Two Treatises of Government E-Book

John Locke

• Herausgeber: Passerino
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

The Two Treatises of Government is a renowned work of political philosophy written by English philosopher John Locke. The treatises were published in 1690 and were an important influence on the development of liberal political thought.

The first treatise argues against the divine right of kings and the idea that political power is derived from God. Instead, Locke asserts that individuals possess natural rights to life, liberty, and property, and that these rights cannot be legitimately taken away by any government or individual. He also argues that individuals have the right to overthrow a government that fails to protect these rights.

The second treatise focuses on the role of government and how it should be structured to protect individual rights. Locke argues that government exists to protect natural rights and that it derives its authority from the consent of the governed. He also emphasizes the importance of the separation of powers and the idea that government should be limited in its scope and power.

John Locke (1632-1704) was an English philosopher and physician, known as one of the most influential thinkers of the Enlightenment era. He is considered the father of liberalism and empiricism, which held that knowledge comes from experience and observation rather than innate ideas.

Locke's most famous work is An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in which he argues against the idea of innate ideas and posits that the mind is a blank slate or " tabula rasa" at birth, which is then filled with ideas and knowledge through experience.
He also believed in the natural rights of life, liberty, and property, which influenced the American Declaration of Independence.

In addition to his philosophical work, Locke was involved in politics and served as a physician for the government. He wrote several other works on politics, religion, and education, including Two Treatises of Government and Some Thoughts Concerning Education.

Preface by Federica Rainaldi.
Federica Rainaldi has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Bologna. Her previous publications include Making sense of Italian politics (Part 1 and 2), online at www.politcsworldwide.com; and Il policy change tra nuovi paradigmi e vecchie pratiche. Le politiche idriche in Italia e Inghilterra, in Rivista Italiana di Politiche Pubbliche, n.1/2011 (with R. Scintu). She currently lives and works in England.

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John Locke

Two Treatises of Government

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Table of contents

Introduction

The Preface

Book I. Of Government

Chapter I. The Introduction

Chapter II. Of Paternal and Regal Power

Chapter III. Of Adam’ s Title to Sovereignty by Creation

Chapter IV. Of Adam’s Title to Sovereignty by Donation, Gen. i. 28

Chapter V. Of Adam’s Title to sovereignty by the subjection of Eve

Chapter VI. Of Adam’s Title to Sovereignty by Fatherhood

Chapter VII. Of Fatherhood and Property considered together as Fountains of Sovereignty

Chapter VIII. Of the Conveyance of Adam’s Sovereign Monarchical Power

Chapter IX. Of Monarchy by Inheritance from Adam

Chapter X. Of the Heir to Adam’s Monarchical Power

Chapter XI. Who Heir?

Book II. Of Civil Government

Chapter I. The Introduction

Chapter II. Of the State of Nature

Chapter III. Of the State of War

Chapter IV. Of Slavery

Chapter V. Of Property

Chapter VI. Of Paternal Power

Chapter VII. Of Political or Civil Society

Chapter VIII. Of the Beginning of Political Societies

Chapter IX. Of the Ends of Political Society and Government

Chapter X. Of the Forms of a Commonwealth

Chapter XI. Of the Extent of the Legislative Power

Chapter XII. Of the Legislative, Executive, and Federative Power of the Commonwealth

Chapter XIII. Of the Subordination of the Powers of the Commonwealth

Chapter XIV. Of Prerogative

Chapter XV. Of Paternal, Political, and Despotical Power, considered together

Chapter XVI. Of Conquest

Chapter XVII. Of Usurpation

Chapter XVIII. Of Tyranny

Chapter XIX. Of the Dissolution of Government

Introduction

John Locke’s (1632 – 1704) Two Treatises of Government were published anonymously in the autumn of 1689 (and dated 1690, as it was the custom at the time). Earlier that year, the English Parliament had formally deposed the Stuart King James II for breaking the original contract with his subjects and had instated William II in his place. While avoiding escalation into another English Civil War – the memory of which was still very much alive at the time – the Glorious Revolution put an end to the Stuart’s catholic absolutism and, with the Bill of Rights, laid the foundations for the English constitutional monarchy. William and his wife Mary (protestant daughter of James II), were required to swear to govern according to the laws made by Parliament, including the Bill of Rights, which laid down limits on the powers of the crown and established the rights of Parliament.

