Locke’s political theory

Locke’s political theory Ian Harris The author of Two Treatises of Government also wrote An Essay concerning Human Understanding. This is an elementary fact, but one with an important implication for understanding Locke’s political theory. For Two Treatises is an explanatory work. Its objective is to explain the proper character of political authority (or, in the Latinate usage Locke preferred, political power).1 To consider Locke’s political theory in this way is to place it within the framework of his other intellectual concerns. This is not the only way of writing about theories of politics, but it has a special relevance to Locke. Two Treatises is one of the most studied works in political theory. Yet the design of its argument has not been much considered. The picture which the student may form is one of disorder within the text.2 This impression is unfortunate, because a modest examination of Locke’s political argument in the light of his broader thought will yield a much clearer picture: and a justified clarity, after all, is the best assistance that scholarship can give to the reader. One word of caution should be added, indicating a way in which one philosophical approach to Locke’s political theory would give a misleading impression of the author in his time. Locke is often supposed to be a progenitor of modern liberalism. Now liberalism assumes as many guises as an imaginative chameleon, but the sort most prominent in philosophical thinking about politics presently is ‘unLockean’ in an important way This thinking distinguishes between the right and the good, meaning by the former a basic organization of society according to some canon of justice (though the canon varies) and by the latter a view of how one is to run one’s own life. The latter is to be decided by the individual in a manner satisfying to him or her, subject only to the protection or entitlements afforded to others in the name of the right. However the right is understood, there is present a belief that the moral life is determined by and not for the individual: that there is no moral arbiter set over him or her.3 This view is a complete inversion of Locke’s fundamental position. To his mind the human condition was patterned by moral obligations imposed by God, patterned indeed in highly specific ways. This moral patterning has implications for politics, because Locke used the idea of God as a moral legislator to explain the sort of political organization he preferred. The political doctrine of John Locke, briefly characterised, was founded on the assumption that God had ordered matters in a manner that aligns the force of theology and ethics behind responsible government. The Lockean God is taken to be mankind’s superior: this means that He excels people in all salient aspects and, on the basis of these, is fitted to direct and guide them. The content of God’s directions is manifold, but its fundamental points are straightforward. That is to say, first, that God wishes mankind to survive, to increase in number and to subdue the earth, and second, that He has promulgated laws, through both reason and revelation, that prescribe measures conducing to those ends. These laws, understood correctly, would conduct people to a sort of government that was limited to certain defined goals and accountable to its citizens. We may contrast this doctrine of responsible government, limited and accountable, with absolutism. Absolutism is the doctrine that the ruler bears no responsibility to the ruled, and this because God is supposed to have ordered matters in a manner somewhat different to that which Locke attributed to Him. According to this view God either conferred authority directly upon the ruler (so that he was responsible to God rather than the ruled) or permitted the ruled to transfer whatever rights they had to the ruler, irrevocably and unconditionally.4 Absolutism is a notion foreign to modern fashion: we are all used to the idea of responsible government. But it was à la mode in Locke’s day and it is worth our while to see how his mind developed quite another cast. I It fell to Locke, as a young don at Christ Church, Oxford, to deliver a series of lectures on natural law. For our purpose the significance of the result, which we know as Essays on the Law of Nature,5 is that it contained a theological and ethical position that would play an important role in Locke’s political theory. The primary supposition of these Essays was that God was the author of moral prescriptions to mankind. These prescriptions characteristically assumed two media, namely revelation and reason. Though revelation, essentially God’s word in the Bible, was relevant to the whole human race it had been diffused to a section of people that was relatively small. Reason, on the other hand, was a faculty possessed by all humans: a code expounded through it could be said to be available to all. This code, called the law of nature, was obviously convenient to moralists who wished to give an explanation of ethical values by using theology. Thus natural law is found in the works of thinkers as various as Aquinas and Luther or Calvin and Culverwell.6 Whilst the precise specification of its contents varied from writer to writer, its fundamental lines were clear. These took their rise from one central supposition of fact. This was that man was a creature constructed by God. On the one hand God had implanted in the human race certain natural drives. The chief of these were desires for self-preservation and the perpetuation of the species. But the human agent, considered individually, was unequal to the very task of surviving, so that the satisfaction of these desires implied co-operation with others in order to produce favourable conditions: that is to say, to produce society. Rational reflection on these facts suggested a series of precepts directing people to these ends—to preserve oneself and live in society (and, additionally, further precepts of the same tendency). On the other hand, reflecting on God’s work in making mankind meant recognizing that He had conferred an incalculable benefit on it. This implied a debt of gratitude to Him, which was thought to be expressed fitly through worship. Thus to preserve oneself, to live socially and to worship were the basic terms of natural law.7 Locke’s Essays were distinguished not by altering this content—indeed he endorsed it8—but by explaining its origin and binding force, and how mankind might know these things. That is to say, he argued that God was the moral legislator and that His precepts were always and everywhere of binding force. God was entitled to legislate because he was superior to man in the respects required for the proper direction of agents: not least in understanding, for God was understood to be omniscient. The notion of superiority, often conceived in terms of intelligence (and, when considering human superiors, birth, wealth and education) pervaded contemporary thought. Such attributes were supposed by contemporaries to be a title to direct others: as Obadiah Walker suggested, writing of the nobility, some had attributes ‘rendring them eminent and conspicuous above other men, [which] sets them also at least as lights and examples to be followed by their Inferiors’.9 The Lockean God not only provided directions but also complemented them with obligations. Locke understood obligation to imply not only a superior but also that superior’s ability to bring sanctions to bear: God certainly qualified as an imposer of obligations, since He was omnipotent. The obligation to God’s directions was universal in extent(for God was superior to all people) and perpetual in duration (since He was eternal).10 These theological and ethical points had a political relevance. They went most of the distance necessary to disbar the explanation of absolutism given by the notion of a transfer of right. That is to say, if we accept Locke’s line of thought about obligation, people were bound to obey God’s directions. They could not be entitled to surrender themselves without reservation to another human being’s guidance. All Locke needed to add in order to rule such a transfer out of court was the assertion that God’s directions would be undercut by those of absolute rulers (and others who threatened freedom), as we shall see. II Two Treatises of Government argued that absolutist explanations did not make sense and that the true explanation of political power is quite different. Its discourse was throughout tailored to these ends. Locke applied the word ‘demonstration’ to his own text and criticized Sir Robert Filmer, one of his principal absolutist targets, for preferring