Locke’s First Treatise

The First Treatise is definitely a tour de force of intellectual destruction. One of my students once asked me why almost no one reads Filmer anymore – outside of academic specialists – given his importance in the period. The answer is, of course, the First Treatise.

I only recently read the First, and it was not nearly as painful as I feared. In fact, much of it was downright amusing.

Oh, yes. It’s a contender for Most One-Sided Literary Fights Of Our Time.

A response to Hobbes? Hardly. Filmer, all the way. Two Treatises is an Exclusion Tract. Same as Algernon Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government, which is also under-read.

In my history of democracy class in college, on the other hand, we read Filmer just so we could read Locke tearing him apart in the First Treatise (before we read the Second Treatise, of course). Locke completely demolishes Filmer in sections 71-72:

“For having placed an Absolute Power in Fathers by Right of Begetting, he could not easily resolve how much of this Power belong’d to a Son over the Children he had begotten…This makes him so doubtful in his Expressions, and so uncertain where to place this Absolute Natural Power, which he calls Fatherhood; sometimes Adam alone has it all, as p. 13
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Sometimes the Posterity of Adam, 244
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Someetimes he that can catch it, an Usurper, p. 23…

72. Thus this New Nothing, that is to carry with it all Power, Authority, and Government; This Fatherhood which is to design the Person, and Establish the Throne of Monarchs, whom the People are to obey, may according to Sir Robert, come into any Hands, any how, and so by his Politicks give to Democracy Royal Authority, and make an Usurper a Lawful Prince. And if it will do all these fine Feats, much good do our Author and all his Followers with their Omnipotent Fatherhood, which can serve for nothing but to unsettle and destroy all the Lawful Governments in the World, and to Establish in their room Disorder, Tyranny, and Usurpation.”

It’s a Cole-esque intellectual alleyway beating, certainly. I remember when I read the Treatises, I actually read the first one first, and I even considered reading Filmer so as to get an idea of who Locke was kicking around like a Chelsea fan in a Millwall pub carpark.

But then, who really reads whatever stack of wank from Powerline or the Corner a genuine blogger has ripped? Far more fun just to watch the blood and teeth fly.

Hi Jon, nice to see you blogging again!

Maybe one of you can help me out with something – I told my students that the _Two Treatises_ were originally published anonymously, which led one of them to ask whether people knew Locke was the author even though it was anonymous. My reply was that the people who agreed with him and were writing similar work knew, but it wasn’t generally known. But that’s based on dim graduate school memories. Was I correct, or should I have told them something else, and if so, what?

TAXATION NO TYRANNY: AN ANSWER TO THE RESOLUTIONS AND ADDRESS OF THE AMERICAN CONGRESS
by Samuel Johnson
In all the parts of human knowledge, whether terminating in science merely speculative, or operating upon life, private or civil, are admitted some fundamental principles, or common axioms, which, being generally received, are little doubted, and, being little doubted, have been rarely proved.
Of these gratuitous and acknowledged truths, it is often the fate to become less evident by endeavours to explain them, however necessary such endeavours may be made by the misapprehensions of absurdity, or the sophistries of interest. It is difficult to prove the principles of science; because notions cannot always be found more intelligible than those which are questioned. It is difficult to prove the principles of practice, because they have, for the most part, not been discovