improved land very low, in making its product but as ten to one, when it is much nearer an hundred to one : for I ask, whether in the wild woods and uncultivated waste of America, left to nature, without any improvement, tillage, or husbandry, a thousand acres yield the needy and wretched inhabitants as many conveniencies of life as ten acres equally fertile land do in Devonshire, where they are well cultivated? "

― John Locke , Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration