John
Locke, 1632-1704, was an important English philosopher,
whose political views have been profoundly influential.
His views on government were expressed in his work Two
Treatises of Government. He asserted that government
rests on the consent of the governed and that revolution
is permissible when government subverts the natural rights
(life, liberty and property) of the people.
Excerpt
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.
Chapter
II: Of the State of Nature 
To
understand political power aright, and derive it from its
original, we must consider what estate all men are naturally
in, and that is, 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.
A
state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction
is reciprocal, no one having more than another, there being
nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species
and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages
of Nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also
be equal one amongst 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. . . .
But
though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state
of license; though man in that state have 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; all the servants of one sovereign
Master, sent into the world by His order and about His business;
they are His property, whose workmanship they are made to
last during His, not one another's pleasure. And, being
furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community
of Nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination
among us that may authorize us to destroy one another, as
if we were made for one another's uses, as the inferior
ranks of creatures are for ours. Every one as he is bound
to preserve himself, and not to quit his station willfully,
so by the like reason, when his own preservation comes not
in competition, ought he as much as he can to preserve the
rest of mankind, and not unless it be to do justice on an
offender, take away or impair the life, or what tends to
the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb,
or goods of another.
And
that all men may be restrained from invading others' rights,
and from doing hurt to one another, and the law of Nature
be observed, which willeth the peace and preservation of
all mankind, the execution of the law of Nature is in that
state put into every man's hands, whereby every one has
a right to punish the transgressors of that law to such
a degree as may hinder its violation. For the law of Nature
would, as all other laws that concern men in this world,
be in vain if there were nobody that in the state of Nature
had a power to execute that law, and thereby preserve the
innocent and restrain offenders; and if any one in the state
of Nature may punish another for any evil he has done, every
one may do so. For in that state of perfect equality, where
naturally there is no superiority or jurisdiction of one
over another, what any may do in prosecution of that law,
every one must needs have a right to do.
And
thus, in the state of Nature, one man comes by a power over
another, but yet no absolute or arbitrary power. . . .
Chapter
III: Of the State of War
[It
is] reasonable and just I should have a right to destroy
that which threatens me with destruction; for by the fundamental
law of Nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible,
when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent
is to be preferred, and one may destroy a man who makes
war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being,
for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion, because
they are not under the ties of the common law of reason,
have no other rule but that of force and violence, and so
may be treated as a beast of prey, those dangerous and noxious
creatures that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls
into their power.
And
hence it is that he who attempts to get another man into
his absolute power does thereby put himself into a state
of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration
of a design upon his life. For I have reason to conclude
that he who would get me into his power without my consent
would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and
destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for nobody can
desire to have me in his absolute power unless it be to
compel me by force to that which is against the right of
my freedom- i.e. make me a slave. To be free from such force
is the only security of my preservation, and reason bids
me look on him as an enemy to my preservation who would
take away that freedom which is the fence to it; so that
he who makes an attempt to enslave me thereby puts himself
into a state of war with me. He that in the state of Nature
would take away the freedom that belongs to any one in that
state must necessarily be supposed to have a design to take
away everything else, that freedom being the foundation
of all the rest; as he that in the state of society would
take away the freedom belonging to those of that society
or commonwealth must be supposed to design to take away
from them everything else, and so be looked on as in a state
of war. . . .
20.
But when the actual force is over, the state of war ceases
between those that are in society and are equally on both
sides subject to the judge; and, therefore, in such controversies,
where the question is put, "Who shall be judge?"
it cannot be meant who shall decide the controversy; every
one knows what Jephtha here tells us, that "the Lord
the Judge" shall judge. Where there is no judge on
earth the appeal lies to God in Heaven. That question then
cannot mean who shall judge, whether another hath put himself
in a state of war with me, and whether I may, as Jephtha
did, appeal to Heaven in it? Of that I myself can only judge
in my own conscience, as I will answer it at the great day
to the Supreme Judge of all men.
Chapter
IV: Of Slavery
The natural liberty of man is to be
free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under
the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only
the law of Nature for his rule. The liberty of man in society
is to be under no other legislative power but that established
by consent in the commonwealth, nor under the dominion of
any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative
shall enact according to the trust put in it. Freedom, then,
is not what Sir Robert Filmer tells us: "A liberty for
every one to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and
not to be tied by any laws"; but 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. A liberty to follow my own will in all things
where that rule prescribes not, not to be subject to the inconstant,
uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man, as freedom
of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of
Nature.
