Ch. 4.3. Primary Source: John Locke, On Government, 1689
When Locke first published this book, the Second Treatise on Government, in Dec., 1689, he probably saw it as a way of helping to justify the Glorious Revolution of 1689. Much of the book, however, may have been written five or ten years earlier during the struggles against Charles II and James II. The treatise uses natural law ideas to argue for rights to “life, liberty, and estate,” or personal freedom, government by consent (popular sovereignty), and property. Locke’s secular (i.e., non-religious) approach to justifying the basis for government was partly shaped by a desire to avoid sectarian arguments in a period that was still afraid of re-awakening the tensions that had led to decades of religious dispute and warfare.
In defending consensual government, Locke’s book provides theoretical backing for the shift that was made a reality by the Glorious Revolution in terms of the justification for government, from divine right monarchy to “popular sovereignty,” i.e., the belief that the people as a whole were the ultimate authority. In Locke’s day and for long afterwards in Britain, however, it was Parliament that ruled in the name of the people. For Locke, liberty also included the right to revolution against any oppressive government, a radical claim that for long limited the popularity of the book in Britain itself.
At first rarely read or cited, this treatise gradually became more influential over the 1700s, especially in France and America, where it came to be seen as a founding text of classical liberalism (see Module 3, ch. 2.1; or Foner, American Freedom, p. 8). The excerpts below are from the edition of 1764, which was widely read in the colonies on the eve of the Revolution. For the full text, see: http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/222
Questions: see below, at the end of this section.
Ch. I. [Political Power]
2. …Political power [is] the power of a magistrate over a subject, [which] may be distinguished from that of a father over his children, a master over his servant, a husband over his wife, and a lord over his slave. All [of] which distinct powers happening sometimes together in the same man…, it may help us to distinguish these powers one another and show the difference between a ruler of a commonwealth, a father of a family, and a captain of a galley.
3. Political power, then, I take to be a right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community, in the execution of such laws, and in the defense of the commonwealth from foreign injury; and all this only for the public good.
Ch. II. The State of Nature.
4…All men are naturally in…a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man. [This is also] a state of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another. [For it is] evident…that the creatures of the same species…should also be equal one among another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty…
6. But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of license: though man in that state has an uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one. And reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions: for men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker…, they are his property.
8. …And thus, in the state of nature…every man hath a right to punish the offender, and be executioner of the law of nature… (13) Civil government is the proper remedy for the inconveniences of the state of nature, which must certainly be great, where men may be judges in their own case.
14. It is often asked as a mighty objection, where are, or ever were there any men in such a state of nature? To which it may suffice as an answer at present, that…all princes and rulers of independent governments all through the world, are in a state of nature… (15) But I moreover affirm, that all men are naturally in that state, and remain so, till by their own consents they make themselves members of some politic society.
Ch. III. The State of War
16. The state of war is a state of enmity and destruction, … a settled design upon another man’s life… 21. To avoid this state of war…, is one great reason of men’s putting themselves into society, and quitting the state of nature…
Ch. IV. Slavery
22. Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it…, and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man…
24. The…condition of slavery…is…the state of war continued, between a lawful conqueror and a captive: for, if once compact enter between them, and make an agreement for a limited power on the one side, and obedience on the other, the state of war and slavery ceases…
Ch. V. Property.
25. Whether we consider natural reason, which tells us, that men, once [they are] born, have a right to their preservation, and consequently to meat and drink, and such other things as nature affords for their subsistence: or revelation, which gives us an account of those grants God made of the world to Adam, and to Noah, and his sons, it is very clear, that God, as king David says (Psalm 115:16), ‘has given the earth to the children of men;’ given it to mankind in common… I shall endeavor to show how men might come to have a property in several parts of that which God gave to mankind in common, and that without any express compact of all the commoners [i.e., all people, the users or sharers of this common property]…
27. Though the earth and all inferior creatures are common to all men, every man has a property in his own person: this nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body, and the work of his hands…are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature has provided…, he has mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property… It has by this labor something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men: for this labor being the unquestionable property of the laborer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough and as good left in common for others…
30. Thus this law of reason makes the deer that Indian’s who has killed it… And among those who are counted the civilized part of mankind, who have made and multiplied positive laws to determine property, this original law of nature for the beginning of property…still takes place… By virtue thereof, the fish anyone catches in the ocean, that great and still remaining common of mankind…, is by the labor that removes it…made his property… And even among us, the hare that anyone is hunting, is thought his who pursues her during the chase…
32. But the chief matter of property being now not the fruits of the earth, and the beasts that subsist on it, but the earth itself… As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labor does, as it were, enclose it from the common… God, when he gave the world in common to all mankind, commanded man also to labor… God and his reason commanded him to subdue the earth, i.e. improve it for the benefit of life, and therein lay out something upon it that was his own, his labor. He that in obedience to this command of God, subdued, tilled and sowed any part of it, thereby annexed to it something that was his property…
34. God gave the world to men in common, but…he gave it to the use of the industrious and rational… He that had as good left for his improvement, as was already taken up, needed not complain…
45. Thus labor in the beginning gave a right of property, wherever anyone was pleased to employ it upon what was common… Afterwards, in some parts of the world, where the increase of people and stock, with the use of money, had made land scarce and so of some value, the several communities settled the bounds of their distinct territories, and by laws within themselves regulated the properties of the private men of their society, and so, by compact and agreement, settled the property which labor and industry began…
48. And as different degrees of industry were apt to give men possessions in different proportions, so this invention of money gave them the opportunity to continue and enlarge them… (49) Thus in the beginning all the world was America, and more so than that is now; for no such thing as money was anywhere known… (50) But…gold and silver, being little useful to the life of man in proportion to food, clothing, and carriage, has its value only from the consent of men, of which labor still makes, in great part, the measure.
