Our main source for Locke’s political philosophy is his Two Treatises of Government, published anonymously late in 1689. Locke never openly acknowledged the work as his own during his lifetime, although his authorship of it is beyond question and is implied by a codicil to his will. It seems that it was largely composed in the early 1680s, prior to Locke’s departure to Holland in 1683 following the disclosure of the Rye House plot (see Chapter 1 above). The target of the First Treatise is Sir Robert Filmer’s ultra-royalist tract, Patriarcha (Filmer 1991), published in 1680 – almost thirty years after its author’s death – as a piece of propaganda on the part of the Tory supporters of Charles II and the right of his Roman Catholic brother James to succeed to the throne. The Second Treatise offers a positive account of the basis of legitimate government in counterbalance to the negative thrust of the First Treatise, the latter being designed to undermine Filmer’s biblically based arguments in favour of absolute royal power. The Two Treatises could not, of course, have been published while Charles II was still on the throne, in view of their implicitly seditious character. Indeed, Algernon Sidney (or Sydney), one of the Rye House conspirators, had been tried and executed for treason, partly on the evidence of a manuscript work attacking Filmer, his Discourses Concerning Government (Sidney 1996). Locke’s very possession of the manuscript of the Two Treatises at that time put him in danger of his life. But why did he choose to publish them six years later, in 1689, after English politics had taken a turn very much to his liking? Partly, no doubt, as a vindication of the course of events leading to the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the replacement of James II by William of Orange and his wife Mary – as Locke’s Preface to the Two Treatises implies. Partly too, perhaps, because Locke was anxious that the tendency of political developments following the installation of William and Mary was not as radical as he had hoped and there was some danger of a reversion to more authoritarian rule (see Ashcraft 1986, pp. 590–601). Certainly, Locke could not be sure of political stability at such a time and this may partly explain his continuing determination not to reveal his authorship of the work.
One thing that does seem relatively clear is that the Two Treatises were neither explicitly nor even implicitly intended by Locke to constitute a refutation of the greatest intellectual supporter of absolutist government of the age, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), whose Leviathan (Hobbes 1996) had appeared in 1651. Hobbes’s arguments in favour of absolutism were quite different from Filmer’s and, unlike Filmer’s, had no currency amongst the Tory politicians of the day who did support the king. Even so, from a present-day perspective, comparisons and contrasts between Hobbes’s and Locke’s political philosophies are extremely interesting and instructive. It would be pointless to avoid them simply because Locke’s immediate concern was not to refute Hobbes. Locke was, of course, perfectly aware of Hobbes’s doctrines and consequently of the differences between Hobbes’s views and his own. Such was Hobbes’s fame – or perhaps we should say notoriety – at the time, that Locke could not avoid writing in the shadow of his illustrious predecessor. In this chapter, therefore, I shall not hesitate to compare and contrast Locke’s views with those of Hobbes, which they do both resemble and differ from in very interesting ways. However, I shall not examine Locke’s arguments against Filmer in the First Treatise because, important though Filmer’s writings were in Locke’s day, they are now mainly of historical interest.
Before leaving Filmer and Locke’s response to him, I should say just a little about the nature of their differences. Filmer’s central thesis was that God had granted absolute dominion over the earth and all of its inhabitants to Adam, the first man, and that this divine right to rule had been passed on, over the generations, to first-born sons, so that the rightful dominion of a king over his people was effectively that of a father over his children, wife and servants. At a time when biblical authority was scarcely questioned, such a doctrine must have appeared entirely compelling to many people – and Locke’s attempted refutation of it correspondingly provocative. But to a modern reader, the bulk of this dispute may seem at best quaint and at worst hardly comprehensible. Much of interest and value can in fact be learned from it and we should not, of course, suppose that seventeenth-century authors wrote any less intelligently about issues which rested on assumptions now generally dismissed as false than they did about issues which still seem important to us. But, unfortunately, limitations of space prevent me from delving further here into this aspect of Locke’s political thought and I shall pass on directly to his positive doctrine. At the end of the chapter, I shall move on from discussing Locke’s Second Treatise to say something about his views on religious toleration, as set out in his Letter Concerning Toleration of 1689.
Locke, like Thomas Hobbes before him and Jean-Jacques Rousseau after him, was a social contract theorist – as indeed were many other political theorists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although these three philosophers ultimately endorse very different ideals of government – roughly speaking: Hobbes absolute monarchy, Locke parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, Rousseau extreme democracy on something like the Greek city-state model – they have in common an aim to ground political obligation on consent. That is to say, all of them consider that legitimate government is fundamentally government by the consent of the governed. Moreover, this consent is understood by all three of them in contractual terms – that is, by reference to an actual or hypothetical contractual agreement between people, freely entered into by the parties concerned, which imposes upon them certain obligations in return for certain anticipated benefits. (Hobbes actually uses the word ‘contract’ in this context – and also the word ‘covenant’ – whereas Locke prefers the term ‘compact’. It is Rousseau who uses the phrase contrat social, or ‘social contract’, but this has now become so widespread that it is not really misleading to speak of Hobbes and Locke as being ‘social contract theorists’.)
Different social contract theorists operate with significantly different conceptions of the sort of ‘consent’ that is involved here and I shall examine Locke’s particular conception in some detail in a later section. But despite such differences, at the root of all social contract theories is the idea that there is a fundamental distinction to be drawn between civil society and a supposedly apolitical human condition, traditionally described as the ‘state of nature’. Civil society is taken to be characterized by the presence of political authority and the rule of law, backed by an effective monopoly of coercive power. The social contract theorist then attempts to explain how people either do, or at least could, make a transition from the state of nature to civil society, without any violation of their natural rights and through their own ‘consent’ or willing participation, simply by entering freely into a mutual agreement or ‘contract’.
By no means all social contract theorists of Locke’s time held the state of nature to be an actual historical condition, once universal amongst human beings. However, some did consider it to be a condition still existing amongst ‘primitive’ peoples in certain parts of the world. And all regarded it as one that automatically obtains between different sovereign powers. Thus Hobbes remarks in Chapter 13 of Leviathan that he ‘believe[s] it was never generally so, over all the world’, but adds that ‘there are many places, where they live so now … in … America’ and that ‘in all times Kings, and persons of Soveraigne authority’ are in a state of nature – or ‘war’, as he describes it – with respect to one another (Hobbes 1996, pp. 89– 90). Locke explicitly concurs with Hobbes on this last point, asserting that ‘all Princes and Rulers of Independent Governments all through the World, are in a State of Nature’ (Second Treatise, 14). However, there is also another way to think of the state of nature that we can find in writers of the time. This is to think of it primarily as a possible condition into which civil society is perpetually in danger of degenerating, as when Hobbes comments that ‘it may be perceived what manner of life there would be, where there were no common Power to feare’ (Hobbes 1996, pp. 89–90). This in turn is not so very different from thinking of the state of nature as a merely hypothetical condition, or even just as a way of describing human communities which abstracts away from their political relationships and institutions. It is in something like this guise that the theoretical role of the state of nature has been revived in modern contractarian political thought, most notably in John Rawls’s notion of ‘the original position’ (see Rawls 1972, pp. 11–22). In any case, it certainly need be no decisive objection to a social contract theory that no state of nature ever really existed, or that the people living in an existing civil society may never individually have made a transition from a state of nature to their current situation – a point that I shall address in a later section with specific reference to Locke’s theory.
