Second Treatise on Civil Government

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In , Locke became personal physician and adviser to Anthony Ashley Cooper, who later was appointed Earl of Shaftesbury. Through Shaftesbury's patronage, Locke earned some government posts and entered London's intellectual circles, all the while writing philosophy. He was one of the best-known European thinkers of his time when he died in In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , Locke established the philosophy of empiricism, which holds that the mind at birth is a blank tablet.

Experience, Locke believed, would engrave itself upon the tablet as one grew. He felt humans should create theories according to experience and test them with experiments. This philosophy helped establish the scientific method. Locke codified the principals of liberalism in "Two Treatises of Government" He emphasized that the state must preserve its citizens' natural rights to life, liberty and property. When the state does not, Locke argued, citizens are justified in rebelling. His view of liberalism comprised limited government, featuring elected representation and legislative checks and balances.

Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. Read reviews that mention state of nature civil government second treatise john locke state of war property locke rights society ideas understanding become human modern politics. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Happy to learn about the careful hands. Only in the first couple of chapters but my tutor told me what happens in the end of the book, The blank slate! Great read and recommend to anyone studying Political Science.

This work by John Locke should be read in its entirety. Too often the condensed descriptions of this book make Mr. Locke to seem rather naive. First there is the natural state of humanity before the formation of civil government. Locke does not really try to propound this period or situation as a utopia. He admits that in the natural state there would be strife. Instead what Locke does is formulate how rational beings would exist in a state of nature without a governing authority.

In essence Locke formulates commonly consented rules by humans living in proximity. Locke believed in a God of Reason and demonstrated how reason is the basic means humans can live together in absence of governing authority.

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Locke uses his basic rational order to demonstrate that humans created the governing authority to protect human life and property. It should be stressed that Locke considers the labor of a person to be his property. Thus slavery and forced labor become a type of robbery. Readers will note that Locke separates the community, which basically consists of people using their informal rules and manners, from the government. Locke demonstrates that government is not a be all but has only certain limited functions in the community. Locke then demonstrates that a ruler who governs for the benefit of himself or for the benefit of a small elite to the detriment of the rest of the citizens of the community is in effect making war on the community and its members.

Such a ruler should be overthrown. Locke thus provides the rational for overthrowing absolute monarchs and other tyrants. Locke demonstrates that the totalitarian Nazi, Leninist, and Maoist tyrants have no right to govern since the basic principle is to confiscate the property and people of the community to serve the leadership. Locke, when read in its entirety, is a strong voice for liberty and justice. Locke had an emmense understanding of mans inability to control self interest and greed. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. Very smart man and a lot of insight on government.

The Declaration and the Constitution could have been written without this knowledge. Every American should read this work. One person found this helpful. This is a great book. It gives the knowledge to understanding how and why the founding fathers came to create our Constitution.

The importance of this book, first published in , cannot be denied. The book's most famous and controversial idea is that the people have a right to overthrow their government if the government fails consistently in its responsibilities and duties. The book, which lacks an introduction or conclusion, may be challenging for modern readers. Locke's writing covers a wide range of topics; conquest, paternal power i. The main ideas of the book are that government exists by the consent of the governed who found government for the purpose of securing their lives, rights and property.

Locke frequently contrasts people who live in a state of nature i. Under Locke's view of the social contract, men give up give up the unlimited freedom they enjoyed in the state of nature so as to secure their life, limb and property more securely under government.

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A right fathers have over their children by begetting them; generatione jus acquiritur parentibus in liberos, says our author out of Grotius, Observations, The right then follows the begetting as arising from it; so that, according to this way of reasoning or distinguishing of our author, Adam, as soon as he was created, had a title only in habit, and not in act, which in plain English is, he had actually no title at all.

To speak less learnedly, and more intelligibly, one may say of Adam, he was in a possibility of being governor, since it was possible he might beget children, and thereby acquire that right of nature, be it what it will, to govern them, that accrues from Edition: Adam was a king from his creation; a king, says our author, not in act, but in habit, i. For though this assertion, that Adam was king from his creation, be true in no sense, yet it stands here as an evident conclusion drawn from the preceding words, though in truth it be but a bare assertion joined to other assertions of the same kind, which confidently put together Edition: Our author tells us in the words of Mr.

Selden, that Adam by donation from God, Gen. This determination of Mr. Selden, says our author, is Edition: And in his Pref. The earth, saith the Psalmist, hath he given to the children of men, which shew the title comes from fatherhood. But let us see the argument. The words of the text are these; and God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth, i.

But our author says, Adam was hereby monarch of the world, which, properly speaking, signifies sovereign ruler of all the men in the world; and so Adam, by this grant, must be constituted such a ruler. If our author means otherwise, he might with much clearness have said, that Adam was hereby proprietor of the whole world.

But he begs your pardon in that point: Selden, or other such writers. That by this grant, i. God gave no immediate power to Adam over men, Edition: That by this grant God gave him not private dominion over the inferior creatures, but right in common with all mankind; so neither was he monarch, upon the account of the property here given him. That this donation, i. Bestiam Reptantem, of which words the scripture itself is the best interpreter: God having created the fishes and fowls the 5 th day, the beginning of the 6 th, he creates the irrational inhabitants of the dry land, which, v.

Cattle, or such creatures as were or might be tame, and so be the private possession of particular men; 2. The third rank were the creeping animals, which ver. When God had made the irrational animals of the world, divided into three kinds, from the places of their habitation, viz. In both which places, though the word that signifies wild beasts be omitted in one, and that which signifies cattle in the other, yet, since God certainly executed in one place, what he declares he designed in the other, we cannot but understand the same in both places, and have here only an account, how the terrestrial irrational animals, which were already created and reckoned up at their creation, in three distinct ranks of cattle, wild beasts, and reptils, were here, ver.

And this further appears from Gen. From whence I think it is past all doubt, that man cannot be comprehended in this grant, nor any dominion over those of his own species be conveyed to Adam. All the terrestrial irrational creatures are enumerated at their creation, ver.

And if God made all mankind slaves to Adam and his heirs by giving Adam dominion over every living thing that moveth on the earth, ch. David, who might be supposed to understand the donation of God in this text, and the right of kings too, as well as our author in his comment on this place, as the learned and judicious Ainsworth calls it, in the 8th Psalm, finds here no such charter of monarchical power, his words are, Thou hast made him, i. And by this time, I hope it is evident, that he that gave dominion over every living thing that moveth on the earth, gave Adam no monarchical power over those of his own species, which will yet appear more fully in the next thing I am to shew.

Whatever God gave by the words of this grant, i. That this donation was not made in particular to Adam, appears evidently from the words of the text, it being made to more than one; for it was spoken in the plural number, God blessed them, and said unto them, Have dominion.

God says unto Adam and Eve, Have dominion; thereby, says our author, Adam was monarch of the world: If it be said, that Eve was subjected to Adam, it seems she was not so subjected to him, as to hinder her dominion over the creatures, or property in them: But perhaps it will be said, Eve was not made till afterward: The text will be only the more directly against him, and shew that God, in this donation, gave the world to mankind in common, and not to Adam in particular.

The word them in the text must include the species of man, for it is certain them can by no means signify Adam alone. In the 26th verse, where God declares his intention to give this dominion, it is plain he meant, that he would make a species of creatures, that should have dominion over the other species of this terrestrial globe: They then were to have dominion. God makes him in his own image, after his own likeness; makes him an intellectual creature, and so capable of dominion: It is not of Adam king David speaks here, for verse 4.

The earth, faith the Psalmist, hath he given to the children of men; which shews the title comes from fatherhood.

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But to conclude, that the fatherhood had the right to the earth, because God gave it to the children of men, is a way of arguing peculiar to our author: I defy any man to make a more pleasant conclusion than this, which cannot be excused from the most obvious absurdity, till it can be shewn, that by children of men, he who had no father, Adam alone is signified; but whatever our author does, the scripture speaks not nonsense.

To maintain this property and private dominion of Adam, our author labours in the following page to destroy the community granted to Noah and his sons, in that parallel place, ix. Sir Robert would persuade us against the express words of the scripture, that what Edition: His words are, As for the general community between Noah and his sons, which Mr. Selden will have to be granted to them, ix. What warrant our author would have, when the plain express words of scripture, not capable of another meaning, will not satisfy him, who pretends to build wholly on scripture, is not easy to imagine.

The text says, God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, i. That indeed is best, for our author to be understood, which best serves to his purpose; but that truly may best be understood by any body else, which best agrees with the plain construction of the words, and arises from the obvious meaning of the place; and then with subordination and in succession, will not be best understood, in a grant of God, where he himself put them not, nor mentions any such limitation.

But yet, our author has reasons, why it may best be understood so. The blessing, says he in the following words, might truly be fulfilled, if the sons, either under or after their father, enjoyed a private dominion, Observations, Which is all one as to say, that a grant of any thing in present possession may best be understood of reversion; because it is possible one may live to enjoy it in reversion. If the grant be indeed to a father and to his sons after him, who is so kind as to let his children enjoy it presently in common with him, one may truly say, as to the event one will be as good as the other; but it can never be true, that what the express words grant in possession, and in common, may best be understood, to be in reversion.

The sum of all his reasoning amounts to this: God did not give to the sons of Noah the world in common with their father, because it was possible they might enjoy it under, or after him. A very good sort of argument against an express text of scripture: For it is plain, however he would exclude them, that part of this benediction, as he would have it in succession, must needs be meant to the sons, and not to Noah himself at all: Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, says God, in this blessing.

This part of the benediction, as appears by the sequel, concerned Edition: But in this one point our author is constant to himself in all his discourses, he takes great care there should be monarchs in the world, but very little that there should be people; and indeed his way of government is not the way to people the world: But this by the by.

Will any body but our author say, that the creatures feared and stood in awe of Noah only, and not of his sons without his leave, or till after his death? And the following words, into your hands they are delivered, are they to be understood as our author says, if your father please, or they shall be delivered into your hands hereafter? If this be to argue from scripture, I know not what may not be proved by it; and I can scarce see how much this differs from that fiction and fansie, or how much a surer foundation it will prove, than the opinions of philosophers and poets, which our author so much condemns in his preface.

But our author goes on to prove, that it may best be understood with a subordination, or a benediction in succession; for, says he, it is not probable that the private dominion which God gave to Adam, and by his donation, assignation, or cession to his children, was abrogated, and a community of all things instituted between Noah and his sons ——Noah was left the sole heir of the world; why should it be thought Edition: The prejudices of our own ill-grounded opinions, however by us called probable, cannot authorise us to understand scripture contrary to the direct and plain meaning of the words.

It is probable, I confess, that Noah should have the same title, the same property and dominion after the flood, that Adam had before it: But our author says, Noah was the sole heir of the world; why should it be thought that God would disinherit him of his birth-right? Our author probably foreseeing he might not be very successful in persuading people out of their senses, and, say what he could, men would be apt to believe the plain words of scripture, and think, as they saw, that the grant was spoken to Noah and his sons jointly; he endeavours to insinuate, as if this grant to Noah conveyed no property, no dominion; because, subduing the earth and dominion over the creatures are therein omitted, nor the earth once named.

And therefore, says he, there is a considerable Edition: Any one but our author would be mightily suspected to be blinded with prejudice, that in all this blessing to Noah and his sons, could see nothing but only an enlargement of commons: This our author calls, a liberty of using them for food, and only an enlargement of commons, but no alteration of property, Observations, What other property man can have in the creatures, but the liberty of using them, is hard to be understood: Should any one who is absolute lord of a country, have bidden our author subdue the earth, and given him dominion over the creatures in it, but not have permitted him to have taken a kid or a lamb out of the flock, to satisfy his hunger, I guess, he would scarce have thought himself lord or proprietor of that land, or the cattle on it; but would have found the difference between having dominion, which a shepherd may have, and having full property as an owner.

So that, had it been his own case, Sir Robert, I believe, would have thought here was an alteration, nay, an enlarging of property; and that Noah and his children had by this grant, not only property given them, but such a property given them in the creatures, as Adam had not: From all which I suppose it is clear, that neither Adam, nor Edition: Wherein I think it is impossible for any sober reader, to find any other but the setting of mankind above the other kinds of creatures, in this habitable earth of ours. It is nothing but the giving to man, the whole species of man, as the chief inhabitant, who is the image of his Maker, the dominion over the other creatures.

And I the less deplore the dulness of my apprehension herein, since I find the apostle seems to have as little notion of any such private dominion of Adam Edition: To conclude, this text is so far from proving Adam sole proprietor, that, on the contrary, it is a confirmation of the original community of all things amongst the sons of men, which appearing from this donation of God, as well as other places of scripture, the sovereignty of Adam, built upon his private dominion, must fall, not having any foundation to support it.

But yet, if after all, any one will needs have it so, that by this donation of God, Adam was made sole proprietor of the whole earth, what will this be to his sovereignty? The most specious thing to be said, is, that he that is proprietor of the whole world, may deny all the rest of mankind food, and so at his pleasure starve them, if they will not acknowledge his sovereignty, and obey his will. If this were true, it would be a good argument to prove, that there never was any such property, that God never gave any such private dominion; since it is more reasonable to think, that God, who bid mankind Edition: But we know God hath not left one man so to the mercy of another, that he may starve him if he please: God the Lord and Father of all has given no one of his children such a property in his peculiar portion of the things of this world, but that he has given his needy brother a right to the surplusage of his goods; so that it cannot justly be denied him, when his pressing wants call for it: And the man he thus submits to, can pretend to no more power over him, than he has consented to, upon compact.

From all which it is clear, that though God should have given Adam private dominion, yet that private dominion could give him no sovereignty; but we have already sufficiently proved, that God gave him no private dominion. THE next place of scripture we find our author builds his monarchy of Adam on, is iii. And thy defire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. Here we have says he the original grant of government, from whence he concludes, in the following part of the page, Observations, That the supreme power is settled in the fatherhood, and limited to one kind of government, that is, to monarchy.

For let his premises be what they will, this is always the conclusion; let rule, in any text, be but once named, and presently absolute monarchy Edition: The words are the curse of God upon the woman, for having been the first and forwardest in the disobedience; and if we will consider the occasion of what God says here to our first parents, that he was denouncing judgment, and declaring his wrath against them both, for their disobedience, we cannot suppose that this was the time, wherein God was granting Adam prerogatives and privileges, investing him with dignity and authority, elevating him to dominion and monarchy: This was not a time, when Adam could expect any favours, any grant of privileges, from his offended Maker.

If this be the original grant of government, as our author tells us, and Adam was now made monarch, whatever Sir Robert would have him, it is plain, God made him but a very poor monarch, such an one, as our author himself would have counted it no great privilege to be. God sets him to work for his living, and seems rather to give him a spade into his hand, to subdue the earth, than a sceptre to rule over its inhabitants.

In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat thy bread, says God to him, ver. This was unavoidable, may it perhaps be answered, because he was yet without subjects, and had nobody to work for him; but afterwards, living as he did above years, he might have people enough, whom he might command, to work for him; no, says God, not only whilst thou art without other help, save thy wife, but as long as thou livest, shalt thou live by thy labour, In the sweat of thy face, shalt thou eat thy bread, till thou return unto the ground, for out of it wast thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return, v.

It will perhaps be answered again in favour of our author, that these words are not spoken personally to Adam, but in him, as their representative, to all mankind, this being a curse upon mankind, because of the fall. God, I believe, speaks differently from men, because he speaks with more truth, Edition: Farther it is to be noted, that these words here of iii.

It would, I think, have been a hard matter for any body, but our author, to have found out a grant of monarchical government to Adam in these words, which were neither spoke to, nor of him: And will any one say, that Eve, or any other woman, sinned, if she were brought to bed without those multiplied pains God threatens her here with? God, in this text, gives not, that I see, any authority to Adam over Eve, or to men over their wives, but Edition: Thus when God says of Jacob and Esau, that the elder should serve the younger, xxv.

But if these words here spoke to Eve must needs be understood as a law to bind her and all other women to subjection, it can be no other subjection than what every wife owes her husband; and then if this be the original grant of government and the foundation of monarchical power, there will be as many monarchs as there are husbands: This I am sure: Thy desire shall be to thy husband, is too doubtful an expression, of whose signification interpreters are not agreed, to build so confidently on, and in a matter of such moment, and so great and general concernment: Let the words rule and subject be but found in the text or margent, and it immediately signifies the duty of a subject to his prince; the relation is changed, and though God says husband, Sir Robert will have it king; Adam has presently absolute monarchical power over Eve, and not only over Eve, but all that should come of her, though the scripture says not a word of it, nor our author a word to prove it.

But Adam must for all that be an absolute monarch, and so down to the end of the chapter. And here I leave my reader to consider, whether my bare saying, without offering any reasons to evince it, that this text gave not Adam that absolute monarchical power, our author supposes, be not as sufficient to destroy that power, as his bare assertion Edition: And he that would trace our author so all through, would make a short and sufficient answer to the greatest part of the grounds he proceeds on, and abundantly consute them by barely denying; it being a sufficient answer to assertions without proof, to deny them without giving a reason.

This being, as one would think by his so frequent mentioning it, the main basis of all his frame, we may well expect clear and evident reason for it, since he lays it down as a position necessary to his purpose, that every man that is born is so far from being free, that by his very birth he becomes a subject of him that Edition: If we ask how Adam comes by this power over his children, he tells us here it is by begetting them: And indeed the act of begetting being that which makes a man a father, his right of a father over his children can naturally arise from nothing else.

Grotius tells us not here how far this jus in liberos, this power of parents over their children extends; but our author, always very clear in the point, assures us, it is supreme power, and like that of absolute monarchs over their slaves, absolute power of life and death.

The Second Treatise on Civil Government

He that should demand of him, how, or for what reason it is, that begetting a child gives the father such an absolute power over him, will find him answer nothing: Had he been an absolute monarch, this way of talking might have suited well enough; proratione voluntas might have been of force in his mouth; but in the way of proof or argument is very unbecoming, and will little Edition: If all men are not, as I think they are, naturally equal, I am sure all slaves are; and then I may without presumption oppose my single opinion to his; and be confident that my saying, that begetting of children makes them not slaves to their fathers, as certainly sets all mankind free, as his affirming the contrary makes them all slaves.

But that this position, which is the foundation of all their doctrine, who would have monarchy to be jure divino, may have all fair play, let us hear what reasons others give for it, since our author offers none. The argument, I have heard others make use of, to prove that fathers, by begetting them, come by an absolute power over their children, is this; that fathers have a power over the lives of their children, because they give them life and being, which is the only proof it is capable of: I answer, that every one who gives another any thing, has not always Edition: They who say the father gives life to his children, are so dazzled with the thoughts of monarchy, that they do not, as they ought, remember God, who is the author and giver of life: How can he be thought to give life to another, that knows not wherein his own life consists?

And doth the rude plough-man, or the more ignorant voluptuary, frame or fashion such an admirable engine as this is, and then put life and sense into it? Can any man say, he formed the parts that are necessary to the life of his child? To give life to that which has yet no being, is to frame and make a living creature, fashion the parts, and mould and suit them to their uses, and having proportioned and fitted them together, to put into them a living soul. He that could do this, Edition: But is there any one so bold, that dares thus far arrogate to himself the incomprehensible works of the almighty?

Who alone did at first, and continues still to make a living soul, he alone can breathe in the breath of life. Shall he that made the eye not see? And therefore though our author, for the magnifying his fatherhood, be pleased to say, Observations, That even the power which God himself exerciseth over mankind is by right of fatherhood, yet this fatherhood is such an one as utterly excludes all pretence of title in earthly parents; for he is king, because he is indeed maker of us Edition: But had men skill and power to make their children, it is not so slight a piece of workmanship, that it can be imagined, they could make them without designing it.

What father of a thousand, when he begets a child, thinks farther than the satisfying his present appetite? God in his infinite wisdom has put strong defires of copulation into the constitution of men, thereby to continue the race of mankind, which he doth most commonly without the intention, and often against the consent and will of the begetter. And indeed those who desire and design children, are but the occasions of their being, and when they design and wish to beget them, do little more towards their making, than Deucalion and his wife in the fable did towards the making of mankind, by throwing pebbles over their heads.