A medical doctor and amateur scientist, author of work on psychology and epistemology, Locke developed his interest in politics following his involvement with the Whig party (the main opponent in Parliament to Stuart rule). He first became involved with the Whigs through Lord Ashley, first Earl of Shaftesbury and Whig Party founder. Locke started to work as Lord Ashley’s personal physician and secretary in 1667 and was forced into exile twice, following the political fortunes of Shaftesbury. While in exile in the Netherland Locke became associated with the political programme of William of Orange (the future king) and returned to England in 1688 together with William’s wife Mary.

Locke’s treatises should be read as the manifesto of the Glorious Revolution. Although he draws on ideas and concepts typical of traditional English constitutionalism – the existence of limitations to the power of the king – Locke’s major contribution to modern political philosophy is the systematisation of these arguments inside a theory of social contract. Whereas Hobbes’ Leviathan (written not long before the Two Treatises) declined this theory in favour of absolutism, Locke opens the social contract to modern liberalism and constitutionalism.

Against the danger of absolute power, Locke aimed at building a model of political order that could limit monarchy rule. The First Treatise is dedicated to rebut the thesis expressed in Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, a work defending absolute rule on the basis of the divine rights of kings. Filmer’s thesis, presented by Locke in Chapter 2, is based on Old Testament history. According to Filmer, men are not born free, but always subject to an absolute ruler. The author of Patriarcha derives the absolute power of kings from two fundamental powers God entrusted upon Adam: the fatherly power over all of humanity and the power over the resources of the earth.

Locke bases his counter-arguments on a different exegesis of the Bible. Having knowledge of the original Hebrew text, Locke maintains that Adam’s creation did not give rise to any sovereignty over men or resources. Adam’s paternity over his progeny cannot in fact be assimilated to monarch rule, and God gave control of earth’s resources to all mankind, not exclusively to Adam. Therefore, according to Locke, one cannot associate Adam with an absolute power over humanity. Furthermore, Locke tells us, even if this claim existed, it will have to be established how it was transferred to his progeny; and even if we were able to demonstrate that Adam’s claim, as an absolute ruler over all of mankind, was transferred to his descendants, it would still be impossible to establish Adam’s line of descent.

This way Locke resolves, in the first part of his work, his political theology. Like Hobbes before him, he believes in a complete separation between the realm of God and that of men and in the interruption of every form of communication between them. At the end of the First Treatise Locke makes clear that there can be no space for God or religion as a source of legitimation for the political power. It is on these bases that he can build, in the Second Treatise, his model of politics.

If Hobbes’ state of nature is notoriously a place where man is wolf to man, Locke’s anthropology is less negative and his state of nature more nuanced and complex. As a state of perfect equality and freedom, Locke’s state of nature is governed by a law of nature. This rational law establishes the absence of any subordination amongst men, and the obligation to avoid doing harm to one another. It also establishes the right of every man to be a judge and executor of the same law, and therefore the right to punish the offenders. Interestingly, the right to property is also seen by Locke as a natural right. For him, private propriety rights arise when a man mixes his labour with something, therefore drawing it into his private ownership, while at the same time increasing its value.

Thus, in Locke’s state of nature there is already a form of moral and rational law of reciprocal respect. War is not an inevitable condition; it is possible to live in the state of nature without recurring to conflict. Locke recognises the existence of a theoretical Justice that could be applied in the state of nature if men were truly impartial. In other words, the anarchic individualism typical of the state of nature creates a relative benevolent condition for men, where some form of associated life is theoretically possible. However, war and conflict are still very likely to occur because of the lack of established and settled laws, of known and impartial judges, and of an executive power.

Therefore, even though Locke recognises the possibility of associated life in the state of nature, the transition to political order still requires a demarcating moment indicating the passage from the state of nature to a consensual political society. This moment is represented by the social contract. Locke’s contract is a pact amongst equal men, which creates a body politic through the transfer of every man’s natural rights. However, Locke specifies that although men give up the right to life, freedom and property, as well as the right to judge and to apply the law of nature, it is only this last one that is fully transferred to civil society, while the natural rights to life, freedom and property become civil and political rights that the positive law of the commonwealth should guarantee.