However, what might well be objected to – particularly by those ‘collectivist’ or ‘organicist’ political philosophers who regard human individuality itself as a product of civil society – is the very idea that human beings can be meaningfully characterized independently of their political relationships. In short, it may be urged that man is essentially a ‘political animal’, in Aristotle’s famous phrase. Against this, all social contract theorists are committed – albeit in varying degrees – to an individualistic conception of civil society, according to which the individual is ontologically prior to, or more fundamental than, any civil society to which he or she belongs. Of course, such theorists can perfectly well concede that civil society creates opportunities for individuals which would be impossible for them without it. However, this concession falls far short of what their opponents insist upon – that there would simply be no human ‘individuals’ but for civil society. The question as to which side in this long-standing debate has the better arguments is too large a one for me to enter into here. Suffice it to say that any social contract theory, including Locke’s, rests on what I have just called an individualistic conception of civil society and that such a conception is certainly open to challenge.
Precisely how a social contract theory characterizes the state of nature will depend in other ways upon the conception of human nature that is associated with it – for there is plenty of room for disagreement about this even amongst theorists who share an individualistic outlook. Thus, in Hobbes’s theory, his radically egocentric view of human psychology evidently plays a large part in leading him so famously to characterize the state of nature as that of ‘a warre … of every man, against every man’ in which ‘the life of man [is] solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short’ (Hobbes 1996, pp. 88–9). Hobbes’s egocentricism is reflected in his assertion that ‘of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is some Good to himselfe’ (Hobbes 1996, p. 93). But it should be stressed that even Hobbes, while he identifies the state of nature with a state of war, does not regard such a state as one of perpetual violence – only as one in which there is a perpetual threat of it. As he puts it, ‘[T]he nature of War, consisteth not in actuall fighting; but in the known disposition thereto’ (Hobbes 1996, pp. 88–9). As to the causes of this state of war, where all political authority is absent, Hobbes contends that there are ‘three principall causes of quarrell … [f]irst, Competition; Secondly, Diffidence; Thirdly, Glory’ (Hobbes 1996, p. 88). In other words, Hobbes blames our supposedly hostile disposition towards one another on what he takes to be our natural psychological propensities for rivalry, fear and pride. Of course, another and less purely theoretical reason why Hobbes may have represented the state of nature as so appalling is that he wrote at the time of the English Civil War and could observe all too vividly in that conflict the dire consequences of the removal of effective political authority. However, Locke also lived through this tumultuous period of English history and yet when we turn to his conception of the state of nature, we see a much more peaceful picture. Locke seems to have envisaged that state as typically comprising a population of self-sufficient yeoman farmers, each looking after his own immediate family members and living in relative harmony with his neighbours. It seems fair to say, then, that one of the crucial differences between Locke and Hobbes lies in the relative optimism of the former and pessimism of the latter concerning human nature. They differ fundamentally regarding the desire and capacity of ordinary folk to get on with their own lives without unduly interfering with the lives of other people. Certainly, Locke is emphatic in denying Hobbes’s identification of the state of nature with a state of war and this seems largely to be a consequence of his very different assessment of human motivation.
But there is another important respect in which Hobbes and Locke are in agreement about the basic human condition. They do at least agree that all human beings – or, at any rate, all adult men – are naturally equal in the state of nature and that, whether rightly or wrongly, only civil society creates significant inequalities. Thus, Hobbes remarks that
Nature hath made men so equall, in the faculties of body, and mind … that … the difference between man, and man, is not so considerable, as that one man can thereupon claim to himselfe any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as well as he.
(Hobbes 1996, pp. 86–7)
Locke concurs that the state of nature is ‘A State also of Equality’ (Second Treatise, 4) – and it is clear that by this he means not just a moral equality, but an equality of power. This assumption of natural equality is indeed essential to the workings of any social contract theory, because only beings who are at least roughly equal in their physical and intellectual powers could derive any benefit from freely entering into a mutual agreement of the kind that such a theory envisages.
What rights and obligations, if any, may be presumed to exist in the state of nature? Clearly, no political rights or obligations, since these are what the social contract is supposed to generate. But what about moral ones? And if these may be presumed to exist, what could be the source of their authority? God? Or Reason? Or do these sources coincide, because God is necessarily supremely rational and has created us as rational beings in his own image? Hobbes was regarded by his contemporaries as a thinly veiled atheist, although how fairly is a matter for dispute. Locke, however, not only sincerely adhered to the Christian faith but even believed that God’s existence was capable of rational demonstration or proof – along with the central principles of morality. He also held, as we saw in Chapter 2, that although we have no innate knowledge we do have a natural capacity for reason, which is divine in origin.
Significant differences between Hobbes and Locke regarding the questions just raised are readily apparent in the texts. Hobbes, for instance, speaks of the right of nature which, he says, is ‘the Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himselfe, for the preservation of his own Nature’ (Hobbes 1996, p. 91). And he contends that in the state of nature ‘every man has a Right to everything; even to one anothers body’ (Hobbes 1996, p. 91). He does indeed formulate certain ‘Laws of Nature’, as he calls them, but regards these as prudential maxims which reason instructs us to endeavour to follow in order to secure our own self-preservation and well-being. As he puts it:
A Law of Nature … is a Precept, or generall Rule, found out by Reason, by which a man is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same; and to omit, that, by which he thinketh it may be best preserved.
(Hobbes 1996, p. 91)
However, whether these ‘laws’ are supposed by Hobbes to have any moral authority in the usual sense is very debatable. He draws a distinction between obeying a law merely in foro interno – in intention, as we might say – and obeying it in foro externo, or in action, remarking:
The Lawes of Nature oblige in foro interno; that is to say, they bind to a desire they should take place: but in foro externo; that is, to the putting them in act, not alwayes.
(Hobbes 1996, p. 110)
Hobbes is clear, in fact, that in the state of nature, where there is no political power to enforce the laws of nature by the threat of effective punishment, reason can at most constrain us only to obey these laws in foro interno. For Hobbes, the first or ‘Fundamentall Law of Nature … is, to seek Peace, and follow it’ (Hobbes 1996, p. 92) – but he stresses that it would be irrational simply to lay down one’s arms with no guarantee that others will do likewise.
Locke, in contrast, does not accept this apparently amoral view of the state of nature. According to Locke,
[T]hough [the state of nature] be a State of Liberty, yet it is not a State of Licence … 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 … that … no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions.
(Second Treatise, 6)
Indeed, Locke considers that in the state of nature it is every man’s right to punish offenders against the law of nature, to a degree sufficient to deter them from committing further offences against it. Compare all of this with Hobbes’s much starker view that in the state of nature ‘nothing can be Unjust’ because ‘Where there is no common Power, there is no Law: where no Law, no Injustice’ (Hobbes 1996, p. 90). By ‘law’ in this context Hobbes means, of course, politically authorized law, backed by effective coercive power. Indeed, Hobbes goes even further and says that in the state of nature there is ‘no Propriety [i.e. property], no Dominion, no Mine and Thine distinct’ (Hobbes 1996, p. 90), whereas Locke is perfectly clear that property may very well exist in the state of nature, along with rights of acquisition and transfer – as we shall see more fully in a later section. However, we have now seen enough of how Hobbes’s and Locke’s views of the state of nature both resemble and differ from each other and it is time to look at their respective conceptions of the foundation of civil society.
As I remarked earlier, both Hobbes and Locke – along with many other seventeenth- and eighteenth-century political theorists – invoke the idea that political obligation rests fundamentally upon the consent of the governed. But their conceptions of the nature of that consent and its exact role in legitimating governmental authority differ considerably. For although their conceptions have in common an appeal to the quasi-legal notion of a ‘contract’ or ‘covenant’, their understandings of the rationale and terms of such an agreement – whether it be construed as quasi-historical or as merely hypothetical in character – are significantly at variance with one another, as close attention to their respective texts reveals. According to Hobbes,
The only way to erect such a Common Power, as may be able to defend [men] … and … secure them in such sort, as that … they may nourish themselves and live contentedly; is, to conferre all their power and strength upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of men, that may reduce all their Wills … unto one Will … This is more than Consent, or Concord; it is reall Unitie of them all, in one and the same Person, made by Covenant of every man with every man … This done, the Multitude so united in one Person, is called a COMMON-WEALTH … And he that carryeth this Person, is called SOVERAIGNE.
(Hobbes 1996, pp. 120–1)
On the face of it, Locke seems to be saying something very similar to this when he asserts that ‘The only way whereby any one devests himself of his Natural Liberty, and puts on the bonds of Civil Society is by agreeing with other Men to joyn and unite into a Community’ (Second Treatise, 95). However, there are fundamental differences between Hobbes and Locke concerning the nature of the sovereign power that is created by the contract – these differences arising out of the form and purpose of the contract itself, as Locke and Hobbes respectively conceive of it.
Most importantly, Hobbes believes that the person (or persons) in whom sovereign power is invested by the parties to the contract can commit no injustice, for the following reason:
The Right of bearing the Person of … all [the contractors], is given to him they make Soveraigne, by Covenant onely of one to another, and not of him to any of them … [Hence] there can happen no breach of Covenant on the part of the Soveraigne … [and so] whatsoever [the sovereign] doth, it can be no injury to any of his Subjects … It is true that they that have Soveraigne power, may commit Iniquity; but not Injustice.
(Hobbes 1996, pp. 122–4)
For Hobbes, then, the sovereign is above the laws of the state because he is not himself a party to the contract. But Locke entirely disagrees with this conception of legitimate sovereign power, holding that an absolute monarch of the sort that Hobbes envisages ‘is as much in the state of Nature, with all under his Dominion, as he is with the rest of Mankind’ (Second Treatise, 91) and that ‘No Man in Civil Society can be exempted from the Laws of it’ (Second Treatise, 94). According to Locke, any individual or group of individuals in whom authority to rule is invested by the parties to the contract must be parties to the contract themselves and must thus be just as much subject to the laws of civil society as everyone else. It makes no sense to Locke to suppose, with Hobbes, that the contractors should confer sovereign power upon someone who was not himself a party to the contract. For such a person would subsequently remain quite as much in a ‘state of nature’ with respect to them as he was beforehand. They, therefore, would remain just as vulnerable to his predations as they were before, whereas he, having been invested with sovereign power over them, would now be subject to no similar danger from them. For Locke, this is simply a recipe for tyranny and social disaster.
Hobbes, on the other hand, clearly believes that the ‘war of all against all’ – the state of nature as he conceives it – is so dire a condition that it is better for all of the contractors to submit themselves to the absolute authority of a single powerful person or group of people, rather than to dissolve civil society altogether. For it can, he supposes, hardly be in the interest of this person or group of people to render the contractors as miserable as he thinks that they would inevitably be in the state of nature. Moreover, such is Hobbes’s pessimism regarding human nature that he does not believe that the contractors can achieve any more desirable but equally stable condition by investing political authority in any of their own number, whether by election or by other means. A crucial consequence of this difference of opinion between Hobbes and Locke is that according to Hobbes there is, for the citizen, no court of appeal higher than that of the sovereign power itself – whereas Locke believes that at least sometimes an ‘appeal to heaven’, in the form of a rebellion against the sovereign power, is legitimate. I shall return to this historically important aspect of Locke’s political doctrine in a later section.
Another superficial similarity between Hobbes’s and Locke’s views is that both of them consider that the transition from the state of nature to civil society entails the relinquishing or curtailment of certain individual rights or liberties. But, once again, they differ considerably over the details. Hobbes, recall, has a particularly pessimistic view of personal relationships in the state of nature, which he identifies as a condition of ‘war of every man against every man’. He thinks that reason, embodied in the laws of nature, instructs all men, even in the state of nature, that their individual interests are best served by establishing peace – which, he believes, can be achieved only if each gives up his natural right to everything on condition that all the rest do likewise. Indeed, his second law of nature enjoins
That a man be willing, when others are so too, as farre-forth, as for Peace, and defence of himselfe he shall think it necessary, to lay down his right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himselfe.
(Hobbes 1996, p. 92)
But, Hobbes urges, such a peace agreement must be subject to effective enforcement, since ‘Covenants, without the Sword, are but Words, and of no strength to secure a man at all’ (Hobbes 1996, p. 117). The contractors must therefore agree to the sovereign power’s possessing an absolute monopoly of force to enable it to police the agreement.
However, as is frequently pointed out by critics of Hobbes, there seems to be a ‘chicken and egg’ problem here – or, more precisely, what modern decision theorists would call a ‘co-ordination problem’. The problem, apparently, is that if only enforceable agreements or ‘covenants’ are effective, an agreement designed to set up an enforcement agency already presupposes the existence of what it is supposed to create. More specifically, it seems that although Hobbes’s warring individuals would do best to lay down their arms in favour of a central enforcement agency, no one can trust the rest to do likewise in the absence of such an agency, since others could then take advantage of him. Each Hobbesian individual in the state of nature can foresee four possible outcomes of any collective attempt to achieve peace by a mutual agreement to lay down one’s arms – and will rank these outcomes in the following order of preference, from his own point of view. (1) Others comply with the agreement, but I do not. (2) Everyone complies with the agreement. (3) No one complies with the agreement. (4) I comply with the agreement, but others do not. A Hobbesian individual ranks outcome (1) above the rest because of his egocentric psychology, which leads him to prefer his own advantage to that of anyone else. But the trouble is that because all Hobbesian individuals are alike in this respect, all will secretly intend not to comply with the agreement, with the consequence that outcome (3) will result – despite the fact that every individual would prefer outcome (2) to outcome (3). Whether or not Hobbes himself really saw or had a solution to this problem is a matter for debate which I cannot go into here. But the problem, such as it is, does seem to be peculiar to Hobbes’s own version of the social contract approach, largely turning once again on his highly pessimistic conception of human nature and of the condition that the contract is supposed to deliver us from.
Locke’s version of the social contract theory is not, it seems, subject to anything like this difficulty. Lockean individuals in the state of nature are not presumed to be entirely selfish and amoral. They can accordingly trust one another to keep their promises to a sufficient extent to make the contract workable in the absence of an antecedently existing power to enforce it. The rights and liberties that a Lockean individual relinquishes upon entering civil society are correspondingly fewer or less in extent than those that a Hobbesian individual is required to give up. We shall see this more fully later. Even so, Locke’s theory does suffer from a prima-facie difficulty which seems quite as troublesome as that affecting Hobbes’s. This is that he needs to explain how it is that individuals born after the institution of civil society may incur a duty to obey its laws, given that they were not consenting parties to the original agreement or contract. For Locke is emphatic that consent is indeed a necessary condition of any individual’s political obligation – children, of course, being excluded from consideration on account of their youth and supposedly immature powers of reason: ‘Men being … 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’ (Second Treatise, 95). Moreover, Locke is insistent that political obligation is not transferable from one person to another – say, from father to son: ‘[W]hatever Engagements or Promises any one has made for himself, he is under the Obligation of them, but cannot by any Compact whatsoever, bind his Children or Posterity’ (Second Treatise, 116).
However, what may indeed be heritable is property – and, as Locke points out, states commonly make allegiance to them a condition of inheritance: ‘Commonwealths not permitting any part of their Dominions to be dismembered, nor to be enjoyed by any but those of their Community, the Son cannot ordinarily enjoy the Possessions of his Father, but under the same terms his Father did, by becoming a Member of the Society’ (Second Treatise, 117). And one may, Locke suggests, forgo one’s inheritance if one so wishes. One does not have an inalienable right to transfer property to or receive it from someone else, subject only to the mutual agreement of the parties to the transaction. Such a right is, according to Locke, alienated or relinquished upon joining civil society, since it is necessary that the rightful ownership of property be subject to the laws of the state. For the state’s primary purpose, in Locke’s eyes, is the protection of persons and their property – and this requires that titles to property be subject to the state’s jurisdiction. Even so, the question still remains as to how, or in what sense, an individual coming of age and choosing to inherit property – or indeed simply choosing to continue to live in the territory governed by a particular state – may be said to owe a political obligation to obey the laws of that civil society in virtue of his consent to be ruled by the government that enacted them.
Locke’s answer to this crucial question invokes a distinction between express and tacit consent. Express consent to membership of a civil society – through, say, the deliverance of an oath – creates, according to Locke, a perpetual obligation to obey its laws. This obligation cannot be renounced or set aside save by the dissolution of the state – as a consequence of war, for example – or by the legal expulsion of that member. But tacit consent, Locke thinks, is implied by an individual’s mere decision to enjoy the protection of the state and its conveniences:
[E]very Man, that hath any Possession, or Enjoyment, of any part of the Dominions of any Government, doth thereby give his tacit Consent, and is as far forth obliged to Obedience to the Laws of that Government … and in Effect, it reaches as far as the very being of any one within the Territories of that Government.
(Second Treatise, 119)
And tacit consent, according to Locke, only creates political obligation while the conditions making for that consent prevail – so that anyone who has not given express consent to the government of the state in which he is living is free at any time to depart and join another state or set up a new one in virgin territory.
However, it may be objected, with some justice, that Locke’s socalled tacit consent scarcely deserves the name ‘consent’ and that, in any case, it is doubtfully either needed for or capable of creating the sort of political obligation that he wants it to. For one thing, why say that a person who chooses to enjoy the conveniences of a civil society owes it a duty to obey its laws in virtue of his consent to the political regime of that society, rather than simply in virtue of his very choice to enjoy the benefits in question? Is not the notion of ‘consent’ here an idle wheel, invoked only to support Locke’s general thesis that legitimate government is always and only government by the consent of the governed? There is indeed a school of thought according to which, in certain circumstances, the voluntary enjoyment of benefits does in itself create obligations. Thus, H. L. A. Hart has urged as a general principle that
[W]hen a number of persons conduct any joint enterprise according to rules and thus restrict their liberty, those who have submitted to these restrictions when required have right to a similar submission from those who have benefited by their submission.
(Hart 1984, p. 85)
In line with such thinking, it is frequently maintained, for example, that those who benefit from trade union activities – for instance, by receiving wage increases and improved working conditions – ought to pay union dues, so that ‘free riders’ may justly be denounced and even penalized for accepting the benefits while avoiding the associated costs. Hart himself criticizes social contract theorists precisely for conflating sources of obligation of this kind with those involving mutual agreement or consent:
The social contract theorists rightly fastened on the fact that the obligation to obey the law is … something which arises between members of a particular political society out of their mutual relationship. Their mistake was to identify this right-creating situation of mutual restrictions with the paradigm case of promising.
(Hart 1984, p. 86)
Much earlier, David Hume, in his essay ‘Of the Original Contract’, went even further in criticizing social contract theorists – and Locke in particular – when he asked:
What necessity, therefore, is there to found the duty of allegiance to magistrates, on that of fidelity, or a regard to promises, and to suppose that it is the consent of each individual which subjects him to government, when it appears that both allegiance and fidelity stand precisely on the same foundation, and are both submitted to by mankind, on account of the apparent interests and necessities of human society?
(Hume 1985)
Hume’s contention is that the obligation to keep a promise itself arises from the fact that ‘the commerce and intercourse of mankind, which are of such mighty advantage, can have no security where men pay no regard to their engagements’ (Hume 1985), so that it cannot provide an independent source of obligation to obey the laws of civil society. We may perhaps judge that Hume goes too far here and agree with Hart that the very act of promising can in itself create an obligation. Even so, we may be inclined to concur with both Hart and Hume in thinking that political obligation typically does not rest so much upon consent, whether express or tacit, as on mutually advantageous co-operative relationships between the members of a community.
Even setting aside such fundamental doubts, however, other and more specific criticisms may be levelled at Locke’s doctrine of tacit consent. For instance, one might ask how realistic or fair it is to say to someone who is born into a given civil society and is brought up within its territory that he may emigrate and start life elsewhere if he does not like the laws that he finds in operation, or the system of government that is in place. As Hume remarks:
Can we seriously say, that a poor peasant or artisan has a free choice to leave his country, when he knows no foreign language or manners, and lives, from day to day, by the small wages which he acquires? We may as well assert that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master.
(Hume 1985)
The position of a foreigner choosing to settle in or just travel through a country is significantly different, since in either case he has a genuine choice beforehand and in the latter case he typically has relatively little to lose by forgoing his visit. But, as Hume points out, although ‘[t]he truest tacit consent of this kind that is ever observed, is when a foreigner settles in any country … yet is his allegiance, though more voluntary, much less expected or depended on, than that of a natural born subject’ (Hume 1985).
A related question that we may raise is this. Why should it be assumed that the tacit consent supposedly implied by a person’s voluntary enjoyment of certain of a state’s conveniences creates a blanket obligation to respect all of its laws and institutions? But if it doesn’t create such an overall obligation, who is to say precisely how far the obligation does extend in any given case? Does someone who enjoys more benefits somehow tacitly consent to obey more laws? If not, then is someone who scarcely benefits at all under as far-reaching an obligation as someone who benefits enormously? That scarcely seems fair. It may be replied that if this is a difficulty for Locke, then it is also – and more immediately – a difficulty for Hume and Hart, since they contend that political obligation rests directly upon social relationships of mutual advantage. However, our primary concern is with Locke’s theory of express and tacit consent and it does seem that, all in all, it provides a somewhat tenuous basis for a general account of political obligation.