assertion to explanation. He criticized the quality of Filmer’s work, terming it ‘glib Nonsense’ and describing his reasoning as ‘nothing but a Rope of Sand’. But though Locke expressed disdain for its quality, he regarded it as an explanation. Filmer’s argument was ‘his Hypothesis’ and its refutation provided ‘premises’ for Locke’s conclusions; Locke’s first book aimed to refute Filmer’s False Principles and his second to reveal The True Original, Extent, and End of Civil-Government.11 Absolutism did not harmonize with the political prepossessions of the circle in which Locke moved. As early as 1675 Shaftesbury, Locke’s patron, or an adherent of his had signalled his distaste of it, observing in particular that absolute governments were not entitled to unlimited obedience. A Letter from a Person of Quality distinguished ‘bounded’ from ‘absolute’ governments. A ‘bounded’ government was one ‘limited by humane laws’, denoting a contrast with absolute governments whose rulers were bound only by God’s laws. The relevance of the distinction became .dear when A Letter asked ‘how can there be a distinction…between Absolute, and bounded Monarchys, if Monarchs have only the fear of God and no fear of humane Resistance to restrain them’. England, A Letter added, was a bounded government.12 Explanation is far from being the sole constituent of political discourse. Practical ends can be connected or annexed to theoretical writings. There has been some question about Locke’s hypothesized involvement in political affairs and about the possible practical use of his Treatises.13 But whatever the character of these, the work itself has an explanatory character. The work sets out to show how ‘political power’ is specific in its goals and limited in its authority, the latter being revocable. We find argument also in two modes. Of course the argument has one primary subject, namely political power, but to this there were not one but two origins. All power was of God,14 but derived from Him either directly or indirectly. The former source worked when God conveyed power by His command to some individual or group. This in effect meant conveyance through scripture. The latter source suggested that power was mediated through a longer route, as for instance popular consent. This would be discovered most characteristically through reason. Locke had therefore to deal in the media of both scripture and reason and through these needed to both dispatch absolutism and establish ‘bounded’ government. This may sound a complicated agenda, but the structure of Locke’s argument is straightforward enough. The first of his Two Treatises concerns primarily scripture and his second reason, though Locke deployed both media in each. He criticized absolutism and developed his alternative pari passu. For in his attack on Filmer throughout the first book Locke laid down several premises from which his own argument about government in the second proceeded, whilst that argument itself offered an alternative to the devices of absolutism by explaining a ‘bounded’ government. The two books of Two Treatises of Government form a continuous treatment of Locke’s theme. III His Two Treatises were complementary, for each considered one of two routes. The first book considered one of the explanations that power is directly of God. This was the one developed in Locke’s day by churchmen like Ussher and Sanderson, and found most extendedly in Filmer.15 Locke set out to destroy Filmer’s explanation of absolutism. Locke’s second book provided an account of power on the other model by the ‘indirect’ route. They were not merely complementary in subject matter, but also in their manner of treating it. For Locke’s First Treatise provided a description of God’s purposes which provides a large part of the basis of the Second Treatise. The First16 is usually conceived as a refutation of one explanation of absolutism, and a rather tedious one at that. This judgement of tedium perhaps obscures the fact that the way in which Locke executed his attack on Filmer’s view of political superiority involves also the rebuttal of Filmer’s view of God’s purposes: and brought with it a relocation of His intentions and, conformably, of political superiority. Locke’s method of dealing with superiorities, whether negatively or positively, was demonstrative in the sense that he set out to show the terms in which political superiority was created by tracing out connections amongst ideas. This method harmonized with his philosophical approach. By demonstration Locke intended ‘noe thing else but shewing men how they shall see right’.17 In his first book Locke was concerned to break the connections Filmer had set up, whilst in his second he aimed to establish connections of his own. Filmer dealt essentially in one superiority, on the basis of which he attempted to establish a wide range of connections. In his view God had conferred on Adam a universal superiority over the earth and mankind. God’s medium of expression was preserved in scripture and His conferral was direct. The contents of the grant comprised a superiority over the world as a whole: a power which was absolute over all Adam’s descendants and unlimited in extent, as well as a parallel lordship over the whole earth and its creatures. This authority, Filmer argued, passed by descent to subsequent monarchs so that they enjoyed an absolute and unlimited power over person and property.18 Locke was not much amused by these connections. He required for the purposes of his own argument about government that man by nature be free from any superior (excepting God).19 Filmer asserted that everyone had a superior, and that was one whose authority was complete in every way. Locke’s first book was devoted to unpicking Filmer’s connections. Sometimes his method was to suggest that these were insecurely grounded in scripture. At other times he argued that Filmer had not connected his ideas properly. These arguments are in their nature ad hominem. They are fairly exhaustive, though those who have not been exhausted before reaching section 80 know that Locke went beyond the text that found its way into print to discuss grant, usurpation and election as titles to government.20 But in the course of breaking Filmer’s connections Locke suggested some of his own. There were two points of especial importance here. First, the absence of power given directly by God to one individual allows us to suppose that the same faculties presume the same moral standing for all, since God had made those faculties and their make reflected His intentions, because (Locke assumed) God acted purposively. That is to say, the similarity of people one to another afforded no grounds for setting one human above another: and so they should have the same status. As Locke put it, Creatures of the same species and rank promiscuously born to all the same advantages of Nature and the use of the same faculties, should be equal one amongst another without Subordination…unless the Lord and Master of them all, should by any manifest Declaration of his Will set one above another.21 To this equality is correlated freedom from direction by others, for the faculties possessed were adequate to self-direction, and so direction by another was intellectually superfluous: or, in Locke’s own words, people were in ‘a State of perfect Freedom to order their Actions…as they think fit…without asking leave, or depending upon the Will of any other Man’.22 Self-direction was the product of adequate and equal faculties, subject (of course) to God’s superiority and His direction.23 This identity of status amongst people ‘born to all the same advantages’, as we shall see in a moment, was important in explaining the duty of preservation, which in its turn was integral to Locke’s view of political organization. But central to many other matters is our second point. Locke provided an explanation of a superiority common to the whole human race, a superiority over the world and its creatures, whether as dominion or as right, and suggests duties addressed to all. All these are cast in terms of the very point to which Locke alluded in his statement of equality, namely that the human intellect was a salient aspect of the image of man in God. These are found in what Locke terms ‘the great design of God’.24 This design, as its name suggests, signified God’s purpose for the human race. The direction was straightforward: people were required ‘to promote the great Design of God, Increase and Multiply’. This language alluded to the narrative of God’s setting the human race over lower animals recorded in the first chapter of Genesis. Indeed Locke adduced just this to emphasize the