[Therefore] it is plain that men have agreed to a disproportionate and unequal possession of the earth, they having, by a tacit and voluntary consent, found out a way how a man may fairly possess more land than he himself can use the product of, by receiving in exchange for the surplus gold and silver, which may be hoarded up without injury to anyone; these metals not spoiling or decaying in the hands of the possessor. This [distribution] of things in an inequality of private possessions men have made practicable…only by putting a value on gold and silver, and tacitly agreeing on the use of money.
CH. VII. Political or Civil Society
77. God having made man such a creature, that in his own judgment, it was not good for him to be alone, put him under strong obligations of necessity, convenience, and inclination to drive him into society…
85. Master and servant are names as old as history, but given to those of far different condition; for a freeman makes himself a servant to another, by selling him, for a certain time, the service he undertakes to do, in exchange for wages he is to receive. And though this commonly puts him into the family of his master, and under the ordinary discipline thereof, yet it gives the master but a temporary power over him, and no greater than what is contained in the contract between them.
But there is another sort of servants, which by a peculiar name we call slaves, who being captives taken in a just war, are by the right of nature subjected to the absolute dominion and arbitrary power of their masters. These men having, as I say, forfeited their lives, and with it their liberties, and lost their estates; and being in the state of slavery, not capable of any property, cannot in that state be considered as any part of civil society; the chief end whereof is the preservation of property…
87. …Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect freedom…has by nature a power not only to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men, but to judge of and punish the breaches of that law in others… No political society can [exist] without having…the power to preserve the property, and in order [to do so], [to] punish…offences… Political society [exists only] where every one of [its] members has quit this natural power, resigned it up into the hands of the community… And thus all private judgment of every particular member being excluded, the community comes to be umpire, by settled standing rules, [impartial] and the same [for] all parties…
90. Hence it is evident, that absolute monarchy, which by some men is counted the only government in the world, is indeed inconsistent with civil society, and so can be no form of civil government at all…
CH. XVIII. Tyranny
199. As usurpation is the exercise of power which another has a right to, so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right to… (200) …The difference between a king and a tyrant…consist[s] only in this, that one makes the laws the bounds of his power and the good of the public the end of his government; the other makes all give way to his own will and appetite… (202) Wherever law ends, tyranny begins…, for exceeding the bounds of authority is no more a right in a great, than in a petty officer; no more justifiable in a king than a constable…
208. …The right of resisting, even [against] manifest acts of tyranny, will not suddenly, or on slight occasions, disturb the government. For if [such acts] reach no farther than some private men’s cases…, [then] the body of the people do not think themselves concerned in it… (209) But if either these illegal acts have extended to the majority of the people; or if the mischief and oppression…seem to threaten all; and they are persuaded…that their laws, and with them their estates, liberties, and lives are in danger, and perhaps their religion too; how they will be hindered from resisting illegal force, used against them, I cannot tell. This is an inconvenience, I confess, that attends all governments whatsoever…
CH. XIX. The Dissolution of Government
222. The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property… Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God hath provided for all men, against force and violence… By this breach of trust [the legislators] forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislative, (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own safety and security… What I have said here…holds true also concerning the supreme executor…
224. But it will be said, this hypothesis lays a ferment for frequent rebellion. To which I answer…(225) …such revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in public affairs… But if a long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people…, it is not to be wondered, that they should then rouse themselves…
240. …Who shall be judge, whether the prince or legislative act contrary to their trust? …To this I reply, the people shall be judge…
Reading Questions for Locke
- 1) What is the state of nature, and why does it consist for Locke of a state of equality? What is the remedy to the problems encountered in the state of nature (ch. II-III)?
- 2) If all are naturally equal, how is slavery justified (ch. IV; ch. VII. Clause 85)?
- 3) Given that Locke believes that the earth was originally common to all mankind, how does his ‘labor theory’ explain and justify the origins of private property, especially private property in land (ch. V, clauses 25-32)?
- 4) Why is the distinction between improved and unimproved land so important for Locke’s argument (ch. V, clauses 32-45)?
- 5) What role does money play in the development of inequality (ch. V, clauses 45-50)?
- 6) Why does an absolute monarchy not fit Locke’s definition of a civil society (also called a body politic or a commonwealth) (ch. VII)?
- 7) When do people have a right to resist or rebel against a government (ch. XVIII – XIX)?