Two treatises on civil government

Front matter

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Introduction

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INTRODUCTION.

About the same time Locke published the ‘‘ Two Treatises of Government,” which are now in the reader’s hands. They had been licensed for printing on the 23rd of August, 1689.

This argument for Civil Liberty was but a few months old when attacks upon his arguments for Religious Liberty in the “ Letter concerning Toleration,” compelled Locke to defend his position. He did this in a “ Second Letter on Toleration,” which was published in June, 1690, followed afterwards by a “ Third Letter concerning Toleration,” in June, 1692.

In the next year, 1693, Locke sought to deepen the foundations of another of the great supports of civilized society, by publishing his “ Thoughts concerning Education.” Still seeking to add strength to the foundations of his country’s power and well-being, his next work was in aid of religious faith ; a book on ‘‘ The Reasonableness of Christianity,” published in the summer of 1695, years before his death. Thus he had dealt in a few years immediately following the Revolution of 1688-9 with all that is most vital in the constitution of a State.

Here we are concerned especially with Locke’s part in the argument upon the limit of authority. Richard Hooker, arguing in 1593 for the Church as established by Elizabeth against those who objected to a Church Polity with laws and usages of human institution, proposed in the first book of his ‘‘ Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity” to consider what is the foundation of law. His purpose was to prove that laws are the product of man’s reason, means-adapted to an end ; maintained by the majority so long as they attain their end, and subject to change with change of circumstance, by the same action of human reason in readjusting means for the more certain attainment of the end desired. HookePs purpose was to show that the Puritans were wrong when they desired to found upon Revelation, and draw wholly from the Bible those arrangements for Church government which had been adopted by the use of Reason — which also is God’s gift — to the conditions which it seemed to the majority most necessary to observe at that time for due maintenance of the Church in England. With the Church wholly in his mind. Hooker hardly thought of the possible applications of his argument to Civil Polity ; but if he had thought much of them he would not have avoided saying what he thought was true.

But the pure-minded Hooker was the great defender of the Church Establishment ; his name, therefore, in the days of conflict, of which Locke’s “Two Treatises” were a product, was as that of a great captain of their own in the ears of men who battled, often as honestly but seldom as reasonably, for the maintenance of old forms of authority in Church and State. Yet the foundation of Hooker’s argument was the foundation also of Locke’s ; and Locke had especial satisfaction when, in his “ Two Treatises of Civil Government,” he quoted Hooker as the “judicious Hooker.” That adjective, “the judicious,” was made current by Locke’s use of it in this book; and thus tamed what had seemed to his adversaries

INTRODUCTION.

their best gun against themselves. Revelation, Hooker had taught, is concerned only with matter of faith, for all else God has given to man Reason as his guide. Men equal by Nature seek communion and fellowship with others, to supply the defects that are in them when living singly and solely by themselves. This was the cause of men’s uniting themselves at the first in politic societies ; which societies could not be without government, nor government without a distinct law of its own, serving to direct even Nature depraved to a right end. All men desire to lead in this world a happy life. That life is led most happily wherein all virtue is exercised without impediment or let. To take away mutual grievances and wrongs there was no way but by an agreement among men, ordaining some kind of government public, and by yielding themselves subject thereunto. 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 was no reason that one man should take upon him to be lord or judge over another. So that, in a word, all public rule, of what kind soever, seemeth evidently to have risen from deliberate advice, consultation, and composition between men, judging it convenient and behoveful. These views of Hooker on the social compact are chiefly given in his own words. He goes on to show that if they began by resting central authority in the will of a ruler, ‘They saw that to live by one man’s will became the cause of all man’s misery. .... By the natural law whereunto God hath made all subject, the la.wful power of making laws to command whole politic societies of men belongeth so properly unto the same entire societies, that for any prince or potentate of what kind soever upon earth, to exercise the same of himself, and not either by express commission immediately and personally received from God, or else by authority derived at the first from their consent upon whose persons they impose the laws, it is no better than mere tyranny.” Laws, said Hooker, are available by consent ; utterly without our consent, we could be at no man’s commandment living.