purpose. The specification in full runs as follows: And God Blessed them, and God said unto them, be Fruitful and Multiply and Replenish the Earth and subdue it, and have Dominion over the Fish of the Sea, and over the Fowl of the Air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the Earth [I Gen. 28] and it is unambiguous. The God of Locke commanded the human race to propagate themselves, subdue the earth and have dominion over creatures. This was the ‘great and primary Blessing of God Almighty’.25 Though the great design was cast as a command, it implied a right. To be specific, it explained how mankind collectively had a right to dominion and indeed property over the earth and over its creatures. Locke distinguished the concepts of dominion and property. But he was clear that the benediction of Genesis ix, 1–3, to Noah and his sons gave to the human race ‘the utmost Property Man is capable of, which is to have a right to destroy any thing by using it’.26 So mankind collectively had a right to property in the earth and its creatures. How was the presence of a right made clear? We might say, simply, through revelation, but though true this would not be complete. The allusion to dominion makes the point clear. Dominion over animals, we may note, derived to mankind from their intellectual superiority. The common assumption of the day was that animals did not think or, if they did, that their thought was so conspicuously beneath man’s that they were manifestly his inferiors. Thus he was their superior or, as Locke put it, had ‘Dominion, or Superiority’27 over them. In the language of the piece known as Draft B, one of his early writings on the human mind, ‘it is the Understanding that sets man above the rest of sensible beings & gives him all that dominion he hath over them’.28 This was because mankind was like God, in that it had a superior understanding, ‘for wherein soever else the Image of God consisted, the intellectual Nature was certainly a part of it’.29 Thus the possession of the imago dei produced the right. God made the grant, of course, for the sake of a purpose. A phrase common to both Genesis texts we have mentioned (1, 28 and 9, 1) specified the same purposes for mankind’s performance in the same general terms, namely: be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. This general formula may be mediated into a number of particular forms. One of these is worth especial attention. The intention implicit in the grant required people to preserve themselves. Locke, indeed, indicated that there was a duty of self-preservation,30 a duty which was matched by a desire for survival and whose content pointed towards the perpetuation of God’s design.31 We may infer that the great design gave people a right to the means of self-preservation; for example, to destroy an animal in order to eat it. Locke inferred as much himself, remarking that God would be unlikely to give property to Adam alone because it is more reasonable to think, that God who bid Mankind increase and multiply, should rather himself give them all a Right, to make use of the Food and Rayment, and other Conveniences of Life, the Materials whereof he had so plentifully provided for them32 In short the great design suggested that God had given the earth to all mankind, having in mind that it should survive and increase. A duty to preserve oneself was implicit in this. Here we see Locke deploying conceptions gathered from the general thought of the day, not least his own. Self-preservation was a concern of writing about natural law, including his own Essays. The notion of the human dominion over animals had appeared in his writings on this understanding. These assumed also that God had equipped people with apprehensions fitting them to survive. We may add, if we care, that the design’s prescription for the multiplication of mankind captured Locke’s assumption, seen in his early writings on political economy, that large populations were best.33 More pointedly, we may say that Locke had taken these motifs and formed from them a determinate pattern. That pattern, as we shall see, was central to his political thought. We should attend to the generic form behind these formulations: that God had signified an intention for mankind. The design presents a teleology—an end or ends marked out by God for mankind to follow. The ‘great Design’ is an example of the sort of intentionality Locke had quietly attributed to God in constructing Draft B in 1671. The general principle that there was such a divine plan does not imply the content of the example of it Locke adduced in his Treatises, of course. But there is a continuity of thought between his early writings on the understanding and his political doctrine. For he assumed in the former that God had equipped mankind with apprehensions adapted to survival and to allow it to dominate the earth and its animals: in the latter the ‘great Design’ embodied these suppositions. For it was mankind’s ‘Senses and Reason’, as well as his desires, that set it on the path God had indicated.34 Thus Locke’s view of the human understanding informed the bases of his politics. We should now turn to the super-structure. III These points were significant for Locke’s larger intention. They provided some of the major bases for his argument about political power in his second book and concurrently about society too. The Essay… of Civil-Government, like the first book, was concerned with superiorities in society. Locke took care to distinguish these from each other. His prime concern was the superiority of the civil government (or, as he put it, magistrate over the citizen). This was differentiated carefully from the superiority of lord over slave (or, as Locke called it, absolute power). To this end Locke distinguished types of power. He was concerned not just with demonstration but also with relations. Space precludes treating all of these here, but it is worth glimpsing the full extent of Locke’s project. That is to say Locke wished to distinguish the relation between magistrate and subject from that between father and child or between master and slave, amongst others. In his own words: I think it may not be amiss, to set down what I take to be Political Power. That the Power of a Magistrate over a Subject, 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 which distinct Powers happening sometimes together in the same Man, if he be considered under these different Relations, it may help us to distinguish these Powers one from another, and shew the difference betwixt a Ruler of a Common-wealth, a Father of a Family, and a Captain of a Galley.35 To these we might add the control which an owner enjoys over property, for Locke treated this in a manner congruent with his view of political power. Thus the Essay…of Civil-Government presented an alternative to Filmer’s conflation of these different relations. It did so, of course, in the interests of explaining ‘bounded’ government. This argument required that people by nature have no superior. This meant a political superior. Locke was not disposed to deny the superiorities inherent in the society of his day, of parents over children or the owner over his property, for instance.36 But Filmer had identified freedom by nature from a political superior as the central assumption of limited government.37 Locke was as good as Filmer’s word. Locke’s method of explaining the difference amongst different relations was to outline their source—in his vocabulary, their original. The original, in fact, was one, in that they were all referred to God’s intentions. These are best understood by referring to the great design. All the relations important to Locke’s argument are explained, wholly or partly, in terms of the great design, except for the relations of master and slave. It is this common explanation which united the terms of Locke’s Essay…concerning Civil- Government. Viewed as a list of contents, the principal items of the Essay might appear somewhat miscellaneous. Duties of self-preservation and preservation, slavery, property and political organization, to name no others, follow each other in a succession which does not seem entirely orderly at first blush. But there is a connection between these items. The laws of self-preservation and preservation explain the terms on which government is instituted, just as Locke’s treatment of slavery illustrates how God’s purposes limited these terms. The great design had a major role in all of these arguments. The duty of selfpreservation was part of the design. We shall see that the law of preservation follows from it, once set in conjunction with freedom, equality and the golden rule. God’s superiority, prescribing self-preservation, excluded slavery (except in some marginal cases) and suggested that men must remain free. Property in general, we know from the First Treatise, derives to mankind from the great design. We shall see that property could be made private through an aspect of freedom; and that privatization was required by the terms of the design. Parental power Locke explained through the function of fitting children to be free and the design will explain the binding character of the function. After all this, it is natural to reflect that rights traditionally associated with Locke’s name, all relate to the design. Government, of course, existed to protect them. In short, Locke’s account of political power is related to the view of human purpose which he called the great design of God. IV If we start with government we soon find ourselves drawn back to the great design. Locke argued that civil government was empowered by two rights—rights belonging to the individual and whose exercise he or she delegated to ensure that they would be applied efficiently. These were the rights to execute the law of nature and to preserve oneself. These rights themselves derive from two duties, to preserve others and to preserve oneself.38 We have seen the duty to preserve oneself in book one, but what of duty to preserve others? The idea of a duty to preserve others is quite intelligible in itself. Its explanation is another matter. It does not figure in scripture. Locke argued that because we have a duty to preserve others: that ‘Every one as he is bound to preserve himself…so by the like reason…ought he, as much as he can, to preserve the rest of Mankind’.39 How can we explain it? Locke, as often in his Treatises, may seem to write elliptically in explaining the law of preservation. But he had no need to be more than allusive because he employed an idea well known to his contemporaries. The law of preservation he explained by combining man’s desire for self-preservation with the golden rule. The golden rule was a central item in the thought of the day. The agent’s duty, therefore, could be summarized in the form: love God, and thy neighbour as thyself. This thought figured in a variety of Christian sources, from St. Matthew to Hooker (to go no further). So habitual was its use that there was evidently little need to set it out in explicit language. But its role becomes clear as we pursue the reasoning in chapter 2 of his Essay on…Civil-Government.40 Locke reminded the reader that men were in a state of freedom and equality and went on to say that Hooker had made ‘this equality of Men by Nature’ ‘the Foundation of that Obligation to mutual Love amongst Men, on which he Builds the Duties they owe one another’.41 Hooker had argued that each man should expect no more from his neighbour than he himself performed, for they were equal by nature and so in that respect there was no ground for differentiating between them. He also wrote of taking care to satisfy what one supposed one’s neighbour to desire. This follows on the ground of equality. Let us put these considerations more formally. The conjunction of the golden rule with desire we may describe first in very general terms. It implies the procedure of putting oneself, mentally, in another’s place. There one considers how one would like to be treated if really in his or her shoes. One formulates one’s conclusion as a rule and one should treat others according to it if one wishes to deserve like conduct from them towards oneself. The procedure could be stated formally in these terms: it cannot be right for A to treat B in a manner in which it would be wrong for B to treat A, merely on the ground that they are two different individuals, and without there being any difference between the nature or circumstances of the two which can be stated as a proper ground for any difference of treatment. Locke chose to adduce the ‘strong desire of Self-preservation’, which we have seen correlated to the great design, ‘the desire, strong desire of Preserving his Life and Being…Planted in him, as a Principle of Action by God himself’.42 This desire, joined with the golden rule, brings us to the law of preservation. There is a further significance to self-preservation: on Locke’s terms it prevented absolutism on the terms preferred by modern thinkers. To trace power directly from God was one route to the absolutist destination. But the same result could be had by an unreserved transfer of right from free men, as we have noted. These arguments presupposed that people were free to transfer their rights. Locke precluded this by asserting that people answerable to God and that God required of them conduct incompatible with an unreserved transfer of freedom. God required man to preserve himself and self-preservation was ensured by freedom from absolute power. According to Locke the only reason why anyone would attempt to gain absolute power over another was to threaten his life.43 To subordinate oneself to a superior without reservation was therefore out of the question: Freedom from Absolute, Arbitrary Power, is so necessary to, and closely joyned with a Man’s Preservation, that he cannot part with it…For a Man, not having the Power of his own Life, cannot, by Compact, or his own Consent, enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the Absolute, Arbitrary Power of another, to take away his Life, when he pleases. No body can give more Power than he has himself; and he that cannot take away his own Life, cannot give another power over it.44 So people could not countenance submission to absolutism in this mode because they were answerable to God and because the content of God’s purposes required them to retain their natural freedom. Freedom, that is to say, cannot be utterly alienated. We shall see that it could be transferred in order to execute other purposes, but that only on conditions which admitted recall. Thus the operations Locke attributed to God restricted the range of possible governments. V Locke had not only to explain political power but also to explain those values his society prized. Once the ability to direct oneself and so the basis of civil freedom had been established, property was the most important of these. Hence the second of Two Treatises passes from freedom (in chapters 2–4) to property (in chapter 5). This ordering had a logic beyond psychological linkage (it has the latter because liberty and property were key values in politics in Locke’s day). For having established political power in terms of God’s design, including intellect and freedom, it was incumbent upon him to explain property in a like manner. Locke placed the retention of freedom significantly, for freedom in his hands would be the instrument of explaining how property could be private. To explain it so was important, for the prevalent style of explanation founded private property on terms that admitted absolutism. To substitute a version that grounded private property in freedom rather than subjection would be a major coup. What was the task before Locke? The great design of God gave property in the earth and its creatures to mankind collectively. The question, then, was how to move from that to private property. Locke explained this in terms of freedom, for he argued that it was an attribute of a free man that his labour was his own. It was free labour, under the auspices of the great design once more, that produced appropriation and was present in the accumulation of more sophisticated forms of property. A dictionary of the seventeenth century distinguished an individual’s property by its independence from others’ control, defining it as ‘the highest right that a man hath or can have to any thing, which is no way depending vpon any other mans courtesie’.45 The writer followed the usage we employ today by applying this definition only to material possessions. Locke is well known for construing the term in a broader way. He embraced not only property as land and goods but also the property each man had in his person. This dual usage is important because it situated ‘property’ in his wider political explanation. Locke needed to treat private property in a certain way in order to sustain his own political theory. His Second Treatise undertook to explain political power in a way which distinguished it from other sorts of power. He wished to do so in a way incompatible with absolutism. The plausibility of his doctrine to contemporary readers would depend not just on his reasoning about political power itself but also on showing that property could be explained adequately within the terms Locke proposed. His wider argument would not be acceptable if it did