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1690
CONCERNING CIVIL GOVERNMENT, SECOND ESSAY
AN ESSAY CONCERNING THE TRUE ORIGINAL EXTENT AND
END OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT
by John Locke
Chapter I
Of Political Power
1. It having been shown in the foregoing discourse:*
- An Essay Concerning Certain False Principles.
Firstly. That Adam had not, either by natural right of fatherhood or
by positive donation from God, any such authority over his children,
nor dominion over the world, as is pretended.
Secondly. That if he had, his heirs yet had no right to it.
Thirdly. That if his heirs had, there being no law of Nature nor
positive law of God that determines which is the right heir in all
cases that may arise, the right of succession, and consequently of
bearing rule, could not have been certainly determined.
Fourthly. That if even that had been determined, yet the knowledge
of which is the eldest line of Adam's posterity being so long since
utterly lost, that in the races of mankind and families of the
world, there remains not to one above another the least pretence to be
the eldest house, and to have the right of inheritance.
All these promises having, as I think, been clearly made out, it
is impossible that the rulers now on earth should make any benefit, or
derive any the least shadow of authority from that which is held to be
the fountain of all power, "Adam's private dominion and paternal
jurisdiction"; so that he that will not give just occasion to think
that all government in the world is the product only of force and
violence, and that men live together by no other rules but that of
beasts, where the strongest carries it, and so lay a foundation for
perpetual disorder and mischief, tumult, sedition, and rebellion
(things that the followers of that hypothesis so loudly cry out
against), must of necessity find out another rise of government,
another original of political power, and another way of designing
and knowing the persons that have it than what Sir Robert Filmer
hath taught us.
2. To this purpose, I think it may not be amiss to set down what I
take to be political power. That the power of a magistrate over a
subject may be distinguished from that of a father over his
children, a master over his servant, a husband over his wife, and a
lord over his slave. All which distinct powers happening sometimes
together in the same man, if he be considered under these different
relations, it may help us to distinguish these powers one from
another, and show the difference betwixt a ruler of a commonwealth,
a father of a family, and a captain of a galley.
3. Political power, then, I take to be a right of making laws,
with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties for the
regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of
the community in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the
commonwealth from foreign injury, and all this only for the public
good.
Chapter II
Of the State of Nature
4. To understand political power aright, and derive it from its
original, we must consider what estate all men are naturally in, and
that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and
dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the
bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon
the will of any other man.
A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction
is reciprocal, no one having more than another, there being nothing
more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank,
promiscuously born to all the same advantages of Nature, and the use
of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another,
without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of
them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one
above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment,
an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.
5. This equality of men by Nature, the judicious Hooker looks upon
as so evident in itself, and beyond all question, that he makes it the
foundation of that obligation to mutual love amongst men on which he
builds the duties they owe one another, and from whence he derives the
great maxims of justice and charity. His words are:
"The like natural inducement hath brought men to know that it is
no less their duty to love others than themselves, for seeing those
things which are equal, must needs all have one measure; if I cannot
but wish to receive good, even as much at every man's hands, as any
man can wish unto his own soul, how should I look to have any part
of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the
like desire, which is undoubtedly in other men weak, being of one
and the same nature: to have anything offered them repugnant to this
desire must needs, in all respects, grieve them as much as me; so that
if I do harm, I must look to suffer, there being no reason that others
should show greater measure of love to me than they have by me
showed unto them; my desire, therefore, to be loved of my equals in
Nature, as much as possible may be, imposeth upon me a natural duty of
bearing to themward fully the like affection. From which relation of
equality between ourselves and them that are as ourselves, what
several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn for direction of
life no man is ignorant." (Eccl. Pol. i.)*
- Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.
6. But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of
licence; though man in that state have an uncontrollable liberty to
dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to
destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but
where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The
state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges
every one, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will
but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought
to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions; for men
being all the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker;
all the servants of one sovereign Master, sent into the world by His
order and about His business; they are His property, whose workmanship
they are made to last during His, not one another's pleasure. And,
being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of
Nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us
that may authorise us to destroy one another, as if we were made for
one another's uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours.
Every one as he is bound to preserve himself, and not to quit his
station wilfully, so by the like reason, when his own preservation
comes not in competition, ought he as much as he can to preserve the
rest of mankind, and not unless it be to do justice on an offender,
take away or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of the
life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another.
7. And that all men may be restrained from invading others'
rights, and from doing hurt to one another, and the law of Nature be
observed, which willeth the peace and preservation of all mankind, the
execution of the law of Nature is in that state put into every man's
hands, whereby every one has a right to punish the transgressors of
that law to such a degree as may hinder its violation. For the law
of Nature would, as all other laws that concern men in this world,
be in vain if there were nobody that in the state of Nature had a
power to execute that law, and thereby preserve the innocent and
restrain offenders; and if any one in the state of Nature may punish
another for any evil he has done, every one may do so. For in that
state of perfect equality, where naturally there is no superiority
or jurisdiction of one over another, what any may do in prosecution of
that law, every one must needs have a right to do.
8. And thus, in the state of Nature, one man comes by a power over
another, but yet no absolute or arbitrary power to use a criminal,
when he has got him in his hands, according to the passionate heats or
boundless extravagancy of his own will, but only to retribute to him
so far as calm reason and conscience dictate, what is proportionate to
his transgression, which is so much as may serve for reparation and
restraint. For these two are the only reasons why one man may lawfully
do harm to another, which is that we call punishment. In transgressing
the law of Nature, the offender declares himself to live by another
rule than that of reason and common equity, which is that measure
God has set to the actions of men for their mutual security, and so he
becomes dangerous to mankind; the tie which is to secure them from
injury and violence being slighted and broken by him, which being a
trespass against the whole species, and the peace and safety of it,
provided for by the law of Nature, every man upon this score, by the
right he hath to preserve mankind in general, may restrain, or where
it is necessary, destroy things noxious to them, and so may bring such
evil on any one who hath transgressed that law, as may make him repent
the doing of it, and thereby deter him, and, by his example, others
from doing the like mischief. And in this case, and upon this
ground, every man hath a right to punish the offender, and be
executioner of the law of Nature.
9. I doubt not but this will seem a very strange doctrine to some
men; but before they condemn it, I desire them to resolve me by what
right any prince or state can put to death or punish an alien for
any crime he commits in their country? It is certain their laws, by
virtue of any sanction they receive from the promulgated will of the
legislature, reach not a stranger. They speak not to him, nor, if they
did, is he bound to hearken to them. The legislative authority by
which they are in force over the subjects of that commonwealth hath no
power over him. Those who have the supreme power of making laws in
England, France, or Holland are, to an Indian, but like the rest of
the world- men without authority. And therefore, if by the law of
Nature every man hath not a power to punish offences against it, as he
soberly judges the case to require, I see not how the magistrates of
any community can punish an alien of another country, since, in
reference to him, they can have no more power than what every man
naturally may have over another.
10. Besides the crime which consists in violating the laws, and
varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a man so far becomes
degenerate, and declares himself to quit the principles of human
nature and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury done,
and some person or other, some other man, receives damage by his
transgression; in which case, he who hath received any damage has
(besides the right of punishment common to him, with other men) a
particular right to seek reparation from him that hath done it. And
any other person who finds it just may also join with him that is
injured, and assist him in recovering from the offender so much as may
make satisfaction for the harm he hath suffered.
11. From these two distinct rights (the one of punishing the
crime, for restraint and preventing the like offence, which right of
punishing is in everybody, the other of taking reparation, which
belongs only to the injured party) comes it to pass that the
magistrate, who by being magistrate hath the common right of punishing
put into his hands, can often, where the public good demands not the
execution of the law, remit the punishment of criminal offences by his
own authority, but yet cannot remit the satisfaction due to any
private man for the damage he has received. That he who hath
suffered the damage has a right to demand in his own name, and he
alone can remit. The damnified person has this power of
appropriating to himself the goods or service of the offender by right
of self-preservation, as every man has a power to punish the crime
to prevent its being committed again, by the right he has of
preserving all mankind, and doing all reasonable things he can in
order to that end. And thus it is that every man in the state of
Nature has a power to kill a murderer, both to deter others from doing
the like injury (which no reparation can compensate) by the example of
the punishment that attends it from everybody, and also to secure
men from the attempts of a criminal who, having renounced reason,
the common rule and measure God hath given to mankind, hath, by the
unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war
against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or a
tiger, one of those wild savage beasts with whom men can have no
society nor security. And upon this is grounded that great law of
nature, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be
shed." And Cain was so fully convinced that every one had a right to
destroy such a criminal, that, after the murder of his brother, he
cries out, "Every one that findeth me shall slay me," so plain was
it writ in the hearts of all mankind.
12. By the same reason may a man in the state of Nature punish the
lesser breaches of that law, it will, perhaps, be demanded, with
death? I answer: Each transgression may be punished to that degree,
and with so much severity, as will suffice to make it an ill bargain
to the offender, give him cause to repent, and terrify others from
doing the like. Every offence that can be committed in the state of
Nature may, in the state of Nature, be also punished equally, and as
far forth, as it may, in a commonwealth. For though it would be beside
my present purpose to enter here into the particulars of the law of
Nature, or its measures of punishment, yet it is certain there is such
a law, and that too as intelligible and plain to a rational creature
and a studier of that law as the positive laws of commonwealths,
nay, possibly plainer; as much as reason is easier to be understood
than the fancies and intricate contrivances of men, following contrary
and hidden interests put into words; for truly so are a great part
of the municipal laws of countries, which are only so far right as
they are founded on the law of Nature, by which they are to be
regulated and interpreted.
13. To this strange doctrine- viz., That in the state of Nature
every one has the executive power of the law of Nature- I doubt not
but it will be objected that it is unreasonable for men to be judges
in their own cases, that self-love will make men partial to themselves
and their friends; and, on the other side, ill-nature, passion, and
revenge will carry them too far in punishing others, and hence nothing
but confusion and disorder will follow, and that therefore God hath
certainly appointed government to restrain the partiality and violence
of men. I easily grant that civil government is the proper remedy
for the inconveniences of the state of Nature, which must certainly be
great where men may be judges in their own case, since it is easy to
be imagined that he who was so unjust as to do his brother an injury
will scarce be so just as to condemn himself for it. But I shall
desire those who make this objection to remember that absolute
monarchs are but men; and if government is to be the remedy of those
evils which necessarily follow from men being judges in their own
cases, and the state of Nature is therefore not to be endured, I
desire to know what kind of government that is, and how much better it
is than the state of Nature, where one man commanding a multitude
has the liberty to be judge in his own case, and may do to all his
subjects whatever he pleases without the least question or control
of those who execute his pleasure? and in whatsoever he doth,
whether led by reason, mistake, or passion, must be submitted to?
which men in the state of Nature are not bound to do one to another.
And if he that judges, judges amiss in his own or any other case, he
is answerable for it to the rest of mankind.
14. It is often asked as a mighty objection, where are, or ever
were, there any men in such a state of Nature? To which it may suffice
as an answer at present, that since all princes and rulers of
"independent" governments all through the world are in a state of
Nature, it is plain the world never was, nor never will be, without
numbers of men in that state. I have named all governors of
"independent" communities, whether they are, or are not, in league
with others; for it is not every compact that puts an end to the state
of Nature between men, but only this one of agreeing together mutually
to enter into one community, and make one body politic; other promises
and compacts men may make one with another, and yet still be in the
state of Nature. The promises and bargains for truck, etc., between
the two men in Soldania, in or between a Swiss and an Indian, in the
woods of America, are binding to them, though they are perfectly in
a state of Nature in reference to one another for truth, and keeping
of faith belongs to men as men, and not as members of society.
15. To those that say there were never any men in the state of
Nature, I will not oppose the authority of the judicious Hooker (Eccl.
Pol. i. 10), where he says, "the laws which have been hitherto
mentioned"- i.e., the laws of Nature- "do bind men absolutely, even as
they are men, although they have never any settled fellowship, never
any solemn agreement amongst themselves what to do or not to do; but
for as much as we are not by ourselves sufficient to furnish ourselves
with competent store of things needful for such a life as our Nature
doth desire, a life fit for the dignity of man, therefore to supply
those defects and imperfections which are in us, as living single
and solely by ourselves, we are naturally induced to seek communion
and fellowship with others; this was the cause of men uniting
themselves as first in politic societies." But I, moreover, affirm
that all men are naturally in that state, and remain so till, by their
own consents, they make themselves members of some politic society,
and I doubt not, in the sequel of this discourse, to make it very
clear.
Chapter III
Of the State of War
16. The state of war is a state of enmity and destruction; and
therefore declaring by word or action, not a passionate and hasty, but
sedate, settled design upon another man's life puts him in a state
of war with him against whom he has declared such an intention, and so
has exposed his life to the other's power to be taken away by him,
or any one that joins with him in his defence, and espouses his
quarrel; it being reasonable and just I should have a right to destroy
that which threatens me with destruction; for by the fundamental law
of Nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all
cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred,
and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an
enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or
a lion, because they are not under the ties of the common law of
reason, have no other rule but that of force and violence, and so
may be treated as a beast of prey, those dangerous and noxious
creatures that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into
their power.
17. And hence it is that he who attempts to get another man into his
absolute power does thereby put himself into a state of war with
him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his
life. For I have reason to conclude that he who would get me into
his power without my consent would use me as he pleased when he had
got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for nobody
can desire to have me in his absolute power unless it be to compel
me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom- i.e.
make me a slave. To be free from such force is the only security of my
preservation, and reason bids me look on him as an enemy to my
preservation who would take away that freedom which is the fence to
it; so that he who makes an attempt to enslave me thereby puts himself
into a state of war with me. He that in the state of Nature would take
away the freedom that belongs to any one in that state must
necessarily be supposed to have a design to take away everything else,
that freedom being the foundation of all the rest; as he that in the
state of society would take away the freedom belonging to those of
that society or commonwealth must be supposed to design to take away
from them everything else, and so be looked on as in a state of war.
18. This makes it lawful for a man to kill a thief who has not in
the least hurt him, nor declared any design upon his life, any farther
than by the use of force, so to get him in his power as to take away
his money, or what he pleases, from him; because using force, where he
has no right to get me into his power, let his pretence be what it
will, I have no reason to suppose that he who would take away my
liberty would not, when he had me in his power, take away everything
else. And, therefore, it is lawful for me to treat him as one who
has put himself into a state of war with me- i.e., kill him if I
can; for to that hazard does he justly expose himself whoever
introduces a state of war, and is aggressor in it.
19. And here we have the plain difference between the state of
Nature and the state of war, which however some men have confounded,
are as far distant as a state of peace, goodwill, mutual assistance,
and preservation; and a state of enmity, malice, violence and mutual
destruction are one from another. Men living together according to
reason without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge
between them, is properly the state of Nature. But force, or a
declared design of force upon the person of another, where there is no
common superior on earth to appeal to for relief, is the state of war;
and it is the want of such an appeal gives a man the right of war even
against an aggressor, though he be in society and a fellow-subject.
Thus, a thief whom I cannot harm, but by appeal to the law, for having
stolen all that I am worth, I may kill when he sets on me to rob me
but of my horse or coat, because the law, which was made for my
preservation, where it cannot interpose to secure my life from present
force, which if lost is capable of no reparation, permits me my own
defence and the right of war, a liberty to kill the aggressor, because
the aggressor allows not time to appeal to our common judge, nor the
decision of the law, for remedy in a case where the mischief may be
irreparable. Want of a common judge with authority puts all men in a
state of Nature; force without right upon a man's person makes a state
of war both where there is, and is not, a common judge.
20. But when the actual force is over, the state of war ceases
between those that are in society and are equally on both sides
subject to the judge; and, therefore, in such controversies, where the
question is put, "Who shall be judge?" it cannot be meant who shall
decide the controversy; every one knows what Jephtha here tells us,
that "the Lord the Judge" shall judge. Where there is no judge on
earth the appeal lies to God in Heaven. That question then cannot mean
who shall judge, whether another hath put himself in a state of war
with me, and whether I may, as Jephtha did, appeal to Heaven in it? Of
that I myself can only judge in my own conscience, as I will answer it
at the great day to the Supreme Judge of all men.
Chapter IV
Of Slavery
21. The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power
on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of
man, but to have only the law of Nature for his rule. The liberty of
man in society is to be under no other legislative power but that
established by consent in the commonwealth, nor under the dominion
of any will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative
shall enact according to the trust put in it. Freedom, then, is not
what Sir Robert Filmer tells us: "A liberty for every one to do what
he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws";
but freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live
by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative
power erected in it. A liberty to follow my own will in all things
where that rule prescribes not, not to be subject to the inconstant,
uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man, as freedom of
nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of Nature.
22. This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power is so necessary
to, and closely joined with, a man's preservation, that he cannot part
with it but by what forfeits his preservation and life together. For a
man, not having the power of his own life, cannot by compact or his
own consent enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the
absolute, arbitrary power of another to take away his life when he
pleases. Nobody can give more power than he has himself, and he that
cannot take away his own life cannot give another power over it.
Indeed, having by his fault forfeited his own life by some act that
deserves death, he to whom he has forfeited it may, when he has him in
his power, delay to take it, and make use of him to his own service;
and he does him no injury by it. For, whenever he finds the hardship
of his slavery outweigh the value of his life, it is in his power,
by resisting the will of his master, to draw on himself the death he
desires.
23. This is the perfect condition of slavery, which is nothing
else but the state of war continued between a lawful conqueror and a
captive, for if once compact enter between them, and make an agreement
for a limited power on the one side, and obedience on the other, the
state of war and slavery ceases as long as the compact endures; for,
as has been said, no man can by agreement pass over to another that
which he hath not in himself- a power over his own life.
I confess, we find among the Jews, as well as other nations, that
men did sell themselves; but it is plain this was only to drudgery,
not to slavery; for it is evident the person sold was not under an
absolute, arbitrary, despotical power, for the master could not have
power to kill him at any time, whom at a certain time he was obliged
to let go free out of his service; and the master of such a servant
was so far from having an arbitrary power over his life that he
could not at pleasure so much as maim him, but the loss of an eye or
tooth set him free (Exod. 21.).
Chapter V
Of Property
24. Whether we consider natural reason, which tells us that men,
being once born, have a right to their preservation, and
consequently to meat and drink and such other things as Nature affords
for their subsistence, or "revelation," which gives us an account of
those grants God made of the world to Adam, and to Noah and his
sons, it is very clear that God, as King David says (Psalm 115. 16),
"has given the earth to the children of men," given it to mankind in
common. But, this being supposed, it seems to some a very great
difficulty how any one should ever come to have a property in
anything, I will not content myself to answer, that, if it be
difficult to make out "property" upon a supposition that God gave
the world to Adam and his posterity in common, it is impossible that
any man but one universal monarch should have any "property" upon a
supposition that God gave the world to Adam and his heirs in
succession, exclusive of all the rest of his posterity; but I shall
endeavour to show how men might come to have a property in several
parts of that which God gave to mankind in common, and that without
any express compact of all the commoners.
25. God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also
given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life
and convenience. The earth and all that is therein is given to men for
the support and comfort of their being. And though all the fruits it
naturally produces, and beasts it feeds, belong to mankind in
common, as they are produced by the spontaneous hand of Nature, and
nobody has originally a private dominion exclusive of the rest of
mankind in any of them, as they are thus in their natural state, yet
being given for the use of men, there must of necessity be a means
to appropriate them some way or other before they can be of any use,
or at all beneficial, to any particular men. The fruit or venison
which nourishes the wild Indian, who knows no enclosure, and is
still a tenant in common, must be his, and so his- i.e., a part of
him, that another can no longer have any right to it before it can
do him any good for the support of his life.
26. Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all
men, yet every man has a "property" in his own "person." This nobody
has any right to but himself. The "labour" of his body and the
"work" of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever, then,
he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it
in, he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined to it something
that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him
removed from the common state Nature placed it in, it hath by this
labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other
men. For this "labour" being the unquestionable property of the
labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined
to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for
others.
27. He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or
the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly
appropriated them to himself. Nobody can deny but the nourishment is
his. I ask, then, when did they begin to be his? when he digested?
or when he ate? or when he boiled? or when he brought them home? or
when he picked them up? And it is plain, if the first gathering made
them not his, nothing else could. That labour put a distinction
between them and common. That added something to them more than
Nature, the common mother of all, had done, and so they became his
private right. And will any one say he had no right to those acorns or
apples he thus appropriated because he had not the consent of all
mankind to make them his? Was it a robbery thus to assume to himself
what belonged to all in common? If such a consent as that was
necessary, man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given
him. We see in commons, which remain so by compact, that it is the
taking any part of what is common, and removing it out of the state
Nature leaves it in, which begins the property, without which the
common is of no use. And the taking of this or that part does not
depend on the express consent of all the commoners. Thus, the grass my
horse has bit, the turfs my servant has cut, and the ore I have digged
in any place, where I have a right to them in common with others,
become my property without the assignation or consent of anybody.
The labour that was mine, removing them out of that common state
they were in, hath fixed my property in them.
28. By making an explicit consent of every commoner necessary to any
one's appropriating to himself any part of what is given in common.
Children or servants could not cut the meat which their father or
master had provided for them in common without assigning to every
one his peculiar part. Though the water running in the fountain be
every one's, yet who can doubt but that in the pitcher is his only who
drew it out? His labour hath taken it out of the hands of Nature where
it was common, and belonged equally to all her children, and hath
thereby appropriated it to himself.
29. Thus this law of reason makes the deer that Indian's who hath
killed it; it is allowed to be his goods who hath bestowed his
labour upon it, though, before, it was the common right of every
one. And amongst those who are counted the civilised part of
mankind, who have made and multiplied positive laws to determine
property, this original law of Nature for the beginning of property,
in what was before common, still takes place, and by virtue thereof,
what fish any one catches in the ocean, that great and still remaining
common of mankind; or what amber-gris any one takes up here is by
the labour that removes it out of that common state Nature left it in,
made his property who takes that pains about it. And even amongst
us, the hare that any one is hunting is thought his who pursues her
during the chase. For being a beast that is still looked upon as
common, and no man's private possession, whoever has employed so
much labour about any of that kind as to find and pursue her has
thereby removed her from the state of Nature wherein she was common,
and hath begun a property.
30. It will, perhaps, be objected to this, that if gathering the
acorns or other fruits of the earth, etc., makes a right to them, then
any one may engross as much as he will. To which I answer, Not so. The
same law of Nature that does by this means give us property, does also
bound that property too. "God has given us all things richly." Is
the voice of reason confirmed by inspiration? But how far has He given
it us- "to enjoy"? 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. And thus considering the plenty of natural provisions there
was a long time in the world, and the few spenders, and to how small a
part of that provision the industry of one man could extend itself and
engross it to the prejudice of others, especially keeping within the
bounds set by reason of what might serve for his use, there could be
then little room for quarrels or contentions about property so
established.
31. But the chief matter of property being now not the fruits of the
earth and the beasts that subsist on it, but the earth itself, as that
which takes in and carries with it all the rest, I think it is plain
that property in that too is acquired as the former. 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, enclose it
from the common. Nor will it invalidate his right to say everybody
else has an equal title to it, and therefore he cannot appropriate, he
cannot enclose, without the consent of all his fellow-commoners, all
mankind. God, when He gave the world in common to all mankind,
commanded man also to labour, and the penury of his condition required
it of him. God and his reason commanded him to subdue the earth- i.e.,
improve it for the benefit of life and therein lay out something
upon it that was his own, his labour. He that, in obedience to this
command of God, subdued, tilled, and sowed any part of it, thereby
annexed to it something that was his property, which another had no
title to, nor could without injury take from him.
32. Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land, by improving
it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough and
as good left, and more than the yet unprovided could use. So that,
in effect, there was never the less left for others because of his
enclosure for himself. For he that leaves as much as another can
make use of does as good as take nothing at all. Nobody could think
himself injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a
good draught, who had a whole river of the same water left him to
quench his thirst. And the case of land and water, where there is
enough of both, is perfectly the same.
33. God gave the world to men in common, but since He gave it them
for their benefit and the greatest conveniencies of life they were
capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed He meant it should
always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the
industrious and rational (and labour was to be his title to it); not
to the fancy or covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious. He
that had as good left for his improvement as was already taken up
needed not complain, ought not to meddle with what was already
improved by another's labour; if he did it is plain he desired the
benefit of another's pains, which he had no right to, and not the
ground which God had given him, in common with others, to labour on,
and whereof there was as good left as that already possessed, and more
than he knew what to do with, or his industry could reach to.
34. It is true, in land that is common in England or any other
country, where there are plenty of people under government who have
money and commerce, no one can enclose or appropriate any part without
the consent of all his fellow-commoners; because this is left common
by compact- i.e., by the law of the land, which is not to be violated.
And, though it be common in respect of some men, it is not so to all
mankind, but is the joint propriety of this country, or this parish.
Besides, the remainder, after such enclosure, would not be as good
to the rest of the commoners as the whole was, when they could all
make use of the whole; whereas in the beginning and first peopling
of the great common of the world it was quite otherwise. The law man
was under was rather for appropriating. God commanded, and his wants
forced him to labour. That was his property, which could not be
taken from him wherever he had fixed it. And hence subduing or
cultivating the earth and having dominion, we see, are joined
together. The one gave title to the other. So that God, by
commanding to subdue, gave authority so far to appropriate. And the
condition of human life, which requires labour and materials to work
on, necessarily introduce private possessions.
35. The measure of property Nature well set, by the extent of
men's labour and the conveniency of life. No man's labour could subdue
or appropriate all, nor could his enjoyment consume more than a
small part; so that it was impossible for any man, this way, to
entrench upon the right of another or acquire to himself a property to
the prejudice of his neighbour, who would still have room for as
good and as large a possession (after the other had taken out his)
as before it was appropriated. Which measure did confine every man's
possession to a very moderate proportion, and such as he might
appropriate to himself without injury to anybody in the first ages
of the world, when men were more in danger to be lost, by wandering
from their company, in the then vast wilderness of the earth than to
be straitened for want of room to plant in.
36. The same measure may be allowed still, without prejudice to
anybody, full as the world seems. For, supposing a man or family, in
the state they were at first, peopling of the world by the children of
Adam or Noah, let him plant in some inland vacant places of America.
We shall find that the possessions he could make himself, upon the
measures we have given, would not be very large, nor, even to this
day, prejudice the rest of mankind or give them reason to complain
or think themselves injured by this man's encroachment, though the
race of men have now spread themselves to all the corners of the
world, and do infinitely exceed the small number was at the beginning.
Nay, the extent of ground is of so little value without labour that
I have heard it affirmed that in Spain itself a man may be permitted
to plough, sow, and reap, without being disturbed, upon land he has no
other title to, but only his making use of it. But, on the contrary,
the inhabitants think themselves beholden to him who, by his
industry on neglected, and consequently waste land, has increased
the stock of corn, which they wanted. But be this as it will, which
I lay no stress on, this I dare boldly affirm, that the 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 straitening anybody,
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; which, how it has done, I shall by
and by show more at large.
37. This is certain, that in the beginning, before the desire of
having more than men needed had altered the intrinsic value of things,
which depends only on their usefulness to the life of man, or had
agreed that a little piece of yellow metal, which would keep without
wasting or decay, should be worth a great piece of flesh or a whole
heap of corn, though men had a right to appropriate by their labour,
each one to himself, as much of the things of Nature as he could
use, yet this could not be much, nor to the prejudice of others, where
the same plenty was still left, to those who would use the same
industry.
Before the appropriation of land, he who gathered as much of the
wild fruit, killed, caught, or tamed as many of the beasts as he
could- he that so employed his pains about any of the spontaneous
products of Nature as any way to alter them from the state Nature
put them in, by placing any of his labour on them, did thereby acquire
a propriety in them; but if they perished in his possession without
their due use- if the fruits rotted or the venison putrefied before he
could spend it, he offended against the common law of Nature, and
was liable to be punished: he invaded his neighbour's share, for he
had no right farther than his use called for any of them, and they
might serve to afford him conveniencies of life.
38. The same measures governed the possession of land, too.
Whatsoever he tilled and reaped, laid up and made use of before it
spoiled, that was his peculiar right; whatsoever he enclosed, and
could feed and make use of, the cattle and product was also his. But
if either the grass of his enclosure rotted on the ground, or the
fruit of his planting perished without gathering and laying up, this
part of the earth, notwithstanding his enclosure, was still to be
looked on as waste, and might be the possession of any other. Thus, at
the beginning, Cain might take as much ground as he could till and
make it his own land, and yet leave enough to Abel's sheep to feed on:
a few acres would serve for both their possessions. But as families
increased and industry enlarged their stocks, their possessions
enlarged with the need of them; but yet it was commonly without any
fixed property in the ground they made use of till they
incorporated, settled themselves together, and built cities, and then,
by consent, they came in time to set out the bounds of their
distinct territories and agree on limits between them and their
neighbours, and by laws within themselves settled the properties of
those of the same society. For we see that in that part of the world
which was first inhabited, and therefore like to be best peopled, even
as low down as Abraham's time, they wandered with their flocks and
their herds, which was their substance, freely up and down- and this
Abraham did in a country where he was a stranger; whence it is plain
that, at least, a great part of the land lay in common, that the
inhabitants valued it not, nor claimed property in any more than
they made use of; but when there was not room enough in the same place
for their herds to feed together, they, by consent, as Abraham and Lot
did (Gen. xiii. 5), separated and enlarged their pasture where it best
liked them. And for the same reason, Esau went from his father and his
brother, and planted in Mount Seir (Gen. 36. 6).
39. And thus, without supposing any private dominion and property in
Adam over all the world, exclusive of all other men, which can no
way be proved, nor any one's property be made out from it, but
supposing the world, given as it was to the children of men in common,
we see how labour could make men distinct titles to several parcels of
it for their private uses, wherein there could be no doubt of right,
no room for quarrel.
40. Nor is it so strange as, perhaps, before consideration, it may
appear, that the property of labour should be able to overbalance
the community of land, for it is labour indeed that puts the
difference of value on everything; and let any one consider what the
difference is between an acre of land planted with tobacco or sugar,
sown with wheat or barley, and an acre of the same land lying in
common without any husbandry upon it, and he will find that the
improvement of labour makes the far greater part of the value. I think
it will be but a very modest computation to say, that of the
products of the earth useful to the life of man, nine-tenths are the
effects of labour. Nay, if we will rightly estimate things as they
come to our use, and cast up the several expenses about them- what
in them is purely owing to Nature and what to labour- we shall find
that in most of them ninety-nine hundredths are wholly to be put on
the account of labour.
41. There cannot be a clearer demonstration of anything than several
nations of the Americans are of this, who are rich in land and poor in
all the comforts of life; whom Nature, having furnished as liberally
as any other people with the materials of plenty- i.e., a fruitful
soil, apt to produce in abundance what might serve for food,
raiment, and delight; yet, for want of improving it by labour, have
not one hundredth part of the conveniencies we enjoy, and a king of
a large and fruitful territory there feeds, lodges, and is clad
worse than a day labourer in England.
42. To make this a little clearer, let us but trace some of the
ordinary provisions of life, through their several progresses,
before they come to our use, and see how much they receive of their
value from human industry. Bread, wine, and cloth are things of
daily use and great plenty; yet notwithstanding acorns, water, and
leaves, or skins must be our bread, drink and clothing, did not labour
furnish us with these more useful commodities. For whatever bread is
more worth than acorns, wine than water, and cloth or silk than
leaves, skins or moss, that is wholly owing to labour and industry.
The one of these being the food and raiment which unassisted Nature
furnishes us with; the other provisions which our industry and pains
prepare for us, which how much they exceed the other in value, 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; and
the ground which produces the materials is scarce to be reckoned in as
any, or at most, but a very small part of it; so little, that even
amongst us, land that is left wholly to nature, that hath no
improvement of pasturage, tillage, or planting, is called, as indeed
it is, waste; and we shall find the benefit of it amount to little
more than nothing.
43. An acre of land that bears here twenty bushels of wheat, and
another in America, which, with the same husbandry, would do the like,
are, without doubt, of the same natural, intrinsic value. But yet
the benefit mankind receives from one in a year is worth five
pounds, and the other possibly not worth a penny; if all the profit an
Indian received from it were to be valued and sold here, at least I
may truly say, not one thousandth. It is labour, then, which puts
the greatest part of value upon land, without which it would
scarcely be worth anything; it is to that we owe the greatest part
of all its useful products; for all that the straw, bran, bread, of
that acre of wheat, is more worth than the product of an acre of as
good land which lies waste is all the effect of labour. For it is
not barely the ploughman's pains, the reaper's and thresher's toil,
and the baker's sweat, is to be counted into the bread we eat; the
labour of those who broke the oxen, who digged and wrought the iron
and stones, who felled and framed the timber employed about the
plough, mill, oven, or any other utensils, which are a vast number,
requisite to this corn, from its sowing to its being made bread,
must all be charged on the account of labour, and received as an
effect of that; Nature and the earth furnished only the almost
worthless materials as in themselves. It would be a strange
catalogue of things that industry provided and made use of about every
loaf of bread before it came to our use if we could trace them;
iron, wood, leather, bark, timber, stone, bricks, coals, lime,
cloth, dyeing-drugs, pitch, tar, masts, ropes, and all the materials
made use of in the ship that brought any of the commodities made use
of by any of the workmen, to any part of the work, all which it
would be almost impossible, at least too long, to reckon up.
44. From all which it is evident, that though the things of Nature
are given in common, 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; and that which made up the
great part of what he applied to the support or comfort of his
being, when invention and arts had improved the conveniences of
life, was perfectly his own, and did not belong in common to others.
45. Thus labour, in the beginning, gave a right of property,
wherever any one was pleased to employ it, upon what was common, which
remained a long while, the far greater part, and is yet more than
mankind makes use of Men at first, for the most part, contented
themselves with what unassisted Nature offered to their necessities;
and though afterwards, in some parts of the world, where the
increase of people and stock, with the use of money, had made land
scarce, and so of some value, the several communities settled the
bounds of their distinct territories, and, by laws, within themselves,
regulated the properties of the private men of their society, and
so, by compact and agreement, settled the property which labour and
industry began. And the leagues that have been made between several
states and kingdoms, either expressly or tacitly disowning all claim
and right to the land in the other's possession, have, by common
consent, given up their pretences to their natural common right, which
originally they had to those countries; and so have, by positive
agreement, settled a property amongst themselves, in distinct parts of
the world; yet there are still great tracts of ground to be found,
which the inhabitants thereof, not having joined with the rest of
mankind in the consent of the use of their common money, lie waste,
and are more than the people who dwell on it, do, or can make use
of, and so still lie in common; though this can scarce happen
amongst that part of mankind that have consented to the use of money.
46. The greatest part of things really useful to the life of man,
and such as the necessity of subsisting made the first commoners of
the world look after- as it doth the Americans now- are generally
things of short duration, such as- if they are not consumed by use-
will decay and perish of themselves. Gold, silver, and diamonds are
things that fancy or agreement hath put the value on, more than real
use and the necessary support of life. Now of those good things
which Nature hath provided in common, every one hath a right (as
hath been said) to as much as he could use; and had a property in
all he could effect with his labour; all that his industry could
extend to, to alter from the state Nature had put it in, was his. He
that gathered a hundred bushels of acorns or apples had thereby a
property in them; they were his goods as soon as gathered. He was only
to look that he used them before they spoiled, else he took more
than his share, and robbed others. And, indeed, it was a foolish
thing, as well as dishonest, to hoard up more than he could make use
of If he gave away a part to anybody else, so that it perished not
uselessly in his possession, these he also made use of And if he
also bartered away plums that would have rotted in a week, for nuts
that would last good for his eating a whole year, he did no injury; he
wasted not the common stock; destroyed no part of the portion of goods
that belonged to others, so long as nothing perished uselessly in
his hands. Again, if he would give his nuts for a piece of metal,
pleased with its colour, or exchange his sheep for shells, or wool for
a sparkling pebble or a diamond, and keep those by him all his life,
he invaded not the right of others; he might heap up as much of
these durable things as he pleased; the exceeding of the bounds of his
just property not lying in the largeness of his possession, but the
perishing of anything uselessly in it.
47. And thus came in the use of money; 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.
48. And as different degrees of industry were apt to give men
possessions in different proportions, so this invention of money
gave them the opportunity to continue and enlarge them. For
supposing an island, separate from all possible commerce with the rest
of the world, wherein there were but a hundred families, but there
were sheep, horses, and cows, with other useful animals, wholesome
fruits, and land enough for corn for a hundred thousand times as many,
but nothing in the island, either because of its commonness or
perishableness, fit to supply the place of money. What reason could
any one have there to enlarge his possessions beyond the use of his
family, and a plentiful supply to its consumption, either in what
their own industry produced, or they could barter for like perishable,
useful commodities with others? Where there is not something both
lasting and scarce, and so valuable to be hoarded up, there men will
not be apt to enlarge their possessions of land, were it never so
rich, never so free for them to take. For I ask, what would a man
value ten thousand or an hundred thousand acres of excellent land,
ready cultivated and well stocked, too, with cattle, in the middle
of the inland parts of America, where he had no hopes of commerce with
other parts of the world, to draw money to him by the sale of the
product? It would not be worth the enclosing, and we should see him
give up again to the wild common of Nature whatever was more than
would supply the conveniences of life, to be had there for him and his
family.
49. Thus, in the beginning, all the world was America, and more so
than that is now; for no such thing as money was anywhere known.
Find out something that hath the use and value of money amongst his
neighbours, you shall see the same man will begin presently to enlarge
his possessions.
50. But, since gold and silver, being little useful to the life of
man, in proportion to food, raiment, and carriage, has its value
only from the consent of men- whereof labour yet makes in great part
the measure- it is plain that the consent of men have agreed to a
disproportionate and unequal possession of the earth- I mean out of
the bounds of society and compact; for in governments the laws
regulate it; they having, by consent, found out and agreed in a way
how a man may, rightfully and without injury, possess more than he
himself can make use of by receiving gold and silver, which may
continue long in a man's possession without decaying for the overplus,
and agreeing those metals should have a value.
51. And thus, I think, it is very easy to conceive, without any
difficulty, how labour could at first begin a title of property in the
common things of Nature, and how the spending it upon our uses bounded
it; so that there could then be no reason of quarrelling about title,
nor any doubt about the largeness of possession it gave. Right and
conveniency went together. For as a man had a right to all he could
employ his labour upon, so he had no temptation to labour for more
than he could make use of. This left no room for controversy about
the title, nor for encroachment on the right of others. What portion
a man carved to himself was easily seen; and it was useless, as well
as dishonest, to carve himself too much, or take more than he needed.
Chapter VI
Of Paternal Power
52. IT may perhaps be censured an impertinent criticism in a
discourse of this nature to find fault with words and names that
have obtained in the world. And yet possibly it may not be amiss to
offer new ones when the old are apt to lead men into mistakes, as this
of paternal power probably has done, which seems so to place the power
of parents over their children wholly in the father, as if the
mother had no share in it; whereas if we consult reason or revelation,
we shall find she has an equal title, which may give one reason to ask
whether this might not be more properly called parental power? For
whatever obligation Nature and the right of generation lays on
children, it must certainly bind them equal to both the concurrent
causes of it. And accordingly we see the positive law of God
everywhere joins them together without distinction, when it commands
the obedience of children: "Honour thy father and thy mother" (Exod.
20. 12); "Whosoever curseth his father or his mother" (Lev. 20. 9);
"Ye shall fear every man his mother and his father" (Lev. 19. 3);
"Children, obey your parents" (Eph. 6. 1), etc., is the style of the
Old and New Testament.
53. Had but this one thing been well considered without looking
any deeper into the matter, it might perhaps have kept men from
running into those gross mistakes they have made about this power of
parents, which however it might without any great harshness bear the
name of absolute dominion and regal authority, when under the title of
"paternal" power, it seemed appropriated to the father; would yet have
sounded but oddly, and in the very name shown the absurdity, if this
supposed absolute power over children had been called parental, and
thereby discovered that it belonged to the mother too. For it will but
very ill serve the turn of those men who contend so much for the
absolute power and authority of the fatherhood, as they call it,
that the mother should have any share in it. And it would have but ill
supported the monarchy they contend for, when by the very name it
appeared that that fundamental authority from whence they would derive
their government of a single person only was not placed in one, but
two persons jointly. But to let this of names pass.
54. Though I have said above (2) "That all men by nature are equal,"
I cannot be supposed to understand all sorts of "equality." Age or
virtue may give men a just precedency. Excellency of parts and merit
may place others above the common level. Birth may subject some, and
alliance or benefits others, to pay an observance to those to whom
Nature, gratitude, or other respects, may have made it due; and yet
all this consists with the equality which all men are in respect of
jurisdiction or dominion one over another, which was the equality I
there spoke of as proper to the business in hand, being that equal
right that every man hath to his natural freedom, without being
subjected to the will or authority of any other man.
55. Children, I confess, are not born in this full state of
equality, though they are born to it. Their parents have a sort of
rule and jurisdiction over them when they come into the world, and for
some time after, but it is but a temporary one. The bonds of this
subjection are like the swaddling clothes they are wrapt up in and
supported by in the weakness of their infancy. Age and reason as
they grow up loosen them, till at length they drop quite off, and
leave a man at his own free disposal.
56. Adam was created a perfect man, his body and mind in full
possession of their strength and reason, and so was capable from the
first instance of his being to provide for his own support and
preservation, and govern his actions according to the dictates of
the law of reason God had implanted in him. From him the world is
peopled with his descendants, who are all born infants, weak and
helpless, without knowledge or understanding. But to supply the
defects of this imperfect state till the improvement of growth and age
had removed them, Adam and Eve, and after them all parents were, by
the law of Nature, under an obligation to preserve, nourish and
educate the children they had begotten, not as their own
workmanship, but the workmanship of their own Maker, the Almighty,
to whom they were to be accountable for them.
