John Locke
Second Treatise of Government
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Table of contents
PREFACE
CHAPTER. I.
CHAPTER. II.
CHAPTER. III.
CHAPTER. IV.
CHAPTER. V.
CHAPTER. VI.
CHAPTER. VII.
CHAPTER. VIII.
CHAPTER. IX.
CHAPTER. X.
CHAPTER. XI.
CHAPTER. XII.
CHAPTER. XIII.
CHAPTER. XIV.
CHAPTER. XV.
CHAPTER. XVI.
CHAPTER. XVII.
CHAPTER. XVIII.
CHAPTER. XIX.
PREFACE
Reader,
thou hast here the beginning and end of a discourse concerning
government; what fate has otherwise disposed of the papers that
should have filled up the middle, and were more than all the rest, it
is not worth while to tell thee. These, which remain, I hope are
sufficient to establish the throne of our great restorer, our present
King William; to make good his title, in the consent of the people,
which being the only one of all lawful governments, he has more fully
and clearly, than any prince in Christendom; and to justify to the
world the people of England, whose love of their just and natural
rights, with their resolution to preserve them, saved the nation when
it was on the very brink of slavery and ruin. If these papers have
that evidence, I flatter myself is to be found in them, there will be
no great miss of those which are lost, and my reader may be satisfied
without them: for I imagine, I shall have neither the time, nor
inclination to repeat my pains, and fill up the wanting part of my
answer, by tracing Sir Robert again, through all the windings and
obscurities, which are to be met with in the several branches of his
wonderful system. The king, and body of the nation, have since so
thoroughly confuted his Hypothesis, that I suppose no body hereafter
will have either the confidence to appear against our common safety,
and be again an advocate for slavery; or the weakness to be deceived
with contradictions dressed up in a popular stile, and well-turned
periods: for if any one will be at the pains, himself, in those
parts, which are here untouched, to strip Sir Robert's discourses of
the flourish of doubtful expressions, and endeavour to reduce his
words to direct, positive, intelligible propositions, and then
compare them one with another, he will quickly be satisfied, there
was never so much glib nonsense put together in well-sounding
English. If he think it not worth while to examine his works all
thro', let him make an experiment in that part, where he treats of
usurpation; and let him try, whether he can, with all his skill, make
Sir Robert intelligible, and consistent with himself, or common
sense. I should not speak so plainly of a gentleman, long since past
answering, had not the pulpit, of late years, publicly owned his
doctrine, and made it the current divinity of the times. It is
necessary those men, who taking on them to be teachers, have so
dangerously misled others, should be openly shewed of what authority
this their Patriarch is, whom they have so blindly followed, that so
they may either retract what upon so ill grounds they have vented,
and cannot be maintained; or else justify those principles which they
preached up for gospel; though they had no better an author than an
English courtier: for I should not have writ against Sir Robert, or
taken the pains to shew his mistakes, inconsistencies, and want of
(what he so much boasts of, and pretends wholly to build on)
scripture-proofs, were there not men amongst us, who, by crying up
his books, and espousing his doctrine, save me from the reproach of
writing against a dead adversary. They have been so zealous in this
point, that, if I have done him any wrong, I cannot hope they should
spare me. I wish, where they have done the truth and the public
wrong, they would be as ready to redress it, and allow its just
weight to this reflection, viz. that there cannot be done a greater
mischief to prince and people, than the propagating wrong notions
concerning government; that so at last all times might not have
reason to complain of the Drum Ecclesiastic. If any one, concerned
really for truth, undertake the confutation of my Hypothesis, I
promise him either to recant my mistake, upon fair conviction; or to
answer his difficulties. But he must remember two things.First,
That cavilling here and there, at some expression, or little incident
of my discourse, is not an answer to my book.Secondly,
That I shall not take railing for arguments, nor think either of
these worth my notice, though I shall always look on myself as bound
to give satisfaction to any one, who shall appear to be
conscientiously scrupulous in the point, and shall shew any just
grounds for his scruples.I
have nothing more, but to advertise the reader, that Observations
stands for Observations on Hobbs, Milton, &c. and that a bare
quotation of pages always means pages of his Patriarcha, Edition
1680.
CHAPTER. I.
AN
ESSAY CONCERNING THE TRUE ORIGINAL, EXTENT AND END OF CIVIL
GOVERNMENTSect.
1. It having been shewn in the foregoing discourse,(1).
That Adam had not, either by natural right of fatherhood, or by
positive donation from God, any such authority over his children, or
dominion over the world, as is pretended:(2).
That if he had, his heirs, yet, had no right to it:(3).
That if his heirs had, there being no law of nature nor positive law
of God that determines which is the right heir in all cases that may
arise, the right of succession, and consequently of bearing rule,
could not have been certainly determined:(4).
That if even that had been determined, yet the knowledge of which is
the eldest line of Adam's posterity, being so long since utterly
lost, that in the races of mankind and families of the world, there
remains not to one above another, the least pretence to be the eldest
house, and to have the right of inheritance:All
these premises having, as I think, been clearly made out, it is
impossible that the rulers now on earth should make any benefit, or
derive any the least shadow of authority from that, which is held to
be the fountain of all power, Adam's private dominion and paternal
jurisdiction; so that he that will not give just occasion to think
that all government in the world is the product only of force and
violence, and that men live together by no other rules but that of
beasts, where the strongest carries it, and so lay a foundation for
perpetual disorder and mischief, tumult, sedition and rebellion,
(things that the followers of that hypothesis so loudly cry out
against) must of necessity find out another rise of government,
another original of political power, and another way of designing and
knowing the persons that have it, than what Sir Robert Filmer hath
taught us.Sect.
2. To this purpose, 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 wealth, a father of
a family, and a captain of a galley.Sect.
3. POLITICAL POWER, then, I take to be a RIGHT of making laws with
penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the
regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of
the community, in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of
the commonwealth from foreign injury; and all this only for the
public good.
CHAPTER. II.
OF
THE STATE OF NATURE.
Sect.
4. TO understand political power right, and derive it from its
original, we must consider, what state 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.
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