Second Treatise of Government

“[O]ne 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 such men 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 beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power.”

Locke’s state of war is similar to the state of nature envisioned by Hobbes, though a crucial difference is Locke’s belief that most human beings maintain some level of rationality within this state of war. In fact, it’s arguable that the only reason the state of war exists is because some men become “beasts of prey” who seek stimulation only through extreme violence and therefore must be, under Locke’s conception, either subdued or destroyed.

“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.”

This is another example of Locke returning to his conception of the state of nature and why such a state implies universal freedom. It’s an essential part of his philosophy and liberal thought because it illustrates the idea that no one, not another person or community or even the most powerful legislative assembly, has absolute power over an individual.

“[E]very man has a property in his own person.”

An interesting twist on the idea of property rights is Locke’s assertion that a person is their own property, which would mean that anything that could be considered property must be given, in some way, an extension of some of the rights with which human beings are born.

“His labour hath taken it out of the hands of nature, where it was common, and belonged equally to all her children, and hath thereby appropriated it to himself.”

This is an incredibly important component of Locke’s theory of property rights. The passage expresses the idea that property is not just an object, not just a resource, but an amalgam of some part of the common land, which all human beings share, as well as an individual’s own labor to shape it into something specific and purposeful.

“[F]or it will but very ill serve the turn of those men, who contend so much for the absolute power and authority of the fatherhood, as they call it, that the mother should have any share in it; and it would have but ill supported the monarchy they contend for.”

Locke points out that if the claim of absolute monarchy rests on some supposed dominion that the father holds over the rest of his family, it is a poorly constructed argument that does not reflect the reality or basis of family structures. Locke’s view of family dynamics holds that women possess authority over certain spheres in their roles as wives and mothers.

“It is one thing to owe honour, respect, gratitude and assistance; another to require an absolute obedience and submission.”

This passage relates to the theory of the social contract, the idea that a community consents to be government and, in doing so, surrenders some freedoms in exchange for the protection and social order provided by a governing entity. Consent is key in this theory: No one, not a king, an assembly, or another human being, has the right to demand the total subjugation of any other human being.

“And where-ever there are any number of men, however associated, that have no such decisive power to appeal to, there they are still in the state of nature.”

Without a government to appeal to for impartial decisions, people automatically exist within the state of nature, regardless of the complexity of the community they have formed. This reflects Locke’s belief in an inherent equality among all men.

“For he that thinks absolute power purifies men’s blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read but the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced of the contrary.”

This is an attack on the widespread assumption that royalty, being divinely ordained from birth by God, was absent of any of the base or lesser qualities possessed by normal human beings. As the saying goes, absolute power corrupts, absolutely.

“And if we may not suppose men ever to have been in the state of nature, because we hear not much of them in such a state, we may as well suppose the armies of Salmanasser or Xerxes were never children, because we hear little of them, till they were men, and imbodied in armies.”

Locke defends his interpretation of the state of nature. His critics would attack him for having no proof that such a state ever existed, much less that it continues to exist even within political societies. Locke responds by saying that supposing it never existed because it hadn’t been heard of, or accurately identified, is as ludicrous as assuming someone was never a child because one never heard them discuss their childhood.

“[E]ither all men, however born, are free, or else there is but one lawful prince, one lawful government in the world.”

This is a challenge to Robert Filmer’s assertion that monarchs have a right to rule by being divine descendants of Adam. According to Locke, Adam’s lineage would be self-evident, and in that case, only one monarch could ever exist, and they would be far and above both normal human beings and even the most distinguished and divinely ordained royalty. Given that Adam’s lineage is not self-evident, as any divine blood would be, all men, no matter who they are or where they are from, are naturally and always born free.

“[W]hereas he, that has once, by actual agreement, and any express declaration, given his consent to be of any common-wealth, is perpetually and indispensably obliged to be, and remain unalterably a subject to it, and can never be again in the liberty of the state of nature; unless by any calamity, the government he was under comes to be dissolved; or else by some public act cuts him off from being any longer a member of it.”

Once an individual consents to be governed, their status as a citizen is protected. It can only be reversed by the individual renouncing his citizenship or by the people dissolving or deposing the government, as is their right if the political society fails to ensure their rights and interests.

“The great and chief end, therefore, of men’s uniting into common-wealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property.”