But grant that the parents made their children, gave them life and being, and that hence there followed an absolute power. This would give the father but a joint dominion with the mother over them: But be that as it will, the mother cannot be denied an equal share in begetting of the child, and so the absolute authority of the father will not arise from hence. Our author indeed is of another mind; for he says, We know that God at the creation gave the sovereignty to the man over the woman, as being the nobler and principal agent in generation, Observations, I remember not this in my Bible; and when the place is brought where God at the creation gave the sovereignty to man over the woman, and that for this reason, because he is the nobler and principal agent in generation, it will be time enough to consider, and answer it.

They who alledge the practice of mankind, for exposing or selling their children, as a proof of their power over them, are with Sir Robert happy arguers; and cannot but recommend their opinion, by founding Edition: The dens of lions and nurseries of wolves know no such cruelty as this: And is it the privilege of man alone to act more contrary to nature than the wild and most untamed part of the creation?

He has in all the parts of the creation taken a peculiar care to propagate and continue the several species of creatures, and makes the individuals act so strongly to this end, that they sometimes neglect their own private good for it, and seem to forget that general rule, which nature teaches all things, of self-preservation; and the preservation of their young, as the strongest principle in them, over-rules the constitution of their particular natures. Thus we see, when their young stand in need of it, the timorous become valiant, Edition: But if the example of what hath been done, be the rule of what ought to be, history would have furnished our author with instances of this absolute fatherly power in its height and perfection, and he might have shewed us in Peru, people that begot children on purpose to fatten and eat them.

Thus far can the busy mind of man carry him to a brutality below the level of beasts, when he quits his reason, which Edition: Nor can it be otherwise in a creature, whose thoughts are more than the sands, and wider than the ocean, where fancy and passion must needs run him into strange courses, if reason, which is his only star and compass, be not that he steers by. The imagination is always restless, and suggests variety of thoughts, and the will, reason being laid aside, is ready for every extravagant project; and in this state, he that goes farthest out of the way, is thought fittest to lead, and is sure of most followers: He that will impartially survey the nations of the world, will find so much of their religions, governments and manners, brought in and continued amongst them by these means, that he will have but little reverence for the practices which are in use and credit amongst men; and will have reason to think, that the woods and forests, where the irrational untaught inhabitants keep right by following nature, are fitter to give us rules, than cities and palaces, where those that call themselves civil and rational, go out of their way, by the authority of example.

If precedents are sufficient to establish a rule in this case, our author might have found in holy writ children sacrificed by their parents, and this Edition: They shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan. The killing of their children, though it were fashionable, was charged on them as innocent blood, and so had in the account of God the guilt of murder, as the offering them to idols had the guilt of idolatry. Be it then, as Sir Robert says, that anciently it was usual for men to sell and castrate their children, Observations, Let it be, that they exposed them; add to it, if you please, for this is still greater power, that they begat them for their tables, to fat and eat them: In confirmation of this natural authority of the father, our author brings a lame proof from the positive command of God in scripture: Whereas many confess, that government only in the abstract, is the ordinance of God, they are not able to prove any such ordinance in the scripture, but only in the fatherly power; and therefore we find the commandment, that enjoins obedience to superiors, given in the terms, Honour thy father; so that not only the power and right of government, but the form of the power governing, and the person having the power, are all the ordinances of God.

The first father had not only simply power, but power monarchical, as he was father immediately from God, Observations, For had our author set down this command without garbling, as God gave it, and joined mother to father, every reader would have seen, that it had made directly against him; and that it was so far from establishing the monarchical power of the father, that it set up the mother equal with him, and enjoined nothing but what was due in common, to both father and mother: He that smiteth his father or mother, shall surely be put to death, xxi.

He that curseth his father or mother, shall surely be put to death, ver. Ye shall fear every man his mother and his father, Lev. If a man have a rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother; then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and say, This our son is stubborn Edition: Cunsed be he that setteth light by his father or his mother, xxviii.