In the reign of Charles I. the chief English philosopher was Thomas Hobbes, who was born at Malmesbury in 1 588, became at Oxford a distinguished scholar, and was tutor to Lord Cavendish, afterwards Earl of Devonshire. He lived to be a very old man, and was at home at Chatsworth with three generations of the family. The pressing questions of the day directed the course of Hobbes’s philosophy into considerations of the limit of authority. He spent kis best energies in the endeavour to set forth a system of political philosophy. Like Hooker, he founded government upon a social compact among men by nature equal, each of whom gave up to the central power some part of his private right, in order that each might be protected by the strength of all. But Hobbes diverged widely from Hooker at the next stage of the argument. Hooker had said that if the government so established should fail to fulfil its purpose, those who established it might

INTRODUCTION.

undo and re- shape it. Hobbes said that the authority when once established became absolute. There was no power to take back what was given. Absolute government was the form thus established ; and this form was best. Especially in his “ Leviathan,” first published under the Commonwealth, in 1651, Hobbes set forth his view of “the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil.” The State was a great body politic, as Leviathan was a great body natural, and the body politic, like the body natural, could be well ruled only when all members were subject to the control of a single head. In the Church as in the State, according to Hobbes, there should be one directing will, and that the King^s. It was for the King to say what doctrines are fit for peace and to be taught the subject.

Sir Robert Filmer was among Royalists of the time of Charles I., who held that Hobbes had conceded too much when he based his theory of absolute sovereignty upon a social compact among men equal by nature. There never was a time, said Filmer, when men were equal. When there were only two in the world, one was the master. When children were born, Adam was master over them. Authority was founded by God Himself in Fatherhood. Out of Fatherhood came Royalty, the Patriarch was King. Sir Robert Filmer wrote several political pieces that were published in the reign of Charles I. One of them boldly asserted that Parliament was an evil ; they all maintained extreme views of the irresponsibility of kings. Filmer sought for his views the authority of Aristotle, in his “ Observations upon Aristotle’s Politics.” But Aristotle based his teaching on the various conditions of the little States of Greece — accepted actual conditions that are not repeated in the modern States of Europe — built his arguments upon acceptance of a form of citizenship that included slave labour as a means of giving leisure for the cultivation of free citizens. Filmer died in 1653, leaving treatises unprinted, of which two were published by his son when the contest about the limit of authority became keener as the combatants drew nearer to the crisis of the Revolution. The more important of these was the “ Patriarcha,” first published in 1680. It was an attempt at the full statement of his argument. Much of the hottest battle of opinion was along its lines. Therefore, when Locke endeavoured, immediately after the Revolution, to show what were the foundations of Civil Government, he began by sweeping off the fallacies with which they had been overlaid. He disposed, in his first essay, of the speculation of Sir Robert Filmer, and showed what are not the foundations of Civil Authority, and, in his second essay, he then endeavoured to show what they are. For the better understanding and enjoyment of Locke’s Two Treatises of Civil Government,” they are here preceded by the Patriarcha.”

Jmuary^ 1884.

H. M.

OR, THE

NATURAL POWER

OF

KINGS.

By the Learned Sir ROBERT FIRMER, Bart.

Patriarcha.

CHAPTER I. That the first Kings were Fathers of Families*

Since the time that school divinity began to flourish there hath betii a common opinion maintained, as well by divines as by divers other learned men, which affirms, —

Mankind is naturally endowed and born with freedom from all subjection, and at liberty to choose what form of government it please, and that the power which any one man hath over others was at first bestowed according to the i discretion of the multitude.’’

This tenet was first hatched in the schools, and hath been fostered by all succeeding Papists for good divinity. The divines, also, of the Reformed Churches have entertained it, and the common people everywhere tenderly embrace it as being most plausible to flesh and blood, for that it prodigally distributes a portion of liberty to the meanest of the multitude, who magnify liberty as if the height of human felicity were only to be found in it, never remembering that the desire of liberty was the first cause of the fall of Adam.

But howsoever this vulgar opinion hath of late obtained a great reputation, yet it is not to be found in the ancient fathers and doctors of the primitive Church. ' contmdicts the doctrine and history of the Holy Scriptures, the constant practice of all ancient monarchies, and the very principles of the law of nature. It is hard to say whether it be more erroneous in divinity or dangerous in policy.