Political society is created with the specific aim of better protecting men’s natural rights through universal and impartial laws. It is for this reason that political power cannot be absolute power. For Locke the body politic created by the pact, and enacting the pact through its legislative power, should always respect the natural rights of men. An absolute sovereign would not be subjected to the law and therefore would be in a state of nature with regards to his subjects. Therefore, for Locke, political power is always instrumental to the end for which it was created, that is, the protection of men’s natural rights. Government always remains a tool that depends on the consent of the people that created it through the social contract.

Locke’s attention to the limitation of power is perhaps best expressed by his theory on the division of powers in its three main functions: legislative, executive and federative. As we have seen, legislative power is the supreme (but not arbitrary or absolute, being subject to individuals’ natural rights) power for Locke; legislative power belongs to the sovereign body politic, who usually delegates it to its representatives in Parliament. On the other hand, both executive and federative powers belong to the king. The federative power corresponds to what we would call foreign policy, while the executive power indicates, in Locke, both the power to apply the law and the power to punish the offenders.

What is of paramount importance here is that the powers of the king are fundamentally different to the sovereign power belonging to the body politic, in that they do not arise from the pact and therefore from a relationship of authorisation and representation. The king entertains with the body politic a relationship based on trust; his powers derive from a different form of pact, from an agreement based on trust. Therefore, when a king breaks the trust that the sovereign body politic has entrusted upon him, he becomes illegitimate and the people have a right to react.

With this argument, Locke effectively justifies the Glorious Revolution and the resistance of Parliament against the rule of James II. Furthermore, he also sanctions the fundamental distinction between Parliament and the sovereign people. Sovereignty lies with the body politic, who delegates it to Parliament; but if Parliament were to be dissolved (as it was after James II left London at the end of 1688), there will not be a return to the state of nature because the original contract, that gave life to political society, remains valid.

With his arguments on natural rights, popular sovereignty and the division of power, Locke is viewed as one of the fathers of classical liberalism. With his work, he updated the traditional theory of the limitation of power typical of English constitutionalism, to include the inalienable rights of men. He adapted social contract theory with the recognition of individual and social freedoms. The breadth of his influence extended well beyond his country and his time, to reach the great philosophers of the Enlightenment and America’s Founding Fathers.

The 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 slatter 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 throughly confuted his Hypothesis, that I suppose nobody 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 style, 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, Edit. 1680.

Book I. Of Government

Chapter I. The Introduction

§. 1. SLAVERY is so vile and miserable an estate of man, and so directly opposite to the generous temper and courage of our nation; that it is hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman, much less a gentleman, should plead for it. And truly I should have taken Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, as any other treatise, which would persuade all men, that they are slaves, and ought to be so, for such another exercise of wit, as was his who writ the encomium of Nero; rather than for a serious discourse meant in earnest, had not the gravity of the title and epistle, the picture in the front of the book, and the applause that followed it, required me to believe, that the author and publisher were both in earnest. I therefore took it into my hands with all the expectation, and read it through with all the attention due to a treatise that made such a noise at its coming abroad, and cannot but confess my self mightily surprised, that in a book, which was to provide chains for all mankind, I should find nothing but a rope of sand, useful perhaps to such, whose skill and business it is to raise a dust, and would blind the people, the better to mislead them; but in truth not of any force to draw those into bondage, who have their eyes open, and so much sense about them, as to consider, that chains are but an ill wearing, how much care soever hath been taken to file and polish them.

§. 2. If any one think I take too much liberty in speaking so freely of a man, who is the great champion of absolute power, and the idol of those who worship it; I beseech him to make this small allowance for once, to one, who, even after the reading of Sir Robert’s book, cannot but think himself, as the laws allow him, a freeman: and I know no fault it is to do so, unless any one better skilled in the fate of it, than I, should have it revealed to him, that this treatise, which has lain dormant so long, was, when it appeared in the world, to carry, by strength of its arguments, all liberty out of it; and that from thenceforth our author’s short model was to be the pattern in the mount, and the perfect standard of politics for the future. His system lies in a little compass, it is no more but this,

“That all government is absolute monarchy.”

And the ground he builds on, is this,

“That no man is born free.”

