  John Locke provided an early and very clear argument for the reparations owed a lawful conqueror, and many arguments for black reparations follow the outlines of his argument.[2] For Locke people have natural rights they get directly from Natural Law and rights they have acquired in accordance with Natural law. To restrain violations of rights, he proposed punishment; punishment must be administered “with so much Severity as will suffice to make it an ill bargain to the Offender, give him cause to repent, and terrifie others from doing the like.” (Locke 1689: sec 8) And to repair the damage that crime “commonly” causes “some person or other,” Locke proposed reparations. As he put it, reparation must give the “satisfaction due to any private Man, for the damage he has received” (Locke 1689: sec 11). According to Locke, reparations were rights stemming from the right of self-preservation. But he insisted that the rights can be pressed only against the “goods or service of the Offender” (Locke 1689: sec 11). More precisely, while the person damaged can seek help from anyone, she, the victim, has a right to reparations only against the one who wrongly caused her damage. But Locke does not say that she must be the immediate victim of the “Offender”. His claim that crime commonly damages “some person or other” suggests that she may be anyone damaged as a result of the offender’s violation of right. For example, she may be damaged because someone murdered her father and thus caused her to live in straitened conditions. On Locke’s account, she may be entitled to press her right to reparations against the murderer for the damage he caused her to suffer. On the other hand, Locke’s claim that crime “commonly” damages someone suggests that crime or violations of rights do not always cause damage and consequently do not always generate rights to reparations, though it does not suggest that such violations of right do not deserve to be punished. But even when the violation of right does not cause material losses, it may cause damages to its victim’s self-respect and moral standing, and in such cases the satisfaction due to her may include an admission of wrong doing from the wrongdoer, a plea for her forgiveness, and an apology. If such admission, plea, and apology require that the wrongdoer repent, reparations may seem to require that the wrongdoer be punished, given Locke’s view that repentance is among the objects of punishment (Locke 1689: sec 8). But Locke seems clear that the rights to reparations and the right to punish are different rights. On his view, we give up the right to punish to the state, but retain the rights to reparations.  He writes that the “Magistrate, … can often, where the publick good demands not the execution of the Law, remit the punishment of Criminal Offences …, but cannot yet remit the satisfaction due to any private Man, for the damage he has received” (Locke 1689: sec 11). Arguably, then, the apology the wrongdoer must give to his victim in order to give her the satisfaction she has a right to does not require that he repent and perhaps therefore does not require that his apology be sincere. It is also worth noting that although unjust enrichment from crime should not be tolerated, it has little if anything to do with reparations. Reparations focus on getting satisfaction for the injured victim of crime and the criminal need not unjustly enrich himself as a result of the crime to have wrongfully injured her. He owes her reparations even if he impoverished himself in the process of injuring her. Finally given Locke’s separation of the right to punish from the rights of reparations, and his claim that the rights to reparations is about making satisfaction to the victim of wrongdoing, Locke would seem committed to holding that when an act of wrong doing is excused though it causes harm that the victim has a right to reparations although the magistrate may well decide that the public good does not require that the state exercise its right to punish the wrongdoer.