57. The law that was to govern Adam was the same that was to
govern all his posterity, the law of reason. But his offspring
having another way of entrance into the world, different from him,
by a natural birth, that produced them ignorant, and without the use
of reason, they were not presently under that law. For nobody can be
under a law that is not promulgated to him; and this law being
promulgated or made known by reason only, he that is not come to the
use of his reason cannot be said to be under this law; and Adam's
children being not presently as soon as born under this law of reason,
were not presently free. For law, in its true notion, is not so much
the limitation as the direction of a free and intelligent agent to his
proper interest, and prescribes no farther than is for the general
good of those under that law. Could they be happier without it, the
law, as a useless thing, would of itself vanish; and that ill deserves
the name of confinement which hedges us in only from bogs and
precipices. So that however it may be mistaken, the end of law is
not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For
in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is
no law there is no freedom. For liberty is to be free from restraint
and violence from others, which cannot be where there is no law; and
is not, as we are told, "a liberty for every man to do what he lists."
For who could be free, when every other man's humour might domineer
over him? But a liberty to dispose and order freely as he lists his
person, actions, possessions, and his whole property within the
allowance of those laws under which he is, and therein not to be
subject to the arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own.
58. The power, then, that parents have over their children arises
from that duty which is incumbent on them, to take care of their
offspring during the imperfect state of childhood. To inform the mind,
and govern the actions of their yet ignorant nonage, till reason shall
take its place and ease them of that trouble, is what the children
want, and the parents are bound to. For God having given man an
understanding to direct his actions, has allowed him a freedom of will
and liberty of acting, as properly belonging thereunto within the
bounds of that law he is under. But whilst he is in an estate
wherein he has no understanding of his own to direct his will, he is
not to have any will of his own to follow. He that understands for him
must will for him too; he must prescribe to his will, and regulate his
actions, but when he comes to the estate that made his father a free
man, the son is a free man too.
59. This holds in all the laws a man is under, whether natural or
civil. Is a man under the law of Nature? What made him free of that
law? what gave him a free disposing of his property, according to
his own will, within the compass of that law? I answer, an estate
wherein he might be supposed capable to know that law, that so he
might keep his actions within the bounds of it. When he has acquired
that state, he is presumed to know how far that law is to be his
guide, and how far he may make use of his freedom, and so comes to
have it; till then, somebody else must guide him, who is presumed to
know how far the law allows a liberty. If such a state of reason, such
an age of discretion made him free, the same shall make his son free
too. Is a man under the law of England? what made him free of that
law- that is, to have the liberty to dispose of his actions and
possessions, according to his own will, within the permission of
that law? a capacity of knowing that law. Which is supposed, by that
law, at the age of twenty-one, and in some cases sooner. If this
made the father free, it shall make the son free too. Till then, we
see the law allows the son to have no will, but he is to be guided
by the will of his father or guardian, who is to understand for him.
And if the father die and fail to substitute a deputy in this trust,
if he hath not provided a tutor to govern his son during his minority,
during his want of understanding, the law takes care to do it: some
other must govern him and be a will to him till he hath attained to
a state of freedom, and his understanding be fit to take the
government of his will. But after that the father and son are
equally free, as much as tutor and pupil, after nonage, equally
subjects of the same law together, without any dominion left in the
father over the life, liberty, or estate of his son, whether they be
only in the state and under the law of Nature, or under the positive
laws of an established government.
60. But if through defects that may happen out of the ordinary
course of Nature, any one comes not to such a degree of reason wherein
he might be supposed capable of knowing the law, and so living
within the rules of it, he is never capable of being a free man, he is
never let loose to the disposure of his own will; because he knows
no bounds to it, has not understanding, its proper guide, but is
continued under the tuition and government of others all the time
his own understanding is incapable of that charge. And so lunatics and
idiots are never set free from the government of their parents:
"Children who are not as yet come unto those years whereat they may
have, and innocents, which are excluded by a natural defect from
ever having." Thirdly: "Madmen, which, for the present, cannot
possibly have the use of right reason to guide themselves, have, for
their guide, the reason that guideth other men which are tutors over
them, to seek and procure their good for them," says Hooker (Eccl.
Pol., lib. i., s. 7). All which seems no more than that duty which God
and Nature has laid on man, as well as other creatures, to preserve
their offspring till they can be able to shift for themselves, and
will scarce amount to an instance or proof of parents' regal
authority.
61. Thus we are born free as we are born rational; not that we
have actually the exercise of either: age that brings one, brings with
it the other too. And thus we see how natural freedom and subjection
to parents may consist together, and are both founded on the same
principle. A child is free by his father's title, by his father's
understanding, which is to govern him till he hath it of his own.
The freedom of a man at years of discretion, and the subjection of a
child to his parents, whilst yet short of it, are so consistent and so
distinguishable that the most blinded contenders for monarchy, "by
right of fatherhood," cannot miss of it; the most obstinate cannot but
allow of it. For were their doctrine all true, were the right heir
of Adam now known, and, by that title, settled a monarch in his
throne, invested with all the absolute unlimited power Sir Robert
Filmer talks of, if he should die as soon as his heir were born,
must not the child, notwithstanding he were never so free, never so
much sovereign, be in subjection to his mother and nurse, to tutors
and governors, till age and education brought him reason and ability
to govern himself and others? The necessities of his life, the
health of his body, and the information of his mind would require
him to be directed by the will of others and not his own; and yet will
any one think that this restraint and subjection were inconsistent
with, or spoiled him of, that liberty or sovereignty he had a right
to, or gave away his empire to those who had the government of his
nonage? This government over him only prepared him the better and
sooner for it. If anybody should ask me when my son is of age to be
free, I shall answer, just when his monarch is of age to govern.
"But at what time," says the judicious Hooker (Eccl. Pol., lib. i., s.
6), "a man may be said to have attained so far forth the use of reason
as sufficeth to make him capable of those laws whereby he is then
bound to guide his actions; this is a great deal more easy for sense
to discern than for any one, by skill and learning, to determine."
62. Commonwealths themselves take notice of, and allow that there is
a time when men are to begin to act like free men, and therefore, till
that time, require not oaths of fealty or allegiance, or other
public owning of, or submission to, the government of their countries.
63. The freedom then of man, and liberty of acting according to
his own will, is grounded on his having reason, which is able to
instruct him in that law he is to govern himself by, and make him know
how far he is left to the freedom of his own will. To turn him loose
to an unrestrained liberty, before he has reason to guide him, is
not the allowing him the privilege of his nature to be free, but to
thrust him out amongst brutes, and abandon him to a state as
wretched and as much beneath that of a man as theirs. This is that
which puts the authority into the parents' hands to govern the
minority of their children. God hath made it their business to
employ this care on their offspring, and hath placed in them
suitable inclinations of tenderness and concern to temper this
power, to apply it as His wisdom designed it, to the children's good
as long as they should need to be under it.
64. But what reason can hence advance this care of the parents due
to their offspring into an absolute, arbitrary dominion of the father,
whose power reaches no farther than by such a discipline as he finds
most effectual to give such strength and health to their bodies,
such vigour and rectitude to their minds, as may best fit his children
to be most useful to themselves and others, and, if it be necessary to
his condition, to make them work when they are able for their own
subsistence; but in this power the mother, too, has her share with the
father.
65. Nay, this power so little belongs to the father by any
peculiar right of Nature, but only as he is guardian of his
children, that when he quits his care of them he loses his power
over them, which goes along with their nourishment and education, to
which it is inseparably annexed, and belongs as much to the
foster-father of an exposed child as to the natural father of another.
So little power does the bare act of begetting give a man over his
issue, if all his care ends there, and this be all the title he hath
to the name and authority of a father. And what will become of this
paternal power in that part of the world where one woman hath more
than one husband at a time? or in those parts of America where, when
the husband and wife part, which happens frequently, the children
are all left to the mother, follow her, and are wholly under her
care and provision? And if the father die whilst the children are
young, do they not naturally everywhere owe the same obedience to
their mother, during their minority, as to their father, were he
alive? And will any one say that the mother hath a legislative power
over her children that she can make standing rules which shall be of
perpetual obligation, by which they ought to regulate all the concerns
of their property, and bound their liberty all the course of their
lives, and enforce the observation of them with capital punishments?
For this is the proper power of the magistrate, of which the father
hath not so much as the shadow. His command over his children is but
temporary, and reaches not their life or property. It is but a help to
the weakness and imperfection of their nonage, a discipline
necessary to their education. And though a father may dispose of his
own possessions as he pleases when his children are out of danger of
perishing for want, yet his power extends not to the lives or goods
which either their own industry, or another's bounty, has made theirs,
nor to their liberty neither when they are once arrived to the
enfranchisement of the years of discretion. The father's empire then
ceases, and he can from thenceforward no more dispose of the liberty
of his son than that of any other man. And it must be far from an
absolute or perpetual jurisdiction from which a man may withdraw
himself, having licence from Divine authority to "leave father and
mother and cleave to his wife."
66. But though there be a time when a child comes to be as free from
subjection to the will and command of his father as he himself is free
from subjection to the will of anybody else, and they are both under
no other restraint but that which is common to them both, whether it
be the law of Nature or municipal law of their country, yet this
freedom exempts not a son from that honour which he ought, by the
law of God and Nature, to pay his parents, God having made the parents
instruments in His great design of continuing the race of mankind
and the occasions of life to their children. As He hath laid on them
an obligation to nourish, preserve, and bring up their offspring, so
He has laid on the children a perpetual obligation of honouring
their parents, which, containing in it an inward esteem and
reverence to be shown by all outward expressions, ties up the child
from anything that may ever injure or affront, disturb or endanger the
happiness or life of those from whom he received his, and engages
him in all actions of defence, relief, assistance, and comfort of
those by whose means he entered into being and has been made capable
of any enjoyments of life. From this obligation no state, no
freedom, can absolve children. But this is very far from giving
parents a power of command over their children, or an authority to
make laws and dispose as they please of their lives or liberties. It
is one thing to owe honour, respect, gratitude, and assistance;
another to require an absolute obedience and submission. The honour
due to parents a monarch on his throne owes his mother, and yet this
lessens not his authority nor subjects him to her government.
67. The subjection of a minor places in the father a temporary
government which terminates with the minority of the child; and the
honour due from a child places in the parents a perpetual right to
respect, reverence, support, and compliance, to more or less, as the
father's care, cost, and kindness in his education has been more or
less, and this ends not with minority, but holds in all parts and
conditions of a man's life. The want of distinguishing these two
powers which the father hath, in the right of tuition, during
minority, and the right of honour all his life, may perhaps have
caused a great part of the mistakes about this matter. For, to speak
properly of them, the first of these is rather the privilege of
children and duty of parents than any prerogative of paternal power.