not base their cherished property soundly. Political theory likewise explained property in terms which made it easy to refer it to government. The most powerful explanation was Grotius’. He assumed that mankind originally held property in common and subsequently agreed to partition it amongst themselves, thus producing private property. Pufendorf added the refinement of classifying the original ownership by the whole community in two ways, as negative (which was common because not marked out by any action) and positive (which was common to a given group but not to outsiders), but he did not modify the fundamental theory.46 Whilst this view of itself implies nothing about government, the two combined easily in the suggestion that only government could produce an enforceable and therefore stable partition. Hobbes asserted that ‘there be no Propriety, no Dominion, no Mine and Thine distinct’ without government.47 Hence private property turned out to be the creation of governmental power. That the most persuasive criticism of Grotius came from a source radically hostile to natural freedom did not help. Filmer had pointed out an acute difficulty in producing a division of common property because he disliked the implications of the natural freedom it implied.48 Such a division, he argued, would require a consent of all mankind. Hobbes’s view that the state of nature could hardly sustain a viable agreement about property was equally unhelpful to anyone who wished to explain property without relying on government. Their arguments in effect required a new explanation of private property from one who wished both to uphold natural freedom and to explain property in terms free of governmental attachments. Locke noted the difficulty49 and proceeded to solve it. The Second Treatise set out an explanation of property which is founded on natural freedom and is incompatible with absolutism. Locke reasoned from the assumption that man was by nature free of a political superior: he retained his natural freedom. That left open the way to set property in terms of freedom. How was this accomplished? If a human being were free it followed that ‘every Man has a Property in his own Person’.50 If a human being enjoyed freedom from another’s control it followed that they had authority over themselves. As we have seen the seventeenth century called this exclusive control dominium. Sometimes too it was called property or suum. This control referred to the qualities inhering in a person and was thought to comprise his life, limbs, liberty and so on. Grotius described it as life, liberty, limbs, honour and reputation. Those who opposed absolutism emphasized that material possessions belonged with these, so that property in the ordinary sense was classified as suum rather than explained through government. Hence within the framework of dominium property in the sense of control over oneself came to include property in goods and estates. The Lockean trinity of life, liberty and property is only one example of this.51 It was one thing to move property in the concrete sense on the conceptual map and another to explain it in terms that would securely locate it there. Writers before Locke had not attempted this. He did so by suggesting that a deployment of the agent’s dominium, his property in the wider sense, produced property in the narrower one. When Locke emphasized the property each had in his person, he added that the ‘Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands…are properly his’.52 That labour Locke used as the means to property. It was easy to describe this as appropriation, since it implied taking something to oneself. The activity had been mentioned by Grotius and Pufendorf, but only marginally.53 Locke made appropriation the instrument of acquiring property. But why should this use of the agent’s property, his ‘labour’, produce property in the ordinary sense? It is a mystery why applying one’s labour to something, even consuming it, makes the thing taken one’s own.54 After all we call one variety of this activity theft. The solution is that the world already belonged to God, who required mankind to use it for an end which necessitated labour. Locke had argued for God’s superiority in his Essays and assumed it in his Treatises: and indeed His ownership of the world was a datum common to all writers on the subject of property. They assumed, additionally, that He had given the world to man: Filmer argued one man, Adam, and Grotius and the rest all mankind. His donation was supposed, by Grotius and Filmer amongst others, to take the form declared in Genesis: be Fruitful and Multiply and Replenish the Earth and subdue it. Locke, of course, had used this passage to found his God’s great design, and here we see its special bearing on property. That lies in a point which is itself quite small, but which has important implications. Most writers treated this instruction of God’s merely as a permission— Filmer described it officially as a blessing or benediction and Grotius as a right—which entitled people to live on the earth but did not demand anything of them. Locke by contrast treated it as a direction from God to man. This interpretation was crucial for his argument about property.55 The command was conveyed through both revelation and reason. The former, as we have seen, disclosed that God had set up ‘the Dominion of the whole Species of Mankind, over the inferior Species of Creatures’ and that this was entailed by His command. ‘God who bid Mankind increase and multiply’ intended to ‘give them all a Right to make use of the Food and Rayment, and other Conveniences of Life, the Materials whereof he had so plentifully provided for them’.56 The latter, we may add, was made as an inference from the nature of man and the world to the effect that God meant man to use the earth to preserve himself: ‘God…spoke to him, (that is) directed him by his Senses and Reason…to the use of those things, which were serviceable for his Subsistence, and given him as means of his Preservation’.57 So God not only gave the world to man but also gave it for a purpose. That purpose, the preservation and increase of the human race, was integral to Locke’s account of property. In the first place it required appropriation as the means of God’s design and therefore legitimated that activity. Locke was quick to insist that this required appropriation. ‘God, who hath given the World to Men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of Life, and convenience’, he remarked, and reason pretty soon concluded that ‘there must of necessity be a means to appropriate’ things before they could be used by anyone. The means of appropriation was labour. Hence the man who laboured in order to sustain life acquired property because He did as God willed with God’s creation. ‘The Law Man was under’, in Locke’s words, ‘was rather for appropriating’.58 Whilst appropriation of itself suggested consumption or seizure, it could also be the instrument of service to the end attributed to God. His command to subdue the earth could be glossed to legitimate property in land. ‘God and his Reason commanded him to subdue the Earth’, we read, ‘i.e. improve it for the benefit of Life’ which was achieved through appropriating land and farming it. The increase of mankind could be sustained, it seemed, by fencing in ground and more pointedly by improving land. Locke insisted eventually that at least 90 per cent ‘of the Products of the Earth useful to the Life of Man’ were ‘the effects of labour’.59 The institution of money would encourage improvement still more, for it removed the limit to rational labour and acquisition set by the perishable character of natural products: people could exchange their produce for money.60 Thus both land and money turned out to be terms in God’s design, for they both implied an increase in the resources available to sustain the human race. Locke wrote near the end of his life that ‘Propriety, I have no where found more clearly explain’d than in a Book intituled Two Treatises of Government’.61 The outstanding immodesty of the assertion bespeaks the importance of a plausible explanation of property for his purpose. It accommodated the principal varieties of property in a way which relied upon man’s natural freedom; it avoided the difficulties which Filmer and Hobbes had seen in the Grotian account; and it was incompatible with absolutism. So property and political power fell into the same pattern of explanation for Locke. So the great design, because it involved freedom, made possible an explanation of private property in terms congruent with Locke’s view of political power. VI Locke had indicated that political power