Woe unto him, that sayeth unto his father, What begettest thou, or to the woman, What hast thou brought forth? In thee have they set light by father or mother, Ezek. And it shall come to pass, that when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begat him, shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live, and his father and his mother that begat him, shall thrust him through when he prophesieth, Zech. Here not the father only, but the father and mother jointly, had power in this case of life and death. Thus ran the law of the Old Testament, and in the New they are likewise joined, in the obedience of their children, Eph.

The rule is, Children, obey your parents; and I do not remember, that I any where read, Children, obey your father, and no more: One would wonder then how our author infers from the 5th commandment, that all power was originally in the father; how he finds monarchical power of government settled and fixed by the commandment, Honour thy father and thy mother.

SparkNotes: Locke's Second Treatise on Civil Government

If all the honour due by the commandment, be it what it will, be the only right of the father, because he, as our author says, has the sovereignty over the woman, as being the nobler and principler agent in generation, why did God afterwards all along join the mother with him, to share in his honour? The scripture gave no such licence to the Jews, and yet there were often breaches wide enough Edition: I agree with our author that the title to this honour is vested in the parents by nature, and is a right which accrues to them by their having begotten their children, and God by many positive declarations has confirmed it to them: The right therefore which parents have by nature, and which is confirmed to them by the 5th commandment, cannot be that political dominion, which our Edition: But what law of the magistrate can give a child liberty, not to honour his father and mother?

Our author says, God hath given to a father a right or liberty to alien his power over his children to any other, Observations, I doubt whether he can alien wholly the right of honour that is due from them: The law that enjoins obedience to kings is delivered, says our author, in the terms, Honour thy father, as if all power were originally in the father, Observations, I appeal whether Edition: Again our author tells us, Observations, For the person of a private father, and a title to obedience, due to the supreme magistrate, are things inconsistent; and therefore this command, which must necessarily comprehend the persons of our natural fathers, must mean a duty we owe Edition: What this duty is, we shall in its due place examine.

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But if creation, which gave nothing but a being, made not Adam prince of his posterity: God gave not any political power to Adam over his wife and children, but only subjected Eve to Adam, as a punishment, or foretold the subjection of the weaker sex, in the ordering the common concernments of their families, but gave not thereby to Adam, as to the husband, power of life and death, which necessarily belongs to the magistrate: This is so plain, that our author confesses, that Sir John Hayward, Blackwood and Barclay, the great vindicators of the right of kings, could not deny it, but admit with one consent the natural liberty and equality of mankind, for a truth unquestionable.

And our author hath been so far from producing any thing, that may make good his great position, that Adam was absolute monarch, and so men are not naturally free, that even his own proofs make against him; so that to use his own way of arguing, the first erroneous principle failing, the whole fabric of this vast engine of absolute power and tyranny drops down of itself, and there needs no more to be said in answer to all that he builds upon so false and frail a foundation.

But to save others the pains, were there any need, he is not sparing himself to shew, by his own contradictions, the weakness of his own doctrine. Adam, as father of his children, faith he, hath an absolute, unlimited royal power over them, and by virtue thereof over those that they begot, and so to all generations; and yet his children, viz.

Cain and Seth, have a paternal power over their children at the same time; so that they are at the same time absolute lords, and yet vassals and slaves; Adam has all the authority, as grand-father of the people, and they have a part of it as fathers of a part of them: It is plain he means the natural power of fathers, because he limits it to be only over their own children; a delegated power has no such limitation, as only over their own children, it might be over others, as well as their own children. But that he means here paternal power, and no other, is past doubt, from the inference he makes in these words immediately following, I see not then how the children of Adam, or of any man else, can be free from subjection to their parents.

Whereby it appears that the power on one side, and the subjection on the other, our author here speaks of, is that natural power and subjection between Edition: This natural power of parents over their children, Adam had over his posterity, says our author; and this power of parents over their children, his children had over theirs in his life-time, says our author also; so that Adam, by a natural right of father, had an absolute unlimited power over all his posterity, and at the same time his children had by the same right absolute unlimited power over theirs.

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