This
freedom from absolute, arbitrary power is so necessary to,
and closely joined with, a man's preservation, that he cannot
part with it but by what forfeits his preservation and life
together. . . .
Chapter
VIII: Of the Beginning of Political Societies
MEN being, as has been said, by nature
all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of
this estate and subjected to the political power of another
without his own consent, which is done by agreeing with other
men, to join and unite into a community for their comfortable,
safe, and peaceable living, one amongst another, in a secure
enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against
any that are not of it. This any number of men may do, because
it injures not the freedom of the rest; they are left, as
they were, in the liberty of the state of Nature. When any
number of men have so consented to make one community or government,
they are thereby presently incorporated, and make one body
politic, wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude
the rest.
For, when any
number of men have, by the consent of every individual,
made a community, they have thereby made that community
one body, with a power to act as one body, which is only
by the will and determination of the majority. . . .or else
it is impossible it should act or continue one body, one
community, which the consent of every individual that united
into it agreed that it should; and so every one is bound
by that consent to be concluded by the majority. . . .
And thus every
man, by consenting with others to make one body politic
under one government, puts himself under an obligation to
every one of that society to submit to the determination
of the majority, and to be concluded by it; or else this
original compact, whereby he with others incorporates into
one society, would signify nothing, and be no compact if
he be left free and under no other ties than he was in before
in the state of Nature.
Chapter IX: of
the Ends of Political Society and Government
If man in the state
of Nature be so free as has been said, if he be absolute lord
of his own person and possessions, equal to the greatest and
subject to nobody, why will he part with his freedom, this
empire, and subject himself to the dominion and control of
any other power? To which it is obvious to answer, that though
in the state of Nature he hath such a right, yet the enjoyment
of it is very uncertain and constantly exposed to the invasion
of others; for all being kings as much as he, every man his
equal, and the greater part no strict observers of equity
and justice, the enjoyment of the property he has in this
state is very unsafe, very insecure. This makes him willing
to quit this condition which, however free, is full of fears
and continual dangers; and it is not without reason that he
seeks out and is willing to join in society with others who
are already united, or have a mind to unite for the mutual
preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which
I call by the general name- property.
The great and chief end, therefore,
of men uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves
under government, is the preservation of their property;
to which in the state of Nature there are many things wanting.
Chapter XV: Of Despotical Power
. . . Despotical power is an absolute,
arbitrary power one man has over another, to take away his
life whenever he pleases; and this is a power which neither
Nature gives, for it has made no such distinction between
one man and another, nor compact can convey. . . . For having
quitted reason, which God hath given to be the rule betwixt
man and man, and the peaceable ways which that teaches,
and made use of force to compass his unjust ends upon another
where he has no right, he renders himself liable to be destroyed
by his adversary whenever he can, as any other noxious and
brutish creature that is destructive to his being.
Chapter XIX: Of the Dissolution
of Government
The reason why men enter into
society is the preservation of their property; and the end
while they choose and authorise a legislative is that there
may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to
the properties of all the society, to limit the power and
moderate the dominion of every part and member of the society.
For since it can never be supposed to be the will of the
society that the legislative should have a power to destroy
that which every one designs to secure by entering into
society, and for which the people submitted themselves to
legislators of their own making: 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. Whensoever, therefore, the
legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society,
and either by ambition, fear, folly, or corruption, endeavor
to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other,
an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates
of the people, by this breach of trust they 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, which is the end for
which they are in society. What I have said here concerning
the legislative in general holds true also concerning the
supreme executor, who having a double trust put in him,
both to have a part in the legislative and the supreme execution
of the law, acts against both, when he goes about to set
up his own arbitrary will as the law of the society.
Whosoever
uses force without right- as every one does in society who
does it without law- puts himself into a state of war with
those against whom he so uses it, and in that state all
former ties are cancelled, all other rights cease, and every
one has a right to defend himself, and to resist the aggressor.
Edited
by Jennifer Brainard, c. Historywiz 2000-2003
The
Enlightenment |
