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AbstractThe European appropriation of Indian land in North America has often been justified through versions of the "agricultural argument" to the effect that the Indians did not need the land and did not really own it because they did not permanently enclose and farm it. Thus the European settlers could resort to original appropriation as described in Locke'sSecond Treatise. This article examines the agricultural argument as exemplified in the writings of John Winthrop, John Locke and Emer de Vattel. Analysis shows that the argument is formally consistent with the premises of natural rights philosophy because it assumes the equal right of both Indians and Europeans to engage in original appropriation. But the historical record shows that the argument actually applied to only a small portion of the land acquired by the Europeans. Sovereignty is the issue that should receive further inquiry.

Behind the legal dispute over aboriginal rights in North America lies the question of whether European settlers had a right to appropriate land used by the original residents for hunting & gathering, for the purpose of farming. While the approach that conquest produces a sufficient title is logical, it is too much of an appeal to raw power to satisfy political theorists. One justification for the European takeover of Indian lands -- that the Indians were not using most of the land & did not really own it because they were hunters rather than farmers -- is considered. Three versions of this approach -- by John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the English liberal philosopher John Locke, & Emer de Vattel, an eighteenth-century expert on international law -- are considered. Recent debate on the agricultural argument is examined, & it is noted that the argument deals with only a small proportion of the actual events accompanying the European takeover of the New World. The real issue, in consequence, is one of sovereignty, & this should receive further study. In Reply to Professor Flanagan, Nicholas Griffin (McMaster U, Hamilton, Ontario) holds that Flanagan believes that the agricultural argument will stand without the distinction between the state of nature & civil society, having in mind a system of bourgeois private ownership using a market mechanism. Flanagan's argument requires stronger assumptions than those he presents, & the appropriate question should be whether one group has the right to demand that another change its way of life in order to solve the perceived problems of the former. InReply to Griffin, Flanagan notes that he did not propose the agriculture argument as a satisfactory justification for the European seizure of North America. F. S. J. Ledgister

AbstractInsurance classifications that rely on demographic information are often accused of being discriminatory. There is a strong movement, based on human rights legislation as well as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to abolish them. However, analysis shows that the common criticisms of these classifications are self-contradictory and also apply in large measure to the behavioural criteria most commonly proposed as substitutes. Whether current practices are "reasonable" in the sense of the Charter will be an important question for determining the scope of the "equality rights" of section 15 of the Charter.