It is important to observe in this connection that Locke does not invoke the right to vote as a condition of ‘consent’ and hence of political obligation. There is no implication in his theory that government by the consent of the governed necessarily involves the right of the governed themselves to participate in government, nor even to help to decide the composition of the government through electoral processes. Here, however, we should be conscious of both the historical context of Locke’s account and his own political allegiances. Locke was writing at a time at which only male property-owners of a certain standing could vote in parliamentary elections and he had no obvious wish to challenge that arrangement (but for another view see Ashcraft 1986, pp. 556ff., and Waldron 2002, pp. 115–19). If we dig beneath the surface of Locke’s democratic language, we shall perhaps find rather more conservative assumptions in place. Modern readers may suspect that his liberal-sounding pronouncements concerning the need for legitimate government to rest upon the ‘consent’ of the governed have less real substance than initially meets the eye. However, Locke’s libertarianism was genuine and bold for its day, even if it now appears in some respects unduly timid and restrictive – as it may to those of us who have the good fortune to live in the sort of democratic state that Locke’s political philosophy has helped to bring about. Locke’s courageous and principled defence of political liberty has earned him a place in the history of English political thought second only to Hobbes – and a permanent place in the hearts of all true friends of liberal democracy.
If what makes government legitimate for Locke is the consent of the governed, what makes it both desirable and beneficial is the protection that it provides for individual property and property rights. Whether or not one agrees with his judgement about this, it must be acknowledged that Locke’s account of property is interesting in its own right and has influenced later political theorists even up to the present day. However, it is important to appreciate from the outset that Locke uses the term ‘property’ not only in a narrow sense, to include such things as material possessions and land, but also in a wide sense, in which it includes an individual’s own person and labour:
[E]very man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his.
(Second Treatise, 27)
As we shall shortly see, for Locke there is an important linkage between the two notions of property, because he holds that property in material possessions and land ultimately arises out of property in one’s own person and labour. But it should in any case be emphasized in this context that the term ‘property’ as it was generally used in seventeenth-century England had rather different connotations from those associated with its present-day use (see Tully 1980).
It is important to recall here that Locke’s Two Treatises were explicitly written in opposition to the views of Sir Robert Filmer who, in his Patriarcha, was defending absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings. In the chapter on property in the Second Treatise, Locke is not least concerned to counter Filmer’s contention that monarchical property rights arise through primogeniture – the supposed right of a first-born son to inherit his father’s wealth and possessions – from God’s original ‘gift’ of the earth and its fruits to Adam and his descendants in perpetuity. More particularly, Locke wishes to show how, even though – as he contends – the earth was given to mankind ‘in common’, individual exclusive property rights in goods and land can have arisen without any violation of natural law and, moreover, without the need for any universal consent or ‘compact’. The significance of this latter qualification is that Locke was also concerned to combat certain rival views advanced at the time – by Hobbes amongst others – according to which all property rights necessarily arise only subsequent to the formation of civil society and even then only through appropriate forms of political authorization. However, this should not be allowed to obscure the fact, mentioned earlier, that Locke himself emphasizes that property rights in civil society are a matter for civil jurisdiction and ‘positive law’. He is only concerned to show that individual property rights can perfectly well arise in the state of nature.
As I have just indicated, Locke maintains, against Filmer, that God originally gave the earth and its fruits to mankind in common – the implication being that in the beginning there were no exclusive individual property rights, such as those supposedly granted to Adam and his heirs. For this Locke appeals not only to the evidence of scripture, but also to ‘natural Reason, which tells us, that [all] Men … have a right to their Preservation, and consequently to … such … things, as Nature affords for their Subsistence’ (Second Treatise, 25). He then goes on to argue, however, that the subsequent creation of private property rights in goods and land is perfectly compatible with this original commonality of all natural resources. The argument appeals to his contention that each person has a natural property right in his own body and labour. From this he concludes that
Whatsoever … [a man] removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property … [N]o Man but he can have a right to what [his labour] is once joyned to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others.
(Second Treatise, 27)
Locke’s argument here is that by ‘mixing’ one’s labour with natural resources which are not yet the exclusive property of any other individual – for instance, by gathering fruit from trees in the wild or by tilling virgin land and sowing it with corn – one thereby comes to have an exclusive property right in the products of that labour.
Locke’s argument may sound odd to the extent that it treats ‘labour’ almost as though it were a kind of substance or stuff, capable of being ‘mixed’ with material substances such as earth and metal, but perhaps that is just a quaint feature of his choice of words and incidental to the reasoning involved. More worryingly, though, as Robert Nozick has pointed out, it is not immediately obvious why mixing one’s labour with unowned natural resources shouldn’t be a way of losing or wasting one’s labour, rather than a way of acquiring whatever it is that is thereby produced (see Nozick 1974, pp. 174–5). And if the point is supposed to be that by mixing one’s labour with something one thereby typically adds value to it, then, as Nozick also points out, it isn’t obvious why one should be entitled to anything more than the added value that one has created. In any case, complications evidently arise in circumstances in which more than one person’s labour is expended in producing certain goods or improving a piece of land, especially when one or more people work for another person, as his or her employees. Locke seems to take it for granted – perhaps because he was a member of the minor gentry himself and thus accustomed from childhood to being surrounded by servants – that included in ‘my’ labour is any labour that I may have hired or purchased:
[T]he Grass my Horse has bit; the Turfs my Servant has cut; and the Ore I have digg’d in any place where I have a right to them in common with others, become my Property, without the assignation or consent of any body. The Labour that was mine, removing them out of that common state they were in, hath fixed my Property in them.
(Second Treatise, 28)
But if I have paid my servant the full value of the labour that he expends for me, how can there be any surplus value created by him that accrues solely to me? If there can’t be, then, it may seem, I can benefit by employing a servant only if I unjustly underpay him. This is an issue that I shall return to later.
Still, Locke certainly makes a compelling point when he says that it is labour that creates by far the larger part of the value of any commodity and that ‘Nature and the Earth furnished only the almost worthless Materials, as in themselves’ (Second Treatise, 43), so that ‘though the things of Nature are given in common, yet Man (by being Master of himself, and Proprietor of his own Person, and the Actions or Labour of it) had still in himself the great Foundation of Property’ (Second Treatise, 44). We might be tempted to see in Locke’s account here the rudiments of what was later to become the muchdisputed ‘labour theory of value’, famously put to radical use by communists like Karl Marx in the nineteenth century. But Locke himself, it must be emphasized, had no communist leanings whatsoever – indeed, quite the reverse, as we have just seen. His intention was to justify the existence of private property, both in the state of nature and in civil society.
Locke imposes two important limitations on the right to appropriate goods or land through mixing one’s labour with natural resources ‘given in common’. And here it is worth stressing that Locke does believe that land itself can become private property by this means:
As much Land as a Man Tills, Plants, Improves, Cultivates, and can use the Product of, so much is his Property. He by his Labour does, as it were, inclose it from the Common.