The nourishment and education of their children is a charge so
incumbent on parents for their children's good, that nothing can
absolve them from taking care of it. And though the power of
commanding and chastising them go along with it, yet God hath woven
into the principles of human nature such a tenderness for their
offspring, that there is little fear that parents should use their
power with too much rigour; the excess is seldom on the severe side,
the strong bias of nature drawing the other way. And therefore God
Almighty, when He would express His gentle dealing with the
Israelites, He tells them that though He chastened them, "He chastened
them as a man chastens his son" (Deut. 8. 5)- i.e., with tenderness
and affection, and kept them under no severer discipline than what was
absolutely best for them, and had been less kindness, to have
slackened. This is that power to which children are commanded
obedience, that the pains and care of their parents may not be
increased or ill-rewarded.
68. On the other side, honour and support all that which gratitude
requires to return; for the benefits received by and from them is
the indispensable duty of the child and the proper privilege of the
parents. This is intended for the parents' advantage, as the other
is for the child's; though education, the parents' duty, seems to have
most power, because the ignorance and infirmities of childhood stand
in need of restraint and correction, which is a visible exercise of
rule and a kind of dominion. And that duty which is comprehended in
the word "honour" requires less obedience, though the obligation be
stronger on grown than younger children. For who can think the
command, "Children, obey your parents," requires in a man that has
children of his own the same submission to his father as it does in
his yet young children to him, and that by this precept he were
bound to obey all his father's commands, if, out of a conceit of
authority, he should have the indiscretion to treat him still as a
boy?
69. The first part, then, of paternal power, or rather duty, which
is education, belongs so to the father that it terminates at a certain
season. When the business of education is over it ceases of itself,
and is also alienable before. For a man may put the tuition of his son
in other hands; and he that has made his son an apprentice to
another has discharged him, during that time, of a great part of his
obedience, both to himself and to his mother. But all the duty of
honour, the other part, remains nevertheless entire to them; nothing
can cancel that. It is so inseparable from them both, that the
father's authority cannot dispossess the mother of this right, nor can
any man discharge his son from honouring her that bore him. But both
these are very far from a power to make laws, and enforcing them
with penalties that may reach estate, liberty, limbs, and life. The
power of commanding ends with nonage, and though after that honour and
respect, support and defence, and whatsoever gratitude can oblige a
man to, for the highest benefits he is naturally capable of be
always due from a son to his parents, yet all this puts no sceptre
into the father's hand, no sovereign power of commanding. He has no
dominion over his son's property or actions, nor any right that his
will should prescribe to his son's in all things; however, it may
become his son in many things, not very inconvenient to him and his
family, to pay a deference to it.
70. A man may owe honour and respect to an ancient or wise man,
defence to his child or friend, relief and support to the
distressed, and gratitude to a benefactor, to such a degree that all
he has, all he can do, cannot sufficiently pay it. But all these
give no authority, no right of making laws to any one over him from
whom they are owing. And it is plain all this is due, not to the
bare title of father, not only because as has been said, it is owing
to the mother too, but because these obligations to parents, and the
degrees of what is required of children, may be varied by the
different care and kindness trouble and expense, is often employed
upon one child more than another.
71. This shows the reason how it comes to pass that parents in
societies, where they themselves are subjects, retain a power over
their children and have as much right to their subjection as those who
are in the state of Nature, which could not possibly be if all
political power were only paternal, and that, in truth, they were
one and the same thing; for then, all paternal power being in the
prince, the subject could naturally have none of it. But these two
powers, political and paternal, are so perfectly distinct and
separate, and built upon so different foundations, and given to so
different ends, that every subject that is a father has as much a
paternal power over his children as the prince has over his. And every
prince that has parents owes them as much filial duty and obedience as
the meanest of his subjects do to theirs, and can therefore contain
not any part or degree of that kind of dominion which a prince or
magistrate has over his subject.
72. Though the obligation on the parents to bring up their children,
and the obligation on children to honour their parents, contain all
the power, on the one hand, and submission on the other, which are
proper to this relation, yet there is another power ordinarily in
the father, whereby he has a tie on the obedience of his children,
which, though it be common to him with other men, yet the occasions of
showing it, almost constantly happening to fathers in their private
families and in instances of it elsewhere being rare, and less taken
notice of, it passes in the world for a part of "paternal
jurisdiction." And this is the power men generally have to bestow
their estates on those who please them best. The possession of the
father being the expectation and inheritance of the children
ordinarily, in certain proportions, according to the law and custom of
each country, yet it is commonly in the father's power to bestow it
with a more sparing or liberal hand, according as the behaviour of
this or that child hath comported with his will and humour.
73. This is no small tie to the obedience of children; and there
being always annexed to the enjoyment of land a submission to the
government of the country of which that land is a part, it has been
commonly supposed that a father could oblige his posterity to that
government of which he himself was a subject, that his compact held
them; whereas, it being only a necessary condition annexed to the land
which is under that government, reaches only those who will take it on
that condition, and so is no natural tie or engagement, but a
voluntary submission; for every man's children being, by Nature, as
free as himself or any of his ancestors ever were, may, whilst they
are in that freedom, choose what society they will join themselves to,
what commonwealth they will put themselves under. But if they will
enjoy the inheritance of their ancestors, they must take it on the
same terms their ancestors had it, and submit to all the conditions
annexed to such a possession. By this power, indeed, fathers oblige
their children to obedience to themselves even when they are past
minority, and most commonly, too, subject them to this or that
political power. But neither of these by any peculiar right of
fatherhood, but by the reward they have in their hands to enforce
and recompense such a compliance, and is no more power than what a
Frenchman has over an Englishman, who, by the hopes of an estate he
will leave him, will certainly have a strong tie on his obedience; and
if when it is left him, he will enjoy it, he must certainly take it
upon the conditions annexed to the possession of land in that
country where it lies, whether it be France or England.
74. To conclude, then, though the father's power of commanding
extends no farther than the minority of his children, and to a
degree only fit for the discipline and government of that age; and
though that honour and respect, and all that which the Latins called
piety, which they indispensably owe to their parents all their
lifetime, and in all estates, with all that support and defence, is
due to them, gives the father no power of governing- i.e., making laws
and exacting penalties on his children; though by this he has no
dominion over the property or actions of his son, yet it is obvious to
conceive how easy it was, in the first ages of the world, and in
places still where the thinness of people gives families leave to
separate into unpossessed quarters, and they have room to remove and
plant themselves in yet vacant habitations, for the father of the
family to become the prince of it;* he had been a ruler from the
beginning of the infancy of his children; and when they were grown up,
since without some government it would be hard for them to live
together, it was likeliest it should, by the express or tacit
consent of the children, be in the father, where it seemed, without
any change, barely to continue. And when, indeed, nothing more was
required to it than the permitting the father to exercise alone in his
family that executive power of the law of Nature which every free
man naturally hath, and by that permission resigning up to him a
monarchical power whilst they remained in it. But that this was not by
any paternal right, but only by the consent of his children, is
evident from hence, that nobody doubts but if a stranger, whom
chance or business had brought to his family, had there killed any
of his children, or committed any other act, he might condemn and
put him to death, or otherwise have punished him as well as any of his
children. which was impossible he should do by virtue of any
paternal authority over one who was not his child, but by virtue of
that executive power of the law of Nature which, as a man, he had a
right to; and he alone could punish him in his family where the
respect of his children had laid by the exercise of such a power, to
give way to the dignity and authority they were willing should
remain in him above the rest of his family.
- "It is no improbable opinion, therefore, which the
arch-philosopher was of, That the chief person in every household
was always, as it were, a king; so when numbers of households joined
themselves in civil societies together, kings were the first kind of
governors among them, which is also, as it seemeth, the reason why the
name of fathers continued still in them, who of fathers were made
rulers; as also the ancient custom of governors to do as
Melchizedec; and being kings, to exercise the office of priests, which
fathers did, at the first, grew, perhaps, by the same occasion.
Howbeit, this is not the only kind of regimen that has been received
in the world. The inconveniencies of one kind have caused sundry
others to be devised, so that, in a word, all public regimen, of
what kind soever, seemeth evidently to have risen from the
deliberate advice, consultation and composition between men, judging
it convenient and behoveful, there being no impossibility in Nature,
considered by itself, but that man might have lived without any public
regimen." Hooker, Eccl. Pol., i. 10.
75. Thus it was easy and almost natural for children, by a tacit and
almost natural consent, to make way for the father's authority and
government. They had been accustomed in their childhood to follow
his direction, and to refer their little differences to him; and
when they were men, who was fitter to rule them? Their little
properties and less covetousness seldom afforded greater
controversies; and when any should arise, where could they have a
fitter umpire than he, by whose care they had every one been sustained
and brought up. and who had a tenderness for them all? It is no wonder
that they made no distinction betwixt minority and full age, nor
looked after one-and-twenty, or any other age, that might make them
the free disposers of themselves and fortunes, when they could have no
desire to be out of their pupilage. The government they had been under
during it continued still to be more their protection than
restraint; and they could nowhere find a greater security to their
peace, liberties, and fortunes than in the rule of a father.
76. Thus the natural fathers of families, by an insensible change,
became the politic monarchs of them too; and as they chanced to live
long, and leave able and worthy heirs for several successions or
otherwise, so they laid the foundations of hereditary or elective
kingdoms under several constitutions and manors, according as
chance, contrivance, or occasions happened to mould them. But if
princes have their titles in the father's right, and it be a
sufficient proof of the natural right of fathers to political
authority, because they commonly were those in whose hands we find, de
facto, the exercise of government, I say, if this argument be good, it
will as strongly prove that all princes, nay, princes only, ought to
be priests, since it is as certain that in the beginning "the father
of the family was priest, as that he was ruler in his own household."
Chapter VII
Of Political or Civil Society
77. GOD, having made man such a creature that, in His own
judgment, it was not good for him to be alone, put him under strong
obligations of necessity, convenience, and inclination, to drive him
into society, as well as fitted him with understanding and language to
continue and enjoy it. The first society was between man and wife,
which gave beginning to that between parents and children, to which,
in time, that between master and servant came to be added. And
though all these might, and commonly did, meet together, and make up
but one family, wherein the master or mistress of it had some sort
of rule proper to a family, each of these, or all together, came short
of "political society," as we shall see if we consider the different
ends, ties, and bounds of each of these.
78. Conjugal society is made by a voluntary compact between man
and woman, and though it consist chiefly in such a communion and right
in one another's bodies as is necessary to its chief end, procreation,
yet it draws with it mutual support and assistance, and a communion of
interests too, as necessary not only to unite their care and
affection, but also necessary to their common offspring, who have a
right to be nourished and maintained by them till they are able to
provide for themselves.