§. 3. In this last age a generation of men has sprung up amongst us, that would flatter princes with an opinion, that they have a divine right to absolute power, let the laws by which they are constituted, and are to govern, and the conditions under which they enter upon their authority, be what they will, and their engagements to observe them never so well ratified by solemn oaths and promises. To make way for this doctrine, they have denied mankind a right to natural freedom; whereby they have not only, as much as in them lies, exposed all subjects to the utmost misery of tyranny and oppression, but have also unsettled the titles, and shaken the thrones of princes: (for they too, by these men’s system, except only one, are all born slaves, and by divine right are subjects to Adam’s right heir;) as if they had designed to make war upon all government, and subvert the very foundations of human society, to serve their present turn.

§. 4. However we must believe them upon their own bare words, when they tell us, we are all born slaves, and we must continue so, there is no remedy for it; life and thraldom we enter’d into together, and can never be quit of the one, till we part with the other. Scripture or reason I am sure do not any where say so, notwithstanding the noise of divine right, as if divine authority hath subjected us to the unlimited will of another. An admirable state of mankind, and that which they have not had wit enough to find out till this latter age. For, however Sir Robert Filmer seems to condemn the novelty of the contrary opinion, Patr. p. 3. yet I believe it will be hard for him to find any other age, or country of the world, but this, which has asserted monarchy to be jure divino. And he confesses, Patr. p. 4. That Heyward, Blackwood, Barclay, and others, that have bravely vindicated the right of kings in most points, never thought of this, but with one consent admitted the natural liberty and equality of mankind.

§. 5. By whom this doctrine came at first to be broached, and brought in fashion amongst us, and what sad effects it gave rise to, I leave to historians to relate, or to the memory of those, who were contemporaries with Sibthorp and Manwering, to recollect. My business at present is only to consider what Sir Robert Filmer, who is allowed to have carried this argument farthest, and is supposed to have brought it to perfection, has said in it; for from him every one, who would be as fashionable as French was at court, has learned, and runs away with this short system of politics, viz. “Men are not born free, and therefore could never have the liberty to choose either governors, or forms of government.” Princes have their power absolute, and by divine right; for slaves could never have a right to compact or consent. Adam was an absolute monarch, and so are all princes ever since.

Chapter II. Of Paternal and Regal Power

§. 6. SIR ROBERT FILMER’S great position is, that men are not naturally free. This is the foundation on which his absolute monarchy stands, and from which it erects itself to an height, that its power is above every power, caput inter nubila, so high above all earthly and human things, that thought can scarce reach it; that promises and oaths, which tye the infinite Deity, cannot confine it. But if this foundation fails, all his fabric falls with it, and governments must be left again to the old way of being made by contrivance, and the consent of men ([Greek]) making use of their reason to unite together into society. To prove this grand position of his, he tells us, p. 12. “Men are born in subjection to their parents,” and therefore cannot be free. And this authority of parents, he calls royal authority, p. 12, 14. Fatherly authority, right of fatherhood, p. 12, 20. One would have thought he would, in the beginning of such a work as this, on which was to depend the authority of princes, and the obedience of subjects, have told us expressly, what that fatherly authority is, have defined it, though not limited it, because in some other treatises of his he tells us, it is unlimited, and unlimitable; 1 he should at least have given us such an account of it, that we might have had an entire notion of this fatherhood, or fatherly authority, whenever it came in our way in his writings: this I expected to have found in the first chapter of his Patriarcha. But instead thereof, having, 1. en passant, made his obeysance to the arcana imperii, p. 5.; 2. made his compliment to the rights and liberties of this, or any other nation, p. 6. which he is going presently to null and destroy; and, 3. made his leg to those learned men, who did not see so far into the matter as himself, p. 7. he comes to fall on Bellarmine, p. 8. and, by a victory over him, establishes his fatherly authority beyond any question. Bellarmine being routed by his own confession, p. 11. the day is clear got, and there is no more need of any forces: for having done that, I observe not that he states the question, or rallies up any arguments to make good his opinion, but rather tells us the story, as he thinks fit, of this strange kind of domineering phantom, called the fatherhood, which, whoever could catch, presently got empire, and unlimited absolute power. He assures us how this fatherhood began in Adam, continued its course, and kept the world in order all the time of the patriarchs till the flood, got out of the ark with Noah and his sons, made and supported all the kings of the earth till the captivity of the Israelites in Egypt, and then the poor fatherhood was under hatches, till God, by giving the Israelites kings, re-established the ancient and prime right of the lineal succession in paternal government. This is his business from p. 12, to p. 19. And then obviating an objection, and clearing a difficulty or two, with one half reason, p. 23. “to confirm the natural right of regal power,” he ends the first chapter. I hope it is no injury to call an half quotation an half reason; for God says, “Honour thy father and mother;” but our author contents himself with half, leaves out thy mother quite, as little serviceable to his purpose. But of that more in another place.