(Second Treatise, 32)
The two limitations are, first, the proviso that any such appropriation should leave ‘enough, and as good … for others’ (Second Treatise, 27) and, second, the ‘spoilage’ limitation:
As much as any one can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils; so much he may by his labour fix a Property in. Whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. Nothing was made by God for Man to spoil or destroy.
(Second Treatise, 31)
Much debate has gone on about both of these limitations and their relationship to one another. Some commentators hold that the spoilage limitation has no real force independently of the proviso about leaving ‘enough, and as good … for others’ – which I shall henceforth simply call, as is customary, the Lockean proviso, or just the proviso. We shall see, though, that even if there is such a dependency between the two limitations, the spoilage limitation does play an important role in Locke’s attempt to explain how large differences in personal wealth may justifiably arise once money has been introduced into an economy.
Turning now to the Lockean proviso, clearly, much depends on precisely how the phrase ‘enough, and as good left in common for others’ (Second Treatise, 27) is to be interpreted. Some commentators have taken it to mean that others must have left to them the opportunity of making similar appropriations from natural resources ‘given in common’. However, this creates a difficulty pointed out by Robert Nozick, namely, that it threatens to prohibit even the first such appropriation (see Nozick 1974, p. 176). For if the nth person who wishes to appropriate is prohibited from doing so by the proviso, because such an appropriation would not leave ‘enough, and … as good for others’, then so is the (n − 1)th person, because his appropriation would lead to the prohibition of the nth person. So it appears that the prohibition ‘zips back’, as Nozick puts it, to the very first person who wishes to appropriate. Nozick himself accordingly suggests – and, indeed, endorses – a weaker version of the proviso, according to which leaving ‘enough, and … as good for others’ merely means not worsening their situation. And it might appear that Locke himself understands the proviso in pretty much these terms, since he makes a number of remarks to the effect that anyone who appropriates and cultivates land actually benefits the rest of mankind by doing so, as when he says:
[H]e who appropriates land to himself by his labour, does not lessen but increases the common stock of mankind … [H]e, that incloses Land and has a greater plenty of the conveniencys of life from ten acres, than he could have from an hundred left to Nature, may truly be said, to give ninety acres to Mankind.
(Second Treatise, 37)
Moreover, Locke is anxious to argue that even in ‘civilized’ parts of the world where all of the land has been appropriated, no natural injustice is done to those without land because their circumstances of life are greatly improved by these arrangements, in comparison with what they would have been without them. He remarks that, indeed, ‘a King of a large and fruitful Territory [in America] feeds, lodges, and is clad worse than a day Labourer in England’ (Second Treatise, 41).
More particularly, as we shall shortly see more fully, Locke links this state of affairs – that is, the complete appropriation of all available land – to the introduction of money. This, he implies, leads to the legitimate suspension of the original ‘rule of propriety’:
[T]he same Rule of Propriety, [viz.] that every Man should have as much as he could make use of, would hold still in the World, without straitning any body, since there is Land enough in the World to suffice double the Inhabitants had not the Invention of Money, and the tacit Agreement of Men to put a value on it, introduced (by Consent) larger Possessions, and a Right to them.
(Second Treatise, 36)
All of this suggests that Locke believed that the proviso did indeed originally imply that enough and as good to appropriate should be left to others, but that once money has been introduced and the market economy emerges, the proviso becomes transmuted into a requirement that no one else be disadvantaged by any further appropriations from natural resources. Here we should recall that Locke’s ‘rule of propriety’ is, after all, only a derived rule – derived, that is, from the fundamental right to preserve one’s life. It may thus be argued that if this right is better supported in a civil society in which all land has been appropriated than in the state of nature, then the ‘rule of propriety’ may in such circumstances justly be set aside.
It is widely held that one of Locke’s chief concerns in Chapter 5 of the Second Treatise is to explain how, in his view, considerable inequalities in personal wealth may arise without any violation of natural law and independently of any political arrangements arrived at by general agreement or mutual consent – and hence how such inequalities can still be equitable even within existing civil society, provided that no political agreement has established contrary rules for the distribution of property as a matter of ‘positive law’ (but for another perspective, see Tully 1980). For Locke, the key to this possibility lies in the introduction of money – which, he considers, depends essentially only upon the tacit consent of the people concerned to use it as such. Here, then, it is important to appreciate that Locke does not consider that the existence of civil society and political authority is a necessary condition for the emergence of a monetary system, even though it might be a somewhat primitive system in their absence. Money, for Locke, is in essence just a durable article which people agree to use as a medium of exchange – ‘some lasting thing that Men might keep without spoiling, and that by mutual consent, Men would take in exchange for the truly useful, but perishable Supports of Life’ (Second Treatise, 47). The durability of money enables men to build up wealth – that is, purchasing power – without violation of the spoilage limitation. Locke is clear that it is indeed money that permits large-scale inequalities in personal wealth to arise – that ‘this Invention of Money gave [men] an opportunity to … enlarge [their possessions]’ (Second Treatise, 48) – although he acknowledges that barter can also result in such inequalities, albeit only on a much smaller scale. This is despite the fact that, as we saw earlier, Locke held labour to be by far the greatest source of all wealth.
The problem is to reconcile these two opinions: for if it is assumed that each man is entitled only to the wealth that has been generated by his own labour, then it is not at all clear how one man could ever amass vastly more wealth than another, since different men’s labour power is not markedly different. At least part of the answer lies in the ambiguity of the phrase ‘his own labour’ – which, for a theorist like Locke, might either be taken to mean ‘the labour of his own body’ or else to mean ‘the labour owned by him’. For if it is allowed – as Locke certainly does allow – that the labour of a man’s body is an alienable commodity that may be purchased by another man, whose property it then becomes, one man may in principle own the labour of many men’s bodies. Thus, while the introduction of money cannot as such enable a man to enclose and cultivate vastly more land than he can plough and sow himself, it does enable him to do this if he is also permitted to purchase with his monetary savings the labour of many other men’s bodies. And why should Locke not allow that the labour of a man’s body is alienable? It might be complained that the great landowner unfairly appropriates more land than he could cultivate himself without violating the spoilage limitation – and then proceeds to compound this injustice by purchasing, at a price favourable to himself, the labour of other men who have been prevented by his action from appropriating some of this land. But two things might be said in his defence. First – as we earlier noted Locke remarking – it may be pointed out that these labourers may not in fact be worse off than they would have been as independent smallholders, because the economies of scale made possible by large estates may enable such labourers to be paid more in wages than they could hope to earn by their independent efforts. Secondly, the great landowner – or his ancestors – may have built up his possessions only gradually, purchasing first the land and then the labour of less industrious or efficient men, without ever violating the Lockean limitations. If he inherited his lands from ancestors who proceeded in this fashion, then this too would appear to be a legitimate way for him to acquire the property, on Lockean principles, unless civil society has enacted positive laws restricting such practices – for Locke does not think that natural law prohibits the free gift or bequest of property, so long as the recipient does not violate the spoilage limitation. It might be urged, perhaps, that a co-operative system of land ownership and production would be fairer, while at the same time being capable of achieving the same economies of scale. But to this it may be replied that Locke does not exclude the possibility of civil society’s encouraging such arrangements by means of positive law – by, for example, making it a condition of membership of the state that property in goods and land cannot be inherited. Locke is only concerned to show that it is not contrary to natural law or the character of civil society as such that large inequalities in personal wealth should be permitted.