79. For the end of conjunction between male and female being not
barely procreation, but the continuation of the species, this
conjunction betwixt male and female ought to last, even after
procreation, so long as is necessary to the nourishment and support of
the young ones, who are to be sustained by those that got them till
they are able to shift and provide for themselves. This rule, which
the infinite wise Maker hath set to the works of His hands, we find
the inferior creatures steadily obey. In those vivaporous animals
which feed on grass the conjunction between male and female lasts no
longer than the very act of copulation, because the teat of the dam
being sufficient to nourish the young till it be able to feed on
grass. the male only begets, but concerns not himself for the female
or young, to whose sustenance he can contribute nothing. But in beasts
of prey the conjunction lasts longer because the dam, not being able
well to subsist herself and nourish her numerous offspring by her
own prey alone (a more laborious as well as more dangerous way of
living than by feeding on grass), the assistance of the male is
necessary to the maintenance of their common family, which cannot
subsist till they are able to prey for themselves, but by the joint
care of male and female. The same is observed in all birds (except
some domestic ones, where plenty of food excuses the cock from feeding
and taking care of the young brood), whose young, needing food in
the nest, the cock and hen continue mates till the young are able to
use their wings and provide for themselves.
80. And herein, I think, lies the chief, if not the only reason, why
the male and female in mankind are tied to a longer conjunction than
other creatures- viz., because the female is capable of conceiving,
and, de facto, is commonly with child again, and brings forth too a
new birth, long before the former is out of a dependency for support
on his parents' help and able to shift for himself and has all the
assistance due to him from his parents, whereby the father, who is
bound to take care for those he hath begot, is under an obligation
to continue in conjugal society with the same woman longer than
other creatures, whose young, being able to subsist of themselves
before the time of procreation returns again, the conjugal bond
dissolves of itself, and they are at liberty till Hymen, at his
usual anniversary season, summons them again to choose new mates.
Wherein one cannot but admire the wisdom of the great Creator, who,
having given to man an ability to lay up for the future as well as
supply the present necessity, hath made it necessary that society of
man and wife should be more lasting than of male and female amongst
other creatures, that so their industry might be encouraged, and their
interest better united, to make provision and lay up goods for their
common issue, which uncertain mixture, or easy and frequent
solutions of conjugal society, would mightily disturb.
81. But though these are ties upon mankind which make the conjugal
bonds more firm and lasting in a man than the other species of
animals, yet it would give one reason to inquire why this compact,
where procreation and education are secured and inheritance taken care
for, may not be made determinable, either by consent, or at a
certain time, or upon certain conditions, as well as any other
voluntary compacts, there being no necessity, in the nature of the
thing, nor to the ends of it, that it should always be for life- I
mean, to such as are under no restraint of any positive law which
ordains all such contracts to be perpetual.
82. But the husband and wife, though they have but one common
concern, yet having different understandings, will unavoidably
sometimes have different wills too. It therefore being necessary
that the last determination (i.e., the rule) should be placed
somewhere, it naturally falls to the man's share as the abler and
the stronger. But this, reaching but to the things of their common
interest and property, leaves the wife in the full and true possession
of what by contract is her peculiar right, and at least gives the
husband no more power over her than she has over his life; the power
of the husband being so far from that of an absolute monarch that
the wife has, in many cases, a liberty to separate from him where
natural right or their contract allows it, whether that contract be
made by themselves in the state of Nature or by the customs or laws of
the country they live in, and the children, upon such separation, fall
to the father or mother's lot as such contract does determine.
83. For all the ends of marriage being to be obtained under
politic government, as well as in the state of Nature, the civil
magistrate doth not abridge the right or power of either, naturally
necessary to those ends- viz., procreation and mutual support and
assistance whilst they are together, but only decides any
controversy that may arise between man and wife about them. If it were
otherwise, and that absolute sovereignty and power of life and death
naturally belonged to the husband, and were necessary to the society
between man and wife, there could be no matrimony in any of these
countries where the husband is allowed no such absolute authority. But
the ends of matrimony requiring no such power in the husband, it was
not at all necessary to it. The condition of conjugal society put it
not in him; but whatsoever might consist with procreation and
support of the children till they could shift for themselves- mutual
assistance, comfort, and maintenance- might be varied and regulated by
that contract which first united them in that society, nothing being
necessary to any society that is not necessary to the ends for which
it is made.
84. The society betwixt parents and children, and the distinct
rights and powers belonging respectively to them, I have treated of so
largely in the foregoing chapter that I shall not here need to say
anything of it; and I think it is plain that it is far different
from a politic society.
85. Master and servant are names as old as history, but given to
those of far different condition; for a free man makes himself a
servant to another by selling him for a certain time the service he
undertakes to do in exchange for wages he is to receive; and though
this commonly puts him into the family of his master, and under the
ordinary discipline thereof, yet it gives the master but a temporary
power over him, and no greater than what is contained in the
contract between them. But there is another sort of servant which by a
peculiar name we call slaves, who being captives taken in a just war
are, by the right of Nature, subjected to the absolute dominion and
arbitrary power of their masters. These men having, as I say,
forfeited their lives and, with it, their liberties, and lost their
estates, and being in the state of slavery, not capable of any
property, cannot in that state be considered as any part of civil
society, the chief end whereof is the preservation of property.
86. Let us therefore consider a master of a family with all these
subordinate relations of wife, children, servants and slaves, united
under the domestic rule of a family, with what resemblance soever it
may have in its order, offices, and number too, with a little
commonwealth, yet is very far from it both in its constitution, power,
and end; or if it must be thought a monarchy, and the paterfamilias
the absolute monarch in it, absolute monarchy will have but a very
shattered and short power, when it is plain by what has been said
before, that the master of the family has a very distinct and
differently limited power both as to time and extent over those
several persons that are in it; for excepting the slave (and the
family is as much a family, and his power as paterfamilias as great,
whether there be any slaves in his family or no) he has no legislative
power of life and death over any of them, and none too but what a
mistress of a family may have as well as he. And he certainly can have
no absolute power over the whole family who has but a very limited one
over every individual in it. But how a family, or any other society of
men, differ from that which is properly political society, we shall
best see by considering wherein political society itself consists.
87. Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect
freedom and an uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges
of the law of Nature, equally with any other man, or number of men
in the world, hath by nature a power not only to preserve his
property- that is, his life, liberty, and estate, against the injuries
and attempts of other men, but to judge of and punish the breaches
of that law in others, as he is persuaded the offence deserves, even
with death itself, in crimes where the heinousness of the fact, in his
opinion, requires it. But because no political society can be, nor
subsist, without having in itself the power to preserve the
property, and in order thereunto punish the offences of all those of
that society, there, and there only, is political society where
every one of the members hath quitted this natural power, resigned
it up into the hands of the community in all cases that exclude him
not from appealing for protection to the law established by it. And
thus all private judgment of every particular member being excluded,
the community comes to be umpire, and by understanding indifferent
rules and men authorised by the community for their execution, decides
all the differences that may happen between any members of that
society concerning any matter of right, and punishes those offences
which any member hath committed against the society with such
penalties as the law has established; whereby it is easy to discern
who are, and are not, in political society together. Those who are
united into one body, and have a common established law and judicature
to appeal to, with authority to decide controversies between them
and punish offenders, are in civil society one with another; but those
who have no such common appeal, I mean on earth, are still in the
state of Nature, each being where there is no other, judge for himself
and executioner; which is, as I have before showed it, the perfect
state of Nature.
88. And thus the commonwealth comes by a power to set down what
punishment shall belong to the several transgressions they think
worthy of it, committed amongst the members of that society (which
is the power of making laws), as well as it has the power to punish
any injury done unto any of its members by any one that is not of it
(which is the power of war and peace); and all this for the
preservation of the property of all the members of that society, as
far as is possible. But though every man entered into society has
quitted his power to punish offences against the law of Nature in
prosecution of his own private judgment, yet with the judgment of
offences which he has given up to the legislative, in all cases
where he can appeal to the magistrate, he has given up a right to
the commonwealth to employ his force for the execution of the
judgments of the commonwealth whenever he shall be called to it,
which, indeed, are his own judgements, they being made by himself or
his representative. And herein we have the original of the legislative
and executive power of civil society, which is to judge by standing
laws how far offences are to be punished when committed within the
commonwealth; and also by occasional judgments founded on the
present circumstances of the fact, how far injuries from without are
to be vindicated, and in both these to employ all the force of all the
members when there shall be need.
89. Wherever, therefore, any number of men so unite into one society
as to quit every one his executive power of the law of Nature, and
to resign it to the public, there and there only is a political or
civil society. And this is done wherever any number of men, in the
state of Nature, enter into society to make one people one body
politic under one supreme government: or else when any one joins
himself to, and incorporates with any government already made. For
hereby he authorises the society, or which is all one, the legislative
thereof, to make laws for him as the public good of the society
shall require, to the execution whereof his own assistance (as to
his own decrees) is due. And this puts men out of a state of Nature
into that of a commonwealth, by setting up a judge on earth with
authority to determine all the controversies and redress the
injuries that may happen to any member of the commonwealth, which
judge is the legislative or magistrates appointed by it. And
wherever there are any number of men, however associated, that have no
such decisive power to appeal to, there they are still in the state of
Nature.
90. And hence it is evident that absolute monarchy, which by some
men is counted for the only government in the world, is indeed
inconsistent with civil society, and so can be not form of civil
government at all. For the end of civil society being to avoid and
remedy those inconveniences of the state of Nature which necessarily
follow from every man's being judge in his own case, by setting up a
known authority to which every one of that society may appeal upon any
injury received, or controversy that may arise, and which every one of
the society ought to obey.* Wherever any persons are who have not such
an authority to appeal to, and decide any difference between them
there, those persons are still in the state of Nature. And so is every
absolute prince in respect of those who are under his dominion.
- "The public power of all society is above every soul contained
in the same society, and the principal use of that power is to give
laws unto all that are under it, which laws in such cases we must
obey, unless there be reason showed which may necessarily enforce that
the law of reason or of God doth enjoin the contrary." Hooker, Eccl.
Pol., i. 16.
91. For he being supposed to have all, both legislative and
executive, power in himself alone, there is no judge to be found, no
appeal lies open to any one, who may fairly and indifferently, and
with authority decide, and from whence relief and redress may be
expected of any injury or inconveniency that may be suffered from him,
or by his order. So that such a man, however entitled, Czar, or
Grand Signior, or how you please, is as much in the state of Nature,
with all under his dominion, as he is with the rest of mankind. For
wherever any two men are, who have no standing rule and common judge
to appeal to on earth, for the determination of controversies of right
betwixt them, there they are still in the state of Nature, and under
all the inconveniencies of it, with only this woeful difference to the
subject, or rather slave of an absolute prince.* That whereas, in
the ordinary state of Nature, he has a liberty to judge of his
right, according to the best of his power to maintain it; but whenever
his property is invaded by the will and order of his monarch, he has
not only no appeal, as those in society ought to have, but, as if he
were degraded from the common state of rational creatures, is denied a
liberty to judge of, or defend his right, and so is exposed to all the
misery and inconveniencies that a man can fear from one, who being
in the unrestrained state of Nature, is yet corrupted with flattery
and armed with power.