Property rights are a key component of Locke’s philosophy of government. In fact, in Locke’s view, protecting property rights is the end goal of a political society, as governments are created not to serve themselves but to protect a people’s rights and interests.

“By common-wealth, I must be understood all along to mean, not a democracy, or any form of government, but any independent community, which the Latines signified by the word civitas.”

It’s important to note that Locke wasn’t by any means a democrat. His forms of government could technically work under a government similar to a monarchy, as long as it possessed all the functions of the liberal state he outlines in the Treatise.

“The rules that they make for other men’s actions, must, as well as their own and other men’s actions, be conformable to the law of nature i.e. to the will of God, of which that is a declaration, and the fundamental law of nature being the preservation of mankind, no human sanction can be good, or valid against it.”

Locke explains that legislatures cannot make laws that would conflict with the laws of nature. Anything that goes against the law of nature—meaning therefore the state of nature, meaning further the community that supports the political system—is detrimental to the welfare of the people and should be discarded.

“But in governments, where the legislative is the one lasting assembly always in being, or in one ma, as in absolute monarchies, there is danger still that they will think themselves to have a distinct interest from the rest of the community; and so will be apt to increase their own riches and power, by taking what they think fit from the people.”

Legislatures are vital institutions, which means it’s absurdly important that a people keep watch over them. If a legislature begins to cede itself to individuals or ideas that distance it from the community, it no longer serves the people and should be examined and perhaps reformed.

“Hence it is, that the controversies that happen between any man of the society with those that are out of it, are managed by the public; and an injury done to a member of their body, engages the whole in the reparation of it.”

Those who commit crimes against another individual don’t just harm the individual but the community as a whole. Consequently, they must be dealt with as though they have done injury to the entire community by doing injury to one member.

“[I]t often comes to pass, that in governments, where part of the legislative consists of representatives chosen by the people, that in tract of time this representation becomes very unequal and disproportionate to the reasons it was at first established upon.”

In this salient and prescient point, Locke notes that communities often undergo slow, gradual changes in any number of proportions. If the legislature and its proportions ever grow out of alignment with the composition of the community, then the people are within their rights to remold the legislature so it accurately represents the current community rather than an outdated model.

“And therefore they have a very wrong notion of government, who say, that the people have incroached upon the prerogative, when they have got any part of it to be defined by positive laws.”

Those who defend the government’s actions by saying that average people have no conception of what the government is or what it should do are forgetting that the government is not supposed to be alien to the people. Trying to make it so divests its interests from the people and the common good, rendering it at best inoperative and at worst tyrannical.

“[T]he reigns of good princes have been always dangerous to the liberties of their people: for when their successors, managing the government with different thoughts, would draw the actions of those good rulers into precedent, and make them the standard of their prerogative, as if what had been done only for the good of the people was a right in them to do, for the harm of the people, if they so pleased.”

This is a warning that leaders are apt to often draw from the good or noble actions of their predecessors and, either by accident or intention, use these past honors to cement their own personal control over the liberties and rights of their people. In short, they will harm the people in the name of keeping them safe.

“Political power is that power, which every man having in the state of nature, has given up into the hands of the society, and therein to the governors, whom the society hath set over itself, with this express or tacit trust, that it shall be employed for their good, and the preservation of their property.”

It’s important to note the qualifier Locke adds in this quote. Men may give up some aspects of the liberties they possess in the state of nature to form a political society, but that is only so long as that political society is employed for their good.

“Should a robber break into my house, and with a dagger at my throat make me seal deeds to convey my estate to him, would this give him any title?”

Violent action, whether by conquerors or kings, does not confer control over the rights of men.

“The injury and the crime is equal, whether committed by the wearer of a crown, or some petty villain.”

If all men are born equal, it doesn’t matter whether you’re royalty or a petty thief—the crimes you commit cause injury, and the punishment should be proportionate to both.

“[W]hen the government is dissolved, the people are at liberty to provide for themselves, by electing a new legislative, differing from the other, by the change of persons, or form, or both, as they shall find it most for their safety and good: for the society can never, by the fault of another, lose the native and original right it has to preserve itself, which can only be done by a settle legislative, and a fair and impartial execution of the laws made by it.”

This vital idea holds that the community, the people who live in a political system, are well within their rights to dispose of the system whenever they see fit. These rights cannot be taken away or ever amended—they are inherent, natural, and God-given.