resided in each agent. He had explained property in a way which showed that it was prior to civil government and unrelated to the underpinning of polity. Instead he referred both property to his view of God’s intentions in the great design. But one great task remained: to treat government itself in the same terms. For Locke’s task was at once to explain government and to limit it. To explain government was necessary, because otherwise the obvious safeguard of liberty and property would be absent. For despite the suspicion of rulers built into the structure of Two Treatises both of its books assume the need for government. The explanation would have to be managed in terms of freedom too, in order to show how Locke’s argument, which had begun without political superiors, conducted his reader to a secure government. That government had to be limited, in order to fulfil the aim of establishing ‘bounded’ government. One task, then, was to show how a polity could exist on his terms and the other was to show its limitations. To show that government could exist legitimately was straightforward enough. The rights of each and everyone to preserve themselves and to execute the law of nature, which we have seen flow from Locke’s general views, explained government easily enough. Locke supposed that in order to secure the objectives corresponding to these rights people would consent to creation of a political society, that is to say a society whose governors were entitled to pursue just those objectives.62 To suppose these rights inhered to each individual presupposed that everyone by nature was free of a political superior. So government was founded on terms compatible with freedom. More positively he conceived that the agent’s natural endowments, reason and will, could be used to establish political power on terms that suited him. First, setting up a government was a rational act. Civil government was a device designed to secure the ends embodied in God’s design. It was supposed to secure them better than individual agents considered separately could secure them. For it made sense for people to do collectively what they could not individually.63 Locke argued, in effect, that the creation of government was an exercise of rationality. The very act of setting up a government implied adding something to nature. In this sense government for Locke was artifice. As such it appeared at an intelligible stage in the text. For having begun the second book of Two Treatises with natural matters, such as the endowments of mankind and their duties under natural law, Locke had moved to matters that required action, such as the acquisition of property and the exercise of parenthood. These activities, of course, accorded with God’s prescriptions. But they involved people acting to better the nature they had received, whether by improving the earth or educating a child. Making a government, too, meant bettering the state of nature and was a deliberate act of artifice. Yet it remains to ask, to what, precisely, did people consent? Locke’s answer was cast in terms of reason and freedom. VII So far examination of political power has suggested that it was an instrument for securing certain ends, those connected with God’s intent. His plans for mankind explained and defined its authority. It followed that an authority that was not defined so stood apart from this divinely warranted pattern. Absolutism, Locke felt able to conclude, was not a form of government at all.64 Having distinguished political power thus, Locke examined its character. Polity, according to him, had three aspects—executive, legislative and federative. The distinction, as stated in his text, was amongst functions. One agency was to legislate, another to execute the laws and so on, and another still to conduct foreign relations. These were not necessarily distinctions amongst personnel, for in government one agent might have more than one function.65 It was the distinction of those functions that mattered, for it was integral to the responsible character of government. That is to say, Locke wished to subordinate the executive and federative to the legislative and to show that the latter depended on the consent of the governed.66 Locke specified that the purpose for which government existed was to sustain rights. How does this relate to the matters discussed so far? Right in Locke can be understood in relation to authority. In its root sense the latter involved an ability to direct. To say that A had authority over B would imply that A was able to direct B more successfully than B could have managed for himself. This would be partly a matter of intellect and partly of other faculties. Where faculties were in some sense equal, no one was better equipped by nature to guide others, as we have noted. But Locke maintained his general model. Hence, for example, God’s authority over people derived from His superior ability to direct and to reward or punish them. This superiority, Locke thought, gave Him a right to deal with mankind as He chose.67 On this model, right would be an attribute of a bearer of authority. It would be attributable in respect of a superiority, meaning by that both that it accrued to a superior and referred to the aspect in which he or she excelled the inferior. Since God was superior to all forms of existence, His right held good over all aspects of creation. But we need not assume that the right enjoyed by a mere human agent over another would be so complete. In particular we might emphasize that God’s supereminent superiority gave Him a right over everything. It followed that His inferiors enjoyed a right only on terms of aspect and extent granted by Him. We have seen already that mankind enjoyed a right to the earth and its creatures because God decided it was so. We have seen, too, that God enlarged the extent of that grant (to embrace destroying the animals). It is worth adding the more striking illustration that people enjoyed life only as God chose.68 On this basis, then, rights would be grants made by God. This affects how we understand the concept of right. Most importantly, the attribution of right to an agent would relate to God’s purposes. After all, God, if understood as wise, would not deal out rights without purpose. Rights would be attributed to those capable of doing His work and, by the same measure, discontinued if the capability were misused. Thus, for example, all human agents have the same faculties, faculties which were supposed to be adequate for self-direction. Hence each agent was entitled to direct himself or herself. This implies a right to be free from the direction of others, ‘the Right of my Freedom’.69 Again, each agent had a superiority over their persons, described by Locke as their right (and sometimes their property). The language suggests an exclusive possession, beyond the proper role of other human agents: but this self-direction was subject to direction by God. We find Locke’s statement of the agent’s independence was subject to natural law. By the same measure we find that those who contravened God’s purposes decisively lost their rights, most dramatically by forfeiting their lives.70 Second, there may be an extension of usage, an extension relating to purpose. It happens several times in Locke’s thought that rights are attributed to people by reason of the fact that they correspond to the means necessary to do God’s work. Amongst these we can list the right to use the earth and its creatures as a means of self-preservation (without which the duty to preserve oneself would be impossible), and the right to punish aggressors (glossed immediately after its appearance as the right to execute the law of nature); without supposing this, as Locke pointed out, natural law could not be enforced terrestrially.71 This brings us to a further sense which right denoted, namely agreement with measures prescribing proper conduct. This was present generally in the seventeenth century, as in Hobbes’s view that right existed where the laws were silent.72 With Locke there is the special assumption that rights would not merely accord with law but would relate to the purpose for which the latter was made. This was true, for example, of the rights protected by government. What was the subject matter of these? We say traditionally, life, liberty and property. These cohere as parts in God’s design. Liberty was a condition of Locke’s design, for the liberty it denoted was that of an agent independent of another’s direction.73 Property, as we have seen, was in its simplest form acquired in terms of the great design and in more sophisticated forms authorized by it. The generality of the formulation ‘life’ accords with the design. ‘Life’ is certainly general and seems oddly so, till we remember that activities to which it relates are as various as, preserve self and preserve others, charity and bring up children—and all of these in the best way possible.74 Thus these rights refer to states of being integral to the purpose Locke attributed to God. So we see that the authorities on earth authorized by God—political, familial and so on—are to be explained in terms of His purpose, the great design. In a like way the rights enjoyed by governors answered to the purpose Locke laid out. These rights issued directly from the rights enjoyed by every agent to preserve himself (and others) and to punish aggressors, which were themselves inferred from the law of preservation.75 These rights proved difficult to exercise, and the point of government was to execute them where the individual could not do so easily. Because the creation of a polity was an exercise in rationality, the same purposes for which it was created bounded its activity. This meant, first, that just as the agent had only a limited range of actionsopen to him or her legitimately, so too the government was restricted. The authority of polity came from the power an agent enjoyed over herself under the terms of the great design. That was limited and so polity at the utmost would enjoy no more. Locke put the matter with a clarity edging on pleonasm. ‘No Body can transfer to another more power than he has in himself; he wrote, and no Body has an absolute Arbitrary Power over himself or over any other, to destroy his own Life, or take away the Life or Property of another. A Man, as has been proved, cannot subject himself to the Arbitrary Power of another; and having in the State of Nature no Arbitrary Power over the Life, Liberty, or Possession of another, but only so much as the Law of Nature gave him for the preservation of himself, and the rest of Mankind; this is all he doth, or can give up to the Commonwealth.76 Where with Marvell the same arts that did a power gain must it maintain, with Locke the same power which did a power create bounded it. Its boundaries were threefold. They lay with creation and function and forfeiture. Locke’s agenda in the creation of a government did not admit of an unreserved contract, unlike Bodin, Grotius or Hobbes. These theorists had conceived that the agent was subject to no constraints on how he disposed of his or her person. For instance, it was permissible to enslave oneself. On these terms a transfer of right to a ruler could be complete and irreversible. But for Locke, because government was an instrument created for a specific end, it ceased to have validity when it ceased to serve that end. Thus polity loses its authority so soon as the purposes for which it was set up were violated.77 Thus he made out his model of bounded government. VIII Locke’s political theory took elements from his preceding thought and treated them in a manner that combined them with the devices and the needs of current thought in order to explain his preferred style of government. Locke wished to explain that government must be responsible, rather than absolute. Two items were especially significant in his project. These were his view of God as mankind’s legislative superior, drawn from his moral theory, and his assessment of human faculties, based upon his writings on the human understanding, but not developed there in quite this direction. He used these devices, in company with his view of relations, to attribute a divinely-warranted pur-pose to mankind, which comprised an understanding of morality and of human life inconsistent with absolutism and favouring ‘bounded’ government. This account suggests that Locke was a more powerful and single-minded theorist than the figure found in our textbooks. This may be a surprise, but should not be. For it should hardly be anticipated that the author of An Essay concerning Human Understanding would be less acute in dealing with politics: though this is not to say that his work is flawless. NOTES 1 In the vocabulary of the seventeenth century ‘power’ connoted the Latin potestas, which embraces both authority and the ability to enforce one’s will. Hence Locke’s project of explaining political power has an emphasis on the normative. Note too that the century was reduced to describing power without right as power de facto. The author would like to thank Dr. Ian Tipton for commenting on an earlier draft. 2 E.g. [4.49], 537; the example could be matched by many others. 3 The outstanding specimen is now a classic: [4.54]. 4 For different derivations of absolutism, cf. [4.20], chs 1–2 in [4.23]; [4.15] esp. 1.8, cf. [4.21] in [4.23], 172–83; [4.25], I.iii.viii.1–2; [4.26] H.xviii. 5 Locke’s manuscripts were edited by Wolfgang Von Leyden under this title as [4.1] and reedited by Robert Horwitz, Jenny Strauss Clay and Diskin Clay as [4.2]. This latter work expresses reservations about Von Leyden’s edition: but these, if valid, would not affect the use of the text made here. The older edition (i.e. [4.1]) is cited because more accessible. Since Von Leyden’s text is printed with a facing translation I have given the folio numbers printed in his edition in order to give a continuous numeration. 6 See [4.12], Ia, Iae.94 and generally 90–7 and Ia.IIae. 10–12; [4.27], 403:612; [4.17], IV: 3–5; [4.19]. 7 See e.g. [4.12], Ia.IIae.94.a.2. For an important commentary on the aspect of selfpreservation, see [4.51]. 8 [4.1], no. 4,ff. 60–1, pp. 156/158. 9 [4.33], I.iv: 31. Cf. II.v: 267: To admonish and reprehend is not an action of an Inferior’. 10 [4.1], no. 4, ff. 52–9, pp. 150–6. 11 [4.6], preface; I.i.i; II.i.i; title page: 153, 155, 159, 285. 12 [4.13], i, 16. 13 See for this especially [4.38]. This fascinating volume has attracted a great deal of comment, much of which is used by [4.39]. Ashcraft replied to this in [4.40]. 14 [4–59] xiii:i. 15 See [4.32], with a preface by Robert Sanderson. 16 Strictly there is no work entitled First Treatise and the expression Second Treatise appears as part of a larger title page. Locke regularly denominated both as books (see the contents page, [4.6], 157 and 159, 285). The usage, however, is convenient. 17 [4.5], sect. 44:153. 18 This is found most fully in the manuscript piece, given to the world after Filmer’s death as [4.20]. 19 The logic is well illustrated in [4.16], i: ‘It is certain, that the Law of Nature has put no difference nor subordination among Men…so that…all Men are born free’. 20 [4.6], I.viii.So: 220, a passage that, curiously, Dr Laslett and the other commentators have overlooked in trying to discover the contents of the lost ending of First Treatise. 21 [4.6], II.ii.4:287. 22 Ibid. 23 For a fuller examination of this passage, including its intellectual background, see the present writer’s [4.46], ch. 6. 24 [4.6], I.iv.41:188. 25 [4.6], I.iv.41:23, 33:188, 174f., 182f. 26 [4.6], I.iv.39:185. 27 Ibid. 28 [4.5], sect 1:101. Sensible means accessible to sensation; a contrast is being drawn implicitly with angels and other spirits supposed to be usually beyond detection by human faculties. 29 [4.6], I.iv.30:180. 30 [4.6], I.ix.86:223: For the desire, strong desire of Preserving his Life and Being having been Planted in him, as a Principle of Action by God himself, Reason, which was the Voice of God in him, could not but teach him and assure him, that pursuing that natural Inclination he had to preserve his Being, he followed the Will of his Maker. 31 [4.6], I. ix. 86:222f.: God having made Man, and planted in him…a strong desire of Self-preservation, and furnished the World with things fit for Food and Rayment and other Necessaries of Life, Subservient to his design, that Man should live and abide for some time upon the Face of the Earth, and not that so curious and wonderful a piece of Workmanship by its own Negligence, or want of Necessaries, should perish again, presently after a few moments continuance. 32 [4.6], I.iv.41:187. 33 See [4.5], sect. 39:147, For our facultys being suited…to the preservation of us to whome they are given or in whome they are & are accommodated to the uses of life, they serve to our purposes well enough if they will but give us certain notice of those things that either delight or hurt us, are convenient or inconvenient to us. Also [4.3], 102f.; ‘Trade’ in [4.4], ii: 485; cf. [4.6], I.iv.33:183 and I.iv.41:188, on depopulation under absolutist regimes. 34 [4.6], I.ix.86:223. 35 [4.6], II.i.2:286. 36 See notably [4.6], II. vi.54:322. 37 [4.20], I.i; [4.23], 2–5. 38 In logical sequence, [4.6], II.ii.8–11:290–2; vii. 87–8:341–3. 39 [4.6], II.ii.6:289. 40 For a fuller explanation of this derivation, see [4.47]. 