Yet upon the ground of this doctrine, both Jesuits and some other zealous favourers of the Geneva discipline have

PATRIARCHA.

built a perilous conclusion, which is, that the people or multitude have power to punish or deprive the prince if he transgress the laws of the kingdom ; witness Parsons and Buchanan ; the first, under the name of Dolman, in the third chapter of his first book, labours to prove that kings have been lawfully chastised by their commonwealths. The latter, in his book De jure Regni apud Scotos,” maintains a liberty of the people to depose their prince. Cardinal Bellarmine and Calvin both look asquint this way.

This desperate assertion whereby kings are made subject to the censures and deprivations of their subjects follows (as the authors of it conceive) as a necessary consequence of that former position of the supposed natural equality and freedom of mankind, and liberty to choose what form of government it please.

And though Sir John Hey wood, Adam Blackwood, John Barclay, and some others have learnedly confuted both Buchanan and Parsons, and bravely vindicated the right of kings in most points, yet all of them, when they come to the argument drawn from the natural liberty and equality of mankind, do with one consent admit it for a truth unquestionable, not so much as once denying or opposing it, whereas if they did but confute this first erroneous principle the whole fabric of this vast engine of popular sedition would drop down of itself.

The rebellious consequence which follows this prime article of the natural freedom of mankind may be my sufficient warrant for a modest examination of the original truth of it; much hath been said, and by many, for the affirmative ; equity requires that an ear be reserved a little for the negative.

In this discourse I shall give myself these cautions :

Jursf, 1 have nothing to do to meddle with mysteries of state, such arcana imperii^ or cabinet councils, the vulgar may sot pry into. An implicit faith is given to the meanest artificer in his own craft ; how much more is it, then, due to a prince in the profound secrets of government, the causes and ends of the greatest politic actions and motions of state dazzle the eyes and exceed the capacities of all men, save only those that are hourly versed in the managing public affairs : yet since the rule for each man to know in

PATRIARCHA.

what to obey his prince cannot be learnt without a relative knowledge of those points wherein a sovereign may command, it is necessaiy when the comm.ands and pleasures of superiors come abroad and call for an obedience that every man himself know how to regulate his actions or his sufferings, for according to the quality of the thing commanded an active or passive obedience is to be yielded, and this is not to limit the prince’s power, but the extent of the subject’s obedience, by giving to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, &c.

Secondly^ I am not to question or quarrel at the rights or liberties of this or any other nation ; my task is chiefly to inquire from whom these first came, not to dispute what or how many these are, but whether they were derived from the laws of natural liberty or from the grace and bounty of princes. My desire and hope is that the people of England may and do enjoy as ample privileges as any nation under heaven ; the greatest liberty in the world (if it be duly considered) is for a people to live under a monarch. It is the Magna Charta of this kingdom ; all other shows or pretexts of liberty are but several degrees of slavery, and a liberty only to destroy liberty.

If such as maintain the natural liberty of mankind take offence at the liberty I take to examine it, they must take heed that they do not deny by retail that liberty which they affirm by wholesale. For if the thesis be true, the hypothesis will follow, that all men may examine their own charters, deeds, or evidences by which they claim and hold the inheritance or freehold of their liberties.

Thirdly^ I must not detract from the worth of all those learned men who are of a contrary opinion in the point of natural liberty. The profoundest scholar that ever was known hath not been able to search out every truth that is discoverable ; neither Aristotle in philosophy, nor Hooker in divinity. They are but men, yet I reverence their judgments in most points, and confess myself beholding to their errors too in this ; something that I found amiss in their opinions guided me in the discovery of that truth which (I persuade myself) they missed. A dwarf sometimes may see that which a giant looks over ; for whilst one truth is curiously searched after, another must necessarily be

PATRIARCH A.

neglected. Late writers have taken up too much upon trust from the subtile schoolmen, who to be sure to thrust down the king below the pope, thought it the safest course to advance the people above the king, that so the papal power might take place of the regal. Thus many an ignorant subject hath been fooled into this faith, that a man may become a martyr for his country by being a traitor to his prince ; whereas the new coined distinction of subjects into royalists and patriots is most unnatural, since the relation between king and people is so great that their v/ell-being is so reciprocal.

>2. To make evident the grounds of this question about ^e natural liberty of mankind, I will lay down some passages of Cardinal Bellarmine, that may best unfold the state of this controversy. Secular or civil power (saith he) is instituted by men ; it is in the people, unless they bestow it on a prince. This power is immediately in the whole multitude, as in the subject of it ; for this power is in the divine law, but the divine law hath given this power to no particular man — if the positive law be taken away, there is left no reason why amongst a multitude (who are equal) one rather than another should bear rule over the rest. Power is given by the multitude to one man, or to more by the same law of nature ; for the commonwealth cannot exercise this power, therefore it is bound to bestow it upon some one man, or some few. It depends upon the consent of the multitude to ordain over themselves a king, or consul, or other magistrates ; and if there be a lawful cause, the multitude may change the kingdom into an aristocracy or democracy.’^ Thus far Bellarmine, in which passages are comprised the strength of all that ever I have read or heard produced for the natural liberty of the subject.

Before I examine or refute these doctrines, I must a little make some observations upon his words.

Firsts he saith, that by the law of God, power is immediately in the people ; hereby he makes God to be the immediate author of a democratical estate ; for a democracy is nothing else but the power of the multitude. If this be true, not only aristocracies but ail monarchies are altogether unlawful, as being ordained (as he thinks) by men, vv^hereas God himself hath chosen a democracy.

Secondly^ he holds^ that although a democracy be the ordinance of God, yet the people have no power to use the power which God hath given them, but only power to give away their power ; whereby it folio we th, that there can be no democratical government, because he saith the people must give their power to one man, or to some few ; which maketh either a regal or aristocratical estate, which the multitude is tied to do, even by the same law of nature which originally gave them the power. And why then doth he say, the multitude may change the kingdom into a democracy ?

Thirdly y he concludes, that if there be a lawful cause, the multitude may change the kingdom. Here I would fain know who shall judge of this lawful cause ? If the multitude (for I see nobody else can) then this is a pestilent and dangerous conclusion.

3. I come now to examine that argument which is used by Bellarmine, and is the one and only argument I can find produced by my author for the proof of the natural liberty of the people. It is thus framed : That God hath given or ordained power, is evident by Scripture ; but God hath given it to no particular person, because by nature all men are equal; therefore he hath given power to the people or multitude.

To answer this reason, drawn from the equality of mankind by nature, I will first use the help of Bellarmine himself, whose very words are these : If many men had been together created out of the earth, they all ought to have been princes over their posterity.’^ In these words we have an evident confession, that creation made man prince of his posterity. And indeed not only Adam, but the succeeding patriarchs had, by right of fatherhood, royal authority over their children. Nor dares Bellarmine deny this also. That the patriarchs (saith he) were endowed with kingly power, their deeds do testify ; for as Adam was lord of his children, so his children under him had a command and power over their own children ; but still with subordination to the first parent, who is lord-paramount over his children’s children to all generations, as being the grandfather of his people.

4. I see not then how the children of Adam, or of any man else, can be free from subjection to their parents. And i6

PATRIARCH A.

this subjection of children being the fountain of all regal authority, by the ordination of God himself ; it follows, that civil power, not only in general is by divine institution, but even the assignment of it specifically to the eldest parents, which quite takes away that new and common distinction which refers only power universal and absolute to God, but power respective in regard of the special form of government to the choice of the people.

This lordship which Adam by command had over the whole world, and by right descending from him the patriarchs did enjoy, was as large and ample as the absolutest dominion of any monarch which hath been since the creation. For dominion of life and death we find that Judah, the father, pronounced sentence of death against Thamar, his daughter-in-law, for playing the harlot. Bring her forth (saith he), that she may be burnt.” Touching war, we see that Abraham commanded an army of 318 soldiers of his own family. And Esau met his brother Jacob with 400 men at arms. For matter of peace, Abraham made a league with Abimelech, and ratified the articles with an oath. These acts of judging in capital crimes, of making war, and concluding peace, are the chiefest marks of sovereignty that are found in any monarch.

5. Not only until the Flood, but after it, this patriarchal power did continue, as the very name patriarch doth in part prove. The three sons of Noah had the whole world divided amongst them by their father ; for of them was the whole world overspread, according to the benediction given to him and his sons : Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth.” Most of the civilest nations of the earth labour to fetch their original from some one of the sons or nephews of Noah, which were scattered abroad after the confusion of Babel. In this dispersion we must certainly find the establishment of regal power throughout the kingdoms of the world.