- "To take away all such mutual grievances, injuries, and wrongs-
i.e., such as attend men in the state of Nature, there was no way
but only by growing into composition and agreement amongst
themselves by ordaining some kind of government public, and by
yielding themselves subject thereunto, that unto whom they granted
authority to rule and govern, by them the peace, tranquillity, and
happy estate of the rest might be procured. Men always knew that where
force and injury was offered, they might be defenders of themselves.
They knew that, however men may seek their own commodity, yet if
this were done with injury unto others, it was not to be suffered, but
by all men and all good means to be withstood. Finally, they knew that
no man might, in reason, take upon him to determine his own right, and
according to his own determination proceed in maintenance thereof,
in as much as every man is towards himself, and them whom he greatly
affects, partial; and therefore, that strifes and troubles would be
endless, except they gave their common consent, all to be ordered by
some whom they should agree upon, without which consent there would be
no reason that one man should take upon him to be lord or judge over
another." Hooker, ibid. 10.
92. For he that thinks absolute power purifies men's blood, and
corrects the baseness of human nature, need read but the history of
this, or any other age, to be convinced to the contrary. He that would
have been insolent and injurious in the woods of America would not
probably be much better on a throne, where perhaps learning and
religion shall be found out to justify all that he shall do to his
subjects, and the sword presently silence all those that dare question
it. For what the protection of absolute monarchy is, what kind of
fathers of their countries it makes princes to be, and to what a
degree of happiness and security it carries civil society, where
this sort of government is grown to perfection, he that will look into
the late relation of Ceylon may easily see.
93. In absolute monarchies, indeed, as well as other governments
of the world, the subjects have an appeal to the law, and judges to
decide any controversies, and restrain any violence that may happen
betwixt the subjects themselves, one amongst another. This every one
thinks necessary, and believes; he deserves to be thought a declared
enemy to society and mankind who should go about to take it away.
But whether this be from a true love of mankind and society, and
such a charity as we owe all one to another, there is reason to doubt.
For this is no more than what every man, who loves his own power,
profit, or greatness, may, and naturally must do, keep those animals
from hurting or destroying one another who labour and drudge only
for his pleasure and advantage; and so are taken care of, not out of
any love the master has for them, but love of himself, and the
profit they bring him. For if it be asked what security, what fence is
there in such a state against the violence and oppression of this
absolute ruler, the very question can scarce be borne. They are
ready to tell you that it deserves death only to ask after safety.
Betwixt subject and subject, they will grant, there must be
measures, laws, and judges for their mutual peace and security. But as
for the ruler, he ought to be absolute, and is above all such
circumstances; because he has a power to do more hurt and wrong, it is
right when he does it. To ask how you may be guarded from or injury on
that side, where the strongest hand is to do it, is presently the
voice of faction and rebellion. As if when men, quitting the state
of Nature, entered into society, they agreed that all of them but
one should be under the restraint of laws; but that he should still
retain all the liberty of the state of Nature, increased with power,
and made licentious by impunity. This is to think that men are so
foolish that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them
by polecats or foxes, but are content, nay, think it safety, to be
devoured by lions.
94. But, whatever flatterers may talk to amuse people's
understandings, it never hinders men from feeling; and when they
perceive that any man, in what station soever, is out of the bounds of
the civil society they are of, and that they have no appeal, on earth,
against any harm they may receive from him, they are apt to think
themselves in the state of Nature, in respect of him whom they find to
be so; and to take care, as soon as they can, to have that safety
and security, in civil society, for which it was first instituted, and
for which only they entered into it. And therefore, though perhaps
at first, as shall be showed more at large hereafter, in the following
part of this discourse, some one good and excellent man having got a
pre-eminency amongst the rest, had this deference paid to his goodness
and virtue, as to a kind of natural authority, that the chief rule,
with arbitration of their differences, by a tacit consent devolved
into his hands, without any other caution but the assurance they had
of his uprightness and wisdom; yet when time giving authority, and, as
some men would persuade us, sacredness to customs, which the negligent
and unforeseeing innocence of the first ages began, had brought in
successors of another stamp, the people finding their properties not
secure under the government as then it was* (whereas government has no
other end but the preservation of property), could never be safe,
nor at rest, nor think themselves in civil society, till the
legislative was so placed in collective bodies of men, call them
senate, parliament, or what you please, by which means every single
person became subject equally with other the meanest men, to those
laws, which he himself, as part of the legislative, had established;
nor could any one, by his own authority, avoid the force of the law,
when once made, nor by any pretence of superiority plead exemption,
thereby to license his own, or the miscarriages of any of his
dependants. No man in civil society can be exempted from the laws of
it. For if any man may do what he thinks fit and there be no appeal on
earth for redress or security against any harm he shall do, I ask
whether he be not perfectly still in the state of Nature, and so can
be no part or member of that civil society, unless any one will say
the state of Nature and civil society are one and the same thing,
which I have never yet found any one so great a patron of anarchy as
to affirm.*(2)
- "At the first, when some certain kind of regimen was once
appointed, it may be that nothing was then further thought upon for
the manner of governing, but all permitted unto their wisdom and
discretion which were to rule till, by experience, they found this for
all parts very inconvenient, so as the thing which they had devised
for a remedy did indeed but increase the sore which it should have
cured. They saw that to live by one man's will became the cause of all
men's misery. This constrained them to come unto laws wherein all
men might see their duty beforehand, and know the penalties of
transgressing them." Hooker, Eccl. Pol. i. 10.
*(2) "Civil law, being the act of the whole body politic, doth
therefore overrule each several part of the same body." Hooker, ibid.
Chapter VIII
Of the Beginning of Political Societies
95. MEN being, as has been said, by nature all free, equal, and
independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the
political power of another without his own consent, which is done by
agreeing with other men, to join and unite into a community for
their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living, one amongst another, in
a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against
any that are not of it. This any number of men may do, because it
injures not the freedom of the rest; they are left, as they were, in
the liberty of the state of Nature. When any number of men have so
consented to make one community or government, they are thereby
presently incorporated, and make one body politic, wherein the
majority have a right to act and conclude the rest.
96. For, when any number of men have, by the consent of every
individual, made a community, they have thereby made that community
one body, with a power to act as one body, which is only by the will
and determination of the majority. For that which acts any
community, being only the consent of the individuals of it, and it
being one body, must move one way, it is necessary the body should
move that way whither the greater force carries it, which is the
consent of the majority, or else it is impossible it should act or
continue one body, one community, which the consent of every
individual that united into it agreed that it should; and so every one
is bound by that consent to be concluded by the majority. And
therefore we see that in assemblies empowered to act by positive
laws where no number is set by that positive law which empowers
them, the act of the majority passes for the act of the whole, and
of course determines as having, by the law of Nature and reason, the
power of the whole.
97. And thus every man, by consenting with others to make one body
politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation to
every one of that society to submit to the determination of the
majority, and to be concluded by it; or else this original compact,
whereby he with others incorporates into one society, would signify
nothing, and be no compact if he be left free and under no other
ties than he was in before in the state of Nature. For what appearance
would there be of any compact? What new engagement if he were no
farther tied by any decrees of the society than he himself thought fit
and did actually consent to? This would be still as great a liberty as
he himself had before his compact, or any one else in the state of
Nature, who may submit himself and consent to any acts of it if he
thinks fit.
98. For if the consent of the majority shall not in reason be
received as the act of the whole, and conclude every individual,
nothing but the consent of every individual can make anything to be
the act of the whole, which, considering the infirmities of health and
avocations of business, which in a number though much less than that
of a commonwealth, will necessarily keep many away from the public
assembly; and the variety of opinions and contrariety of interests
which unavoidably happen in all collections of men, it is next
impossible ever to be had. And, therefore, if coming into society be
upon such terms, it will be only like Cato's coming into the
theatre, tantum ut exiret. Such a constitution as this would make
the mighty leviathan of a shorter duration than the feeblest
creatures, and not let it outlast the day it was born in, which cannot
be supposed till we can think that rational creatures should desire
and constitute societies only to be dissolved. For where the
majority cannot conclude the rest, there they cannot act as one
body, and consequently will be immediately dissolved again.
99. Whosoever, therefore, out of a state of Nature unite into a
community, must be understood to give up all the power necessary to
the ends for which they unite into society to the majority of the
community, unless they expressly agreed in any number greater than the
majority. And this is done by barely agreeing to unite into one
political society, which is all the compact that is, or needs be,
between the individuals that enter into or make up a commonwealth. And
thus, that which begins and actually constitutes any political society
is nothing but the consent of any number of freemen capable of
majority, to unite and incorporate into such a society. And this is
that, and that only, which did or could give beginning to any lawful
government in the world.
100. To this I find two objections made: 1. That there are no
instances to be found in story of a company of men, independent and
equal one amongst another, that met together, and in this way began
and set up a government. 2. It is impossible of right that men
should do so, because all men, being born under government, they are
to submit to that, and are not at liberty to begin a new one.
101. To the first there is this to answer: That it is not at all
to be wondered that history gives us but a very little account of
men that lived together in the state of Nature. The inconveniencies of
that condition, and the love and want of society, no sooner brought
any number of them together, but they presently united and in
corporated if they designed to continue together. And if we may not
suppose men ever to have been in the state of Nature, because we
hear not much of them in such a state, we may as well suppose the
armies of Salmanasser or Xerxes were never children, because we hear
little of them till they were men and embodied in armies. Government
is everywhere antecedent to records, and letters seldom come in
amongst a people till a long continuation of civil society has, by
other more necessary arts, provided for their safety, ease, and
plenty. And then they begin to look after the history of their
founders, and search into their original when they have outlived the
memory of it. For it is with commonwealths as with particular persons,
they are commonly ignorant of their own births and infancies; and if
they know anything of it, they are beholding for it to the
accidental records that others have kept of it. And those that we have
of the beginning of any polities in the world, excepting that of the
Jews, where God Himself immediately interposed, and which favours
not at all paternal dominion, are all either plain instances of such a
beginning as I have mentioned, or at least have manifest footsteps
of it.
102. He must show a strange inclination to deny evident matter of
fact, when it agrees not with his hypothesis, who will not allow
that the beginning of Rome and Venice were by the uniting together
of several men, free and independent one of another, amongst whom
there was no natural superiority or subjection. And if Josephus
Acosta's word may be taken, he tells us that in many parts of
America there was no government at all. "There are great and
apparent conjectures," says he, "that these men [speaking of those
of Peru]