41 [4.6], II.ii.5:288. 42 [4.6], I.ix.86:223. 43 [4.6], II.iii.17:297. 44 [4.6], II.iv.23:302. 45 [4.18], s.n. Property. 46 [4.25], II.2.ii, esp. 1,5; [4.29], IV.v.2,4. 47 [4.26], I.xiii: 63, cf. II.xxiv: 127. 48 For Filmer’s objections, see [4.22], 234. 49 [4.6], II.v.25:303f. 50 [4.6], II.v.27:305. 51 For an objection to slavery, without Locke ‘s argument against it, see [4.28], 36f.; for property as a quality inhering in a person, see [4.24], V.xiii: 409; for Grotius on suum, see [4.25], I.2.i.5 and II.17.2,1. It is worth remembering that Locke would admit slavery on other terms: see [4.6], II.iii-iv. 52 For instance Hobbes had included material possessions in his catalogue of ‘propriety’, but had been able to suggest that along with other examples of suum they were explained by the BIBLIOGRAPHY Works by Locke 4.1 Essays on the Law of Nature, ed. Wolfgang Von Leyden, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1954, etc. See also 4.2 Questions concerning the Law of Nature, ed. Robert Horwitz, Jenny Strauss Clay and Diskin Clay, edition of the same mss as [4.1], London, Cornell University Press, 1990. 4.3 ‘An Essay concerning Toleration’ (1667) in C.A.Viano (ed.) Scritti Editi e Inediti sovereign’s actions: see [4.26], II.xxx: 179. [4.6], II.v.27:305f. 53 Pufendorf only discussed appropriation after partition (see [4.29], IV.iv.12) and Grotius used the verb arripere to describe prior appropriation, which scarcely suggests a legitimate title to property (see [4.25], II.2.ii.1). 54 For some gaminesque queries, see [4.55], 174–82. 55 [4.22] in [4.20], 217; [4.25], II.2.ii.1. 56 [4.6], I.iv.28:178f.; 41:187. 57 [4.6], I.ix.86:223. 58 [4.6], II.v.26:304; v.35:310; II.v.37:312: ‘he who appropriates land to himself by his labour, does not lessen but increase the common stock of mankind’. 59 See seriatim [4.6], II.v.28–9 (consumption), 30 (seizure), 32 (improvement), 40 (labour): 306–14. 60 [4.6], II.v.48; 50:319, 320. 61 Locke to the Rev. Richard King, 25 August 1703 in [4.9], viii: 58. 62 See generally [4.6], II.vii-ix; [4–6], II.vii.78–88:336–41. 63 [4.6], II.ix. esp. 131:371. 64 [4.6], II.xv. 169–74:398–402. 65 [4.6], II.xii generally; for personnel see xii.148:384 and xiii.15i: 386. 66 As [4.6], II.xiii esp. 149:384f. 67 [4.1], no. 4. 68 [4.6], I.iv.39:185f.; [4.8], 8 for the fact that human life was understood to be God’s: ‘if God afford them a Temporary, Mortal Life, ‘tis his Gift, they owe it to his Bounty, they could not claim it as their Right, nor does he injure them when he takes it from them’. Cf. [4.1], no. 4, f. 56 (p. 154). 69 [4.6], II.iii.17:297. 70 E.g. [4.6], II.ii.4:287, vi.63. 327; II.ii.11:292. 71 [4.6], I.ix.86:223; II.ii.7:289f.: the supposition of the latter right obviated Hobbes’ view that God’s law was not enforced as such on earth (but only as a terrestrial sovereign’s command): but the Lockean God gave people a legitimate title to enforce His commands. 72 E.g. [4.26], I.xiv: 64; [4.31], II.i: 167–8; [4.30], I.xiv.3:194 and the young Locke [4.1], no. 1, f.11: no. 73 See [4.46] for this. 74 For charity see [4.47], sect. 2. 75 See p.106 above. 76 [4.6], II.xi.135:375. 77 See esp. [4.6], II.xix.211–19:424–9. sulla Toleranza, Turin, Taylor Turino, 1961. 4.4 Locke on Money, ed. Patrick Kelly, 2 vols, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991. 4.5 Draft B in Drafts for the Essay concerning Human Understanding and other philosophical writings, ed. P.H.Nidditch and G.A.J.Rogers, vol. i, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990. 4.6 Two Treatises of Government ed. Peter Laslett, 2nd edn, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1967. 4.7 An Essay concerning Human Understanding ed. P.H.Nidditch, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1975. 4.8 The Reasonableness of Christianity as delivered in the scriptures, London, 1956. 4.9 The Correspondence of John Locke ed. E.S.de Beer, Oxford, 8 vols, Oxford University Press, 1976–89. Amongst the works of Locke not mentioned here, especially important are 4.10 Two Tracts of Government, ed. Philip Abrams, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1967 and 4.11 Epistola de Tolerantia, ed. Raymond Klibansky, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1968. Other Primary Works 4.12 Aquinas, Thomas Summa Theologica, trans. T.Gilby et al, London, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 60 vols, 1963–75. 4.13 Anon. A Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend in the Country, n.p. [probably London], 1675. 4.14 Anon. Vox Populi, Vox dei, London, 1681. 4.15 Bodin, Jean Les Six Livres de la Republique (1576), ed. and trans. M.J.Tooley, Oxford, Blackwell, 1955. 4.16 Burnet, Gilbert An Enquiry into the Measures of Submission to the Supream Authority, London, 1688. 4.17 Calvin, Jean Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans, F.L.Battles, 2 vols, London, S.C.M. Press, 1962. 4.18 Cowell, John The Interpreter, Cambridge, 1607. 4.19 Culverwell, Nathaniel A Learned and Elegant Discourse of the Light of Nature, ed. R.A.Greene and H.Macallum, Toronto, Toronto University Press, 1971. 4.20 Filmer, Sir Robert Patriarcha, 4.21 The Necessity of the Absolute Power of all Kings, 4.22 Observations concerning the Originall of Government all in 4.23 Patriarcha and Other Writings, ed. J.P.Sommerville, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991. 4.24 Fuller, Thomas The Holy State and the Prophane State, Cambridge, 1642. 4.25 Grotius, Hugo De Jure Belli ac Pacis, Paris, 1625. 4.26 Hobbes, Thomas Leviathan, London, 1651. 4.27 Luther, Martin Werke, Weimar, 1883-. 4.28 Parker, Henry Jus Populi, London, 1644. 4.29 Pufendorf, Samuel De Jure Naturae et Gentium, Lund, 1672; edn Amsterdam, 1688. 4.30 Elementa Jurisprudentiae Universalis, 1660, edn, Cambridge, 1672. 4.31 Taylor, Jeremy Ductor Dubitantium, 1660; edn London, 1676. 4.32 Ussher, James The Power Communicated to the Prince by God, London, 1660, with a preface by Robert Sanderson. 4.33 Walker, Obadiah Of Education, Oxford, 1673. Other Works A full listing of secondary works will be found in 4.34 Hall, R., and Woolhouse, R.S. Eighty Years of Locke Scholarship, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1983, which covers 1900–80. Subsequent work is listed annually in the 4.35 Locke Newsletter, ed. R.Hall. See too 4.36 Yolton, J.S. and J.W.John Locke: A Reference Guide, Boston, Hall, 1985. Works on Locke’s political theory include: 4.37 Ashcraft, R. Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, London, Unwin Hyman, 1987. 4.38 Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1986, on which see 4.39 Wootton, D. ‘John Locke and Richard Ashcraft’s Revolutionary Politics’, Political Studies 40 (1992): 79–98 and 4.40 Richard Ashcraft ‘Simple Objections and Complex Reality’, ibid. 40 (1992): 99– 115. 4.41 Colman, J. John Locke’s Moral Philosophy, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 1983. 4.42 Dunn, J. The Political Thought of John Locke, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1969. 4.43 Locke, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1984. 4.44 Fagiani, F. Nel crepuscolo della probilita, Naples, Bibliopolis, 1983. 4.45 Franklin, J. John Locke and the Theory of Sovereignty, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978. 4.46 Harris, I. The Mind of John Locke, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994. 4.47 ‘Locke on Justice’, Oxford Studies in the History of Philosophy: 2; Seventeenth — Century Philosophy, Oxford, forthcoming. 4.48 Parry, G. John Locke, London, Allen & Unwin, 1978. 4.49 Sabine, G. A History of Political Thought3, London, Cassell, 1963. 4.50 Tuck, R. Natural Rights Theories, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979– ‘The Modern Theory of Natural Law’ in 4.51 Pagden, A. (ed.) The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987. 4.52 Tully, J. A Discourse of Property, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980. For articles, see 4.53 Ashcraft, R. (ed.) John Locke: critical assessments, 4 vols, London, Routledge, 1991. A list of writings about Locke’s philosophy will be found in Dr Tipton’s chapter (ch.3) in this volume. For modern liberal thought, see: 4.54 Rawls, J. A Theory of Justice, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1971. 4.55 Nozick, R. Anarchy, State and Utopia, Oxford, Blackwell, 1974. 4.56 Ackerman, B. Social Justice in the Liberal State, New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 1980, and the commentaries in 4.57 Sandel, M. (ed.) Liberalism and its Critics, Oxford, Blackwell, 1982. 4.58 Campbell, T. Justice, London, Macmillan, 1988. In a distinct class is 4.59 St. Paul, Epistle to the Romans.