  Thus Locke appeals to the Fundamental Law of Nature which requires that all or as much as may be should be preserved in order to argue that that the lawful conqueror’s right to reparations must give way if it comes into conflict with the rights to subsistence and maintenance of the children of those who owe him reparations. But Locke does not say that the lawful conqueror’s right to reparations is trumped by the children’s right to inheritance; on his account, it is the right to subsistence that trumps the right to reparations when the two rights conflict. When Locke limits the conqueror’s right to reparations, he does so in order to accommodate the rights to subsistence of innocent children. He is concerned that such children will die if he presses the right to reparations too hard, not that they will inherit very little.