§. 7. I do not think our author so little skilled in the way of writing discourses of this nature, nor so careless of the point in hand, that he by over-sight commits the fault, that he himself, in his Anarchy of a mixed Monarchy, p. 239, objects to Mr. Hunton in these words: “Where first I charge the author, that he hath not given us any definition, or description of Monarchy in general; for by the rules of method he should have first defined.” And by the like rule of method Sir Robert should have told us, what his fatherhood or fatherly authority is, before he had told us, in whom it was to be found, and talked so much of it. But perhaps Sir Robert found, that this fatherly authority, this power of fathers, and of kings, for he makes them both the same, p. 24. would make a very odd and frightful figure, and very disagreeing with what either children imagine of their parents, or subjects of their kings, if he should have given us the whole draught together in that gigantic form, he had painted it in his own fancy; and therefore, like a wary physician, when he would have his patient swallow some harsh or corrosive liquor, he mingles it with a large quantity of that which may dilute it; that the scattered parts may go down with less feeling, and cause less aversion.

§. 8. Let us then endeavour to find what account he gives us of this fatherly authority, as it lies scattered in the several parts of his writings. And first, as it was vested in Adam, he says, “Not only Adam, but the succeeding patriarchs, had, by right of fatherhood, royal authority over their children,” p. 12. “This lordship which Adam by command had over the whole world, and by right descending from him the patriarchs did enjoy, was as large and ample as the absolute dominion of any monarch, which hath been since the creation,” p. 13. “Dominion of life and death, making war, and concluding peace,” p. 13. “Adam and the patriarchs had absolute power of life and death,” 35. “Kings, in the right of parents, succeed to the exercise of supreme jurisdiction,” p. 19. “As kingly power is by the law of God, so it hath no inferior law to limit it; Adam was lord of all,” p. 40. “The father of a family governs by no other law, than by his own will,” p. 78. “The superiority of princes is above laws,” p. 79. “”The unlimited jurisdiction of kings is so amply described by Samuel,” p. 80. “Kings are above the laws,” p. 93. And to this purpose see a great deal more which our author delivers in Bodin’s words: “It is certain, that all laws, privileges, and grants of princes, have no force, but during their life; if they be not ratified by the express consent, or by sufferance of the prince following, especially privileges,” Observations, p. 279. “The reason why laws have been also made by kings, was this; when kings were either busied with wars, or distracted with public cares, so that every private man could not have access to their persons, to learn their wills and pleasure, then were laws of necessity invented, that so every particular subject might find his prince’s pleasure decyphered unto him in the tables of his laws,” p. 92. “In a monarchy, the king must by necessity be above the laws,” p. 100. “A perfect kingdom is that, wherein the king rules all things according to his own will,” p. 100. “Neither common nor statute laws are, or can be, any diminution of that general power, which kings have over their people by right of fatherhood,” p. 115. “Adam was the father, king, and lord over his family; a son, a subject, and a servant or slave, were one and the same thing at first. The father had power to dispose or sell his children or servants; whence we find, that the first reckoning up of goods in scripture, the man-servant and the maid-servant, are numbred among the possessions and substance of the owner, as other goods were,” Observations, Pref. “God also hath given to the father a right or liberty, to alien his power over his children to any other; whence we find the sale and gift of children to have much been in use in the beginning of the world, when men had their servants for a possession and an inheritance, as well as other goods; whereupon we find the power of castrating and making eunuchs much in use in old times,” Observations, p. 155. “Law is nothing else but the will of him that hath the power of the supreme father,” Observations, p. 223. “It was God’s ordinance that the supremacy should be unlimited in Adam, and as large as all the acts of his will; and as in him so in all others that have supreme power,” Observations, p. 245.

