 The much later natural law theorist John Locke also took up questions regarding just and unjust prices, not in either of his well-known treatises on government but in a lesser known tract titled, Venditio. Locke, even more explicitly than Aquinas, saw the just price as being equivalent to “the market price at the place where he sells” (Locke 1661: 340). The relativity of the just price to the particular market in which the transaction takes place is important. For Locke argued that if two ships sailed laden with corn, one to Dunkirk where there is a near famine taking place, and the other to Ostend where normal conditions obtain, it would not be unjust for the merchant to sell at a significantly higher price in the former location than in the latter (so long as the higher price is one that the buyers can afford). If the merchant did not charge a higher price, Locke argued, then two problems would result. First, it is likely that the merchant’s goods would simply be bought by speculators and resold on a secondary market, thereby simply redirecting the profit into somebody else’s hands without doing anything to improve the situation of buyers. And second, if merchants cannot charge a high price in “good” markets to cover their losses in “bad” ones, they will soon operate at a net loss and this will, Locke claims, “quickly put an end to merchandising” (Locke 1661: 342).