It is a common opinion that at the confusion of tongues there were seventy-two distinct nations erected, all which were not confused multitudes, without heads or governors, and at liberty to choose what governors or government they pleased, but they were distinct families, which had fathers for rulers over them, whereby it appears that even in the confusion God

PATRIARCHA.

was careful to preserve the fatherly authority by distributing the diversity of languages according to the diversity of families, for so plainly it appears by the text. First, after the enumeration of the sons of Japhet, the conclusion is, By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands, every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.’^ So it is said : ‘‘These are the sons of Ham after their families, after their tongues, in their countries, and in their nations.'* The like we read : “These are the sons of Shem after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their nations. These are the families of the sons of Noah after their generations in their nations, and by these were these nations divided in the earth after the flood.”

In this division of the world, some are of opinion that Noah used lots for the distribution of it ; others affirm he sailed about the Mediterranean Sea in ten years, and as he went about, appointed to each son his part, and so made the division of the then known world into Asia, Africa, and Europe, according to the number of his sons, the limits of which three parts are all found in that Midland Sea.

6. But howsoever the manner of this division be uncertain, yet it is most certain the division itself was by families from Noah and his children, over which the parents were heads and princes.

Amongst these was Nimrod, who no doubt (as Sir Walter Raleigh affirms) was by good right lord or king over his family ; yet against right did he enlarge his empire by seizing violently on the rights of other lords of families ; and in this sense he njay be said ko be the author and first founder of monarchy. * And all those that do attribute unto him the original regal power do hold he got it by tyranny or usurpation, and not by any due election of the people or multitude, or by any faction with them.

As this patriarchal power continued in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, even until the Egyptian bondage, so we find it amongst the sons of Ishmael and Esau. It is said, “ These are the sons of Ishmael, and these are their names by their castles and towns, twelve princes of their tribes and families. And these are the names of the dukes that came of Esau, according to their families and their places by their nations,”

7. Some, perhaps, may think that these princes and dukes i8

PATRIARCHA.

of families were but some petty lords under some greater kings, because the number of them are so many that their particular territories could be but small, and not worthy the title of kingdoms ; but they must consider that at first kings had no such large dominions as they have nowadays. We find in the time of Abraham, which was about 300 years after the Flood, that in a little corner of Asia nine kings at once met in battle, most of which were but kings of cities apiece, with the adjacent territories, as of Sodom, Gomorrha, Shinar, &c. In the same chapter is mention of Melchisedek, king of Salem, which was but the city of Jerusalem. And in the catalogue of the Kings of Edom, the names of each king’s city is recorded, as the only mark to distinguish their dominions. In the land of Canaan, which was but a small circuit, Joshua destroyed thirty-one kings, and about the same time Adonibesek had seventy kings whose hands and toes he had cut off, and made them feed under his table.* A few years after this, thirty-two kings came to Benhadad, king of Syria, and about seventy kings of Greece went to the Wars of Troy. Caesar found more kings in France than there be now princes there, and at his sailing over into this island he found four kings in our county of Kent. These heaps of kings in each nation are an argument their territories were but small, and strongly confirms our assertion that erection of kingdoms came at first only by distinction of families.

By manifest footsteps we may trace this paternal government unto the Israelites coming into Egypt, where the exercise of supreme patriarchal jurisdiction was intermitted, because they were in subjection to a stronger prince. After the return of these Israelites out of bondage, God, out of a special care of them, chose Moses and Joshua successively to govern as princes in the place and stead of the supreme fathers ; and after them likewise for a time He raised up Judges to defend His people in time of peril. But when God gave the Israelites kings. He re-established the ancient and prime right of lineal succession to paternal government. And whensoever He made choice of any special person to be king, He intended that the issue also should have benefit thereof, as being comprehended sufficiently in the person * I Kings XX. 16.

FA TRIARCHA. 19

of the father, although the father only was named in the grant.

8. It may seem absurd to maintain that kings now are the fathers of their people, since experience shows the contrary. It is true, all kings be not the natural parents of their subjects, yet they all either are, or are to be reputed, the next heirs to those first progenitors who were at first the natural parents of the whole people, and in their right succeed to the exercise of supreme jurisdiction ; and such heirs are not only lords of their own children, but also of their brethren, and all others that were subject to their fathers. And therefore we find that God told Cain of his brother Abel, His desires shall be subject unto thee, and thou shalt rule over him.^^ Accordingly, when Jacob bought his brother's birthright, Isaac blessed him thus : ‘‘Be lord over thy brethren, and let the sons of thy mother bow before thee."*