§. 9. I have been fain to trouble my reader with these several quotations in our author’s own words, that in them might be seen his own description of his fatherly authority, as it lies scattered up and down in his writings, which he supposes was first vested in Adam, and by right belongs to all princes ever since. This fatherly authority then, or right of fatherhood, in our author’s sense, is a divine unalterable right of sovereignty, whereby a father or a prince hath an absolute, arbitrary, unlimited, and unlimitable power over the lives, liberties, and estates of his children and subjects; so that he may take or alienate their estates, sell, castrate, or use their persons as he pleases, they being all his slaves, and he lord or proprietor of every thing, and his unbounded will their law.

§. 10. Our author having placed such a mighty power in Adam, and upon that supposition sounded all government, and all power of princes, it is reasonable to expect, that he should have proved this with arguments clear and evident, suitable to the weightiness of the cause; that since men had nothing else left them, they might in slavery have such undeniable proofs of its necessity, that their consciences might be convinced, and oblige them to submit peaceably to that absolute dominion, which their governors had a right to exercise over them. Without this, what good could our author do, or pretend to do, by erecting such an unlimited power, but flatter the natural vanity and ambition of men, too apt of itself to grow and encrease with the possession of any power? and by persuading those, who, by the consent of their fellow-men, are advanced to great, but limited, degrees of it, that by that part which is given them, they have a right to all, that was not so; and therefore may do what they please, because they have authority to do more than others, and so tempt them to do what is neither for their own, nor the good of those under their care; whereby great mischiefs cannot but follow.

§. 11. The sovereignty of Adam, being that on which, as a sure basis, our author builds his mighty absolute monarchy, I expected, that in his Patriarcha, this his main supposition would have been proved, and established with all that evidence of arguments, that such a fundamental tenet required; and that this, on which the great stress of the business depends, would have been made out with reasons sufficient to justify the confidence with which it was assumed. But in all that treatise, I could find very little tending that way; the thing is there so taken for granted, without proof, that I could scarce believe myself, when, upon attentive reading that treatise, I found there so mighty a structure raised upon the bare supposition of this foundation: for it is scarce credible, that in a discourse, where he pretends to confute the erroneous principle of man’s natural freedom, he should do it by a bare supposition of Adam’s authority, without offering any proof for that authority. Indeed he confidently says, that “Adam had royal authority,” p. 12, and 13; “absolute lordship and dominion of life and death,” p. 13; “an universal monarchy,” p. 33; “absolute power of life and death,” p. 35. He is very frequent in such assertions; but, what is strange, in all his whole Patriarcha I find not one pretence of a reason to establish this his great foundation of government; not any thing that looks like an argument, but these words: “To confirm this natural right of regal power, we find in the Decalogue, that the law which enjoins obedience to kings, is delivered in the terms, Honour thy father, as if all power were originally in the father.” And why may I not add as well, that in the Decalogue, the law that enjoins obedience to queens, is delivered in the terms of Honour thy mother, as if all power were originally in the mother? The argument, as Sir Robert puts it, will hold as well for one as the other: but of this, more in its due place.

§. 12. All that I take notice of here, is, that this is all our author says in this first, or any of the following chapters, to prove the absolute power of Adam, which is his great principle: and yet, as if he had there settled it upon sure demonstration, he begins his second chapter with these words, “By conferring these proofs and reasons, drawn from the authority of the scripture.” Where those proofs and reasons for Adam’s sovereignty are, bating that of Honour thy father, above mentioned, I confess, I cannot find; unless what he says, p. 11, “In these words we have an evident confession,” viz. “of Bellarmine, that creation made man prince of his posterity,” must be taken for proofs and reasons drawn from scripture, or for any sort of proof at all: though from thence by a new way of inference, in the words immediately following, he concludes, the royal authority of Adam sufficiently settled in him.