However, this still leaves unaddressed an issue touched on earlier, namely, how it is that an employer can accrue any wealth from the labour of his employees if he pays them what their labour is truly worth. How, in short, can the employer extract a profit from their work without unjustly ‘exploiting’ them? However, it would seem that this is – at most – only a problem if one advocates a fully fledged ‘labour theory of value’, according to which the ‘true’ value of a product is to be quantified in terms of the amount of labour involved in producing it. Locke, it appears, does not go so far as to endorse such a theory – even when he remarks, for instance, that ‘when any one hath computed, he will then see, how much labour makes the far greatest part of the value of things, we enjoy in this World’ (Second Treatise, 42). For there is nothing in this remark which implies a strict quantitative relationship between a commodity’s ‘value’ and the amount of labour required to produce it. Indeed, there is nothing here that implies either that a commodity’s ‘value’ is some intrinsic, quantifiable feature of it or that labour may be unambiguously measured in objectively specifiable units.
It is sometimes suggested that Locke writes as an advocate on behalf of the emerging property-owing middle classes of seventeenth-century England and thus an apologist for early modern capitalism (see, for example, Macpherson 1962). In fact, although Locke was notoriously careful with his own relatively modest income from rents and investments, he was by upbringing, education and calling a representative of the minor landed gentry and the scholarly world of academia. It is dangerous to try to read any ulterior motive or propagandist purpose into the text of the Second Treatise, beyond those that are evident on its surface and in the immediate circumstances of its composition, as part of a concerted response to Filmer’s illiberal monarchist tract.
In Chapter 29 of Leviathan, Hobbes cites a number of ‘doctrines’ or ‘opinions’ of a ‘seditious’ character which, if not stamped upon by the state authorities, are liable to disease the body politic. In particular, he criticizes the following views. (1) That private citizens are competent judges of matters that are subject to the civil law. (2) That conscientious refusal to obey the civil law is sometimes justifiable. (3) That the sovereign power should itself be subject to the civil law. And (4) that private property should be exempt from state interference. Locke, on the other hand, at least implicitly supports all of these views in some form and quite explicitly advocates and defends some of them. This is why his political theory may justly be described as liberal, in contrast with Hobbes’s absolutism.
Locke imposes clear restrictions on the rights of government over the private citizen, contending that they cannot override certain individual natural rights. As he puts it, the legislative power
hath no other end but preservation, and therefore can never have a right to destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the Subjects. The Obligations of the Law of Nature, cease not in Society.
(Second Treatise, 135)
He concludes that ‘Absolute Arbitrary Power, or Governing without settled standing Laws, can neither of them consist with the ends of Society and Government’ (Second Treatise, 137). Thus he sees the restraints on governmental authority as arising out of the very nature and purpose of the original ‘compact’, which, he assumes, was entered into by the parties concerned only in order to protect their individual rights and freedoms. His reasoning extends, in particular, to individual property rights – which is why he maintains, contrary to Hobbes, that the government is never entitled to appropriate an individual’s private goods, land or money without his consent:
[T]he preservation of Property being the end of Government … however it may have power to make Laws for the regulating of Property between the Subjects one amongst another, yet can never have a Power to take to themselves the whole or any part of the Subjects Property, without their own consent.
(Second Treatise, 138–9)
Hence, such consent is, for Locke, a necessary prerequisite for the legitimate raising of taxes:
’tis fit every one who enjoys his share of the Protection, should pay out of his Estate his proportion for the maintenance of it. But still it must be with his own Consent, i.e. the Consent of the Majority, giving it either by themselves, or their Representatives chosen by them.
(Second Treatise, 140)
So here we have a very clear statement of the principle encapsulated, almost one hundred years later, in the famous slogan of the American War of Independence, ‘No taxation without representation’.
Locke discusses in some detail – although with an understandable degree of circumspection, in view of the volatile political circumstances of the time – the conditions in which subjects may rightfully employ forcible resistance against the government. Resort to such force, he thinks, is warranted only when the abuse of governmental power is so manifest and general that the government has lost all claim to legitimacy – and even then, only when every avenue of lawful redress has been shut off: ‘[F]orce is to be opposed to nothing, but to unjust and unlawful Force … [and] is only to be used, where a Man is intercepted from appealing to the Law’ (Second Treatise, 204–7). Furthermore, Locke implies that forcible resistance to the government cannot legitimately be undertaken by an individual subject simply on his own account, but should be motivated only by the collective oppression of the people. Such resistance is admissible, he suggests, only
if either [the government’s] illegal Acts have extended to the Majority of the People; or if the Mischief and Oppression … seem to threaten all, and they are perswaded in their Consciences, that their Laws, and with them their Estates, Liberties, and Lives are in danger.
(Second Treatise, 209)
The crucial difference between the positions of Hobbes and Locke is that Locke, unlike Hobbes, considers that a government may cease to be legitimate by abusing the trust of the people, whereupon the state of nature is effectively restored and the people ‘have a Right to resume their original Liberty, and [establish] a new Legislative’ (Second Treatise, 222). But who is to be the judge as to whether the government really has abused the trust of the people? Ultimately, the people themselves, in Locke’s view:
Who shall be Judge whether the Prince or Legislative act contrary to their Trust? … I reply: The People shall be Judge … But if the Prince … decline that way of Determination, the Appeal then lies no where but to Heaven.
(Second Treatise, 240–2)
Locke is rather vague concerning the means by which the people’s judgement is supposed to emerge, but it is clear that he thinks that a popular uprising or rebellion against an oppressive government can be justified as a last resort. This, in effect, is what he means by an ‘appeal to heaven’. And this is one reason why, although the Two Treatises were not originally written to vindicate the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Locke was able to advertise them as serving 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 justifie 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 Ruine.
(Two Treatises, the Preface)
In the same year – 1689 – that the Two Treatises were published, Locke’s almost equally famous first Letter Concerning Toleration, or Letter on Toleration, appeared in Latin, under the title Epistola de Tolerantia, and in an English translation – although, like the Two Treatises, it was largely composed several years earlier. (Three further Letters were to follow, but I shall not discuss them here.) In the first Letter, Locke argues vigorously in favour of religious toleration and the separation of church and state. It is worth remarking that his views on these matters were by this time very much more liberal than they had been prior to his association with Shaftesbury in the 1660s (see Chapter 1 above).
Locke’s arguments in the first Letter may be summed up in the following terms. First, he appeals to the nature and purpose of civil society to argue that the civil magistrate should have no jurisdiction over matters concerning religious practice or observance, pointing out that
The commonwealth seems to me to be a society of men constituted only for the procuring, preserving, and advancing their own civil interests. Civil interests I call life, liberty, health, and indolency of body; and the possession of outward things, such as money, lands, houses, furniture, and the like.