§. 13. If he has in that chapter, or any where in the whole treatise, given any other proofs of Adam’s royal authority, other than by often repeating it, which, among some men, goes for argument, I desire any body for him to shew me the place and page, that I may be convinced of my mistake, and acknowledge my oversight. If no such arguments are to be found, I beseech those men, who have so much cried up this book, to consider, whether they do not give the world cause to suspect, that it is not the force of reason and argument, that makes them for absolute monarchy, but some other by interest, and therefore are resolved to applaud any author, that writes in favour of this doctrine, whether he support it with reason or no. But I hope they do not expect, that rational and indifferent men should be brought over to their opinion, because this their great doctor of it, in a discourse made on purpose, to set up the absolute monarchical power of Adam, in opposition to the natural freedom of mankind, has said so little to prove it, from whence it is rather naturally to be concluded, that there is little to be said.

§. 14. But that I might omit no care to inform myself in our author’s full sense, I consulted his Observations on Aristotle, Hobbes, &c. to see whether in disputing with others he made use of any arguments for this his darling tenet of Adam’s sovereignty; since in his treatise of the Natural Power of Kings, he hath been so sparing of them. In his Observations on Mr. Hobbes’s Leviathan, I think he has put, in short, all those arguments for it together, which in his writings I find him any where to make use of: his words are these: “If God created only Adam, and of a piece of him made the woman, and if by generation from them two, as parts of them, all mankind be propagated: if also God gave to Adam not only the dominion over the woman and the children that should issue from them, but also over all the earth to subdue it, and over all the creatures on it, so that as long as Adam lived, no man could claim or enjoy any thing but by donation, assignation or permission from him, I wonder,” &c. Observations, p. 165. Here we have the sum of all his arguments, for Adam’s sovereignty and against natural freedom, which I find up and down in his other treatises: and they are these following; God’s creation of Adam, the dominion he gave him over Eve, and the dominion he had as father over his children: all which I shall particularly consider.

Note: In grants and gifts that have their original from God or nature, as the power of the father hath, no inferior power of man can limit, nor make any law of prescription against them. Observations, 158.

The scripture teaches, that supreme power was originally the father, without any limitation. Observations, 245.

Chapter III. Of Adam’ s Title to Sovereignty by Creation

§. 15. SIR ROBERT, in his preface to his Observations on Aristotle’s Politics, tells us, “A natural freedom of mankind cannot be supposed without the denial of the creation of Adam:” but how Adam’s being created, which was nothing but his receiving a being immediately from omnipotence and the hand of God, gave Adam a sovereignty over any thing, I cannot see, nor consequently understand, how a supposition of natural freedom is a denial of Adam’s creation, and would be glad any body else (since our author did not vouchsafe us the favour) would make it out for him: for I find no difficulty to suppose the freedom of mankind, though I have always believed the creation of Adam. He was created, or began to exist, by God’s immediate power, without the intervention of parents or the pre-existence of any of the same species to beget him, when it pleased God he should; and so did the lion, the king of beasts, before him, by the same creating power of God: and if bare existence by that power, and in that way, will give dominion, without any more ado, our author, by this argument, will make the lion have as good a title to it, as he, and certainly the ancienter. No! for Adam had his title by the appointment of God, says our author in another place. Then bare creation gave him not dominion, and one might have supposed mankind free without the denying the creation of Adam, since it was God’s appointment made him monarch.

§. 16. But let us see, how he puts his creation and this appointment together. “By the appointment of God,” says Sir Robert, “as soon as Adam was created, he was monarch of the world, though he had no subjects; for though there could not be actual government till there were subjects, yet by the right of nature it was due to Adam to be governor of his posterity: though not in act, yet at least in habit, Adam was a king from his creation.” I wish he had told us here, what he meant by God’s appointment: for whatsoever Providence orders, or the law of nature directs, or positive revelation declares, may be said to be by God’s appointment: but I suppose it cannot be meant here in the first sense, i. e. by Providence; because that would be to say no more, but that as soon as Adam was created he was de facto monarch, because by right of nature it was due to Adam, to be governor of his posterity. But he could not de facto be by Providence constituted the governor of the world, at a time when there was actually no government, no subjects to be governed, which our author here confesses. Monarch of the world is also differently used by our author; for sometimes he means by it a proprietor of all the world exclusive of the rest of mankind, and thus he does in the same page of his preface before cited: “Adam,” says he, “”being commanded to multiply and people the earth, and to subdue it, and having dominion given him over all creatures, was thereby the monarch of the whole world; none of his posterity had any right to possess any thing but by his grant or permission, or by succession from him.” 2. Let us understand then by monarch proprietor of the world, and by appointment God’s actual donation, and revealed positive grant made to Adam, Gen. i. 28. as we see Sir Robert himself does in this parallel place, and then his argument will stand thus: by the positive grant of God: as soon as Adam was created, he was proprietor of the world, because by the right of nature it was due to Adam to be governor of his posterity. In which way of arguing there are two manifest falsehoods. First, It is false, that God made that grant to Adam, as soon as he was created, since, though it stands in the text immediately after his creation, yet it is plain it could not be spoken to Adam, till after Eve was made and brought to him: and how then could he be monarch by appointment as soon as created, especially since he calls, if I mistake not, that which God says to Eve, Gen. iii. 16, the original grant of government, which not being till after the fall, when Adam was somewhat, at least in time, and very much distant in condition, from his creation, I cannot see, how our author can say in this sense, that by God’s appointment, as soon as Adam was created, he was monarch of the world. Secondly, were it true that God’s actual donation appointed Adam monarch of the world as soon as he was created, yet the reason here given for it would not prove it; but it would always be a false inference, that God, by a positive donation, appointed Adam monarch of the world, because by right of nature it was due to Adam to be governor of his posterity: for having given him the right of government by nature, there was no need of a positive donation; at least it will never be a proof of such a donation.

§. 17. On the other side the matter will not be much mended, if we understand by God’s appointment the law of nature, (though it be a pretty harsh expression for it in this place) and by monarch of the world, sovereign ruler of mankind: for then the sentence under consideration must run thus: By the law of nature, as soon as Adam was created he was governor of mankind, for by right of nature it was due to Adam to be governor of his posterity; which amounts to this, he was governor by right of nature, because he was governor by right of nature: but supposing we should grant, that a man is by nature governor of his children, Adam could not hereby be monarch as soon as created: for this right of nature being founded in his being their father, how Adam could have a natural right to be governor, before he was a father, when by being a father only he had that right, is methinks, hard to conceive, unless he will have him to be a father before he was a father, and to have a title before he had it.

§. 18. To this foreseen objection, our author answers very logically, he was governor in habit, and not in act; a very pretty way of being a governor without government, a father without children, and a king without subjects. And thus Sir Robert was an author before he writ his book; not in act it is true, but in habit; for when he had once published it, it was due to him by the right of nature, to be an author, as much as it was to Adam to be governor of his children, when he had begot them: and if to be such a monarch of the world, an absolute monarch in habit, but not in act, will serve the turn, I should not much envy it to any of Sir Robert’s friends, that he thought fit graciously to bestow it upon, though even this of act and habit, if it signified any thing but our author’s skill in distinctions, be not to his purpose in this place. For the question is not here about Adam’s actual exercise of government, but actually having a title to be governor. Government, says our author, was due to Adam by the right of nature: what is this right of nature? A right fathers have over their children by begetting them; generatione jus acquiritur parentibus in liberos, says our author out of Grotius, Observations, 223. The right then follows the begetting as arising from it; so that, according to this way of reasoning or distinguishing of our author, Adam, as soon as he was created, had a title only in habit, and not in act, which in plain English is, he had actually no title at all.

§. 19. To speak less learnedly, and more intelligibly, one may say of Adam, he was in a possibility of being governor, since it was possible he might beget children, and thereby acquire that right of nature, be it what it will, to govern them, that accrues from thence: but what connexion has this with Adam’s creation, to make him say, that, as soon as he was created, he was monarch of the world? for it may be as well said of Noah, that as soon as he was born, he was monarch of the world, since he was in possibility (which in our author’s sense is enough to make a monarch, a monarch in habit,) to outlive all mankind, but his own posterity. What such necessary connexion there is betwixt Adam’s creation and his right to government, so that a natural freedom of mankind cannot be supposed without the denial of the creation of Adam, I confess for my part I do not see; nor how those words, by the appointment, &c. Observations, 254. however explained, can be put together, to make any tolerable sense, at least to establish this position, with which they end, viz. Adam was a king from his creation; a king, says our author, not in act, but in habit, i. e. actually no king at all.