(Letter, p. 128)
He urges that ‘the care of souls is not committed to the civil magistrate, any more than to other men’ (Letter, p. 129) and that, in any case, ‘his [the civil magistrate’s] power consists only in outward force; but true and saving religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind’ (Letter, p. 129). He also points out that the diversity of religious belief all over the world is such that, if it were legitimate for the civil magistrate to enforce specific forms of religious observance, most of the world’s population would be condemned to practise a false religion, to the endangerment of their own souls: ‘One country alone would be in the right, and all the rest of the world would be put under an obligation of following their princes in the ways that lead to destruction’ (Letter, p. 130).
Locke next considers what the nature of a ‘church’ is, taking this to be
a voluntary society of men, joining themselves together of their own accord in order to the public worshipping of God in such a manner as they judge acceptable to him, and effectual to the salvation of their souls.
(Letter, p. 131)
From this definition, he concludes that although a church has a right to expel members who do not adhere to its established rules, it has no authority to extend its jurisdiction into the civil sphere:
The end of a religious society … is the public worship of God … All discipline ought therefore to tend to that end, and all ecclesiastical laws to be thereunto confined. Nothing ought or can be transacted in this society relating to the possession of civil and worldly goods. No force is here to be made use of upon any reason whatsoever.
(Letter, p. 133)
Having thus argued for the separation of church and state, with each being confined to its own proper sphere of authority and activity, Locke is in a position to mount a defence of religious toleration and to explain precisely how far, in his view, the duty of toleration extends. He concludes, first, that while the duty of toleration does not require any church to refrain from expelling recalcitrant members of its community, ‘Excommunication neither does, nor can, deprive the excommunicated person of any of those civil goods that he formerly possessed’ (Letter, p. 134). Secondly, he concludes that ‘no private person has any right in any manner to prejudice another person in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church or religion’ (Letter, p. 134). And here he emphasizes that the civil magistrate, in his capacity of being a member of a particular church, is no different from anyone else in this respect, ‘For the civil government can give no new right to the church, nor the church to civil government’ (Letter, p. 135). His overall conclusion is that
Nobody, therefore, in fine, neither single persons nor churches, nay, nor even commonwealths, have any just title to invade the civil rights and worldly goods of each other upon pretence of religion.
(Letter, p. 137)
A presumption of Locke’s arguments so far is that, in many matters of religion, infallible knowledge is not available to human beings – a view fully in line with his more general epistemological doctrines (see Chapter 2 above). He is, of course, fully aware that many of his more dogmatic opponents strongly disagree with him about this. However, against these opponents he has another compelling argument to offer in favour of religious toleration, namely, that no one can be saved by the true religion who does not genuinely believe it:
Although the magistrate’s opinion in religion be sound, and the way that he appoints be truly evangelical, yet, if I be not thoroughly persuaded thereof in my own mind, there will be no safety for me in following it. No way whatsoever that I shall walk in against the dictates of my conscience will ever bring me to the mansions of the blessed.
(Letter, p. 143)
Having broached the matter of conscience, Locke now goes on to raise a very important question when he asks: ‘What if the magistrate should enjoin anything by his authority that appears unlawful to the conscience of a private person?’ (Letter, p. 155). His answer is subtly nuanced, as might be expected in view of the potentially explosive nature of the problem. On the one hand, he deems that such a person should follow his conscience but accept lawful punishment for doing so, ‘For the private judgement of any person concerning a law enacted in political matters, for the public good, does not take away the obligation of that law, nor deserve a dispensation’ (Letter, p. 155). However, he goes on:
[I]f the law indeed be concerning things that lie not within the verge of the magistrate’s authority … men are not in these cases obliged by that law, against their consciences … [T]he … judgement of the magistrate does not give him any new right of imposing laws upon his subjects, which neither was in the constitution of the government granted him, nor ever was in the power of the people to grant.
(Letter, p. 156)
Characteristically, Locke steadfastly pursues the issue to the bitter end and asks, finally,
But what if the magistrate believe that he has a right to make such laws, and that they are for the public good, and his subjects believe the contrary? Who shall be judge between them?
(Letter, p. 156)
Locke forthrightly replies: ‘I answer, God alone’ (Letter, p. 156). And, while he is emphatic that each person’s duty of concern is, first, for the salvation of his own soul and, secondly, for the public peace, he implies that, in extreme circumstances, popular rebellion against the magistrate may be justified – echoing here his cautious remarks in the Second Treatise about the legitimacy of an ultimate ‘appeal to heaven’.
For all his liberality, Locke sets determinate limits to the extent of due religious toleration. First, he considers that we have no duty of toleration towards Churches which teach that their members are justified in engaging in seditious practices against the state, or which do not themselves recognize a duty of religious toleration. Secondly, he does not consider that toleration should be extended to ‘[a] church … which is constituted upon such a bottom that all those who enter into it do thereby ipso facto deliver themselves up to the protection and service of another prince’ (Letter, p. 158). One implicit target here seems to be the Roman Catholic Church, with the Pope – who had at that time extensive political influence – being seen as such a ‘prince’ (but see Waldron 2002, pp. 218–23). Finally, Locke considers that toleration should not be extended to atheists, chiefly on the ground that ‘Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist’ (Letter, p. 158). This argument may hardly seem compelling, especially to present-day readers. Here, however, we should also recall that Locke held that belief in God is not merely a matter of faith, but also of reason, because he considered that the existence of God is capable of rational demonstration or proof. If – rightly or wrongly – he regarded atheism as irrational, one can at least understand why he should have thought that we have no duty to tolerate attempts to spread it amongst the populace, to the detriment of religious belief of any kind. It would be unfair, I think, simply to accuse Locke of hypocrisy on this score, that is, of failing to extend to atheists a right to toleration that is properly their due by his own lights. We who now live in a largely secular society – partly as a result of that very separation of church and state that Locke recommended – should not forget how very different was the intellectual, political and religious atmosphere in which Locke himself was writing and how deep-seated and widespread religious intolerance then was. That we now live in more enlightened times is due in no inconsiderable degree to Locke’s own efforts.
As a political philosopher, Locke argues forcefully in defence of representative democracy, respect for private property rights, constitutional limitations on the extent of governmental power, the separation of church and state, and religious toleration – grounding all of these liberal principles in the notion that the only justifiable end of civil government is the protection of the life, liberties and possessions of its individual citizens, who alone can authorize its right to rule through their freely given consent. We may find fault with the details of some of Locke’s argumentation, but his sincerity and his passionate commitment to individual freedom are unquestionable. Although it is hard to determine exactly what influence any work of political philosophy has on the political culture and institutions of succeeding generations, it seems fair to say that wherever the principles of liberal democracy hold sway in the world today, they do so in no small measure thanks to Locke’s courageous and spirited defence of them.
Dunn, John 1969: The Political Thought of John Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Lloyd Thomas, David A. 1995: Locke on Government (London: Routledge).
Marshall, John 1994: John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Simmons, A. John 1992: The Lockean Theory of Rights (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Simmons, A. John 1993: On the Edge of Anarchy: Locke, Consent, and the Limits of Society (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
Tully, James 1993: An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Yolton, John W. (ed.) 1969: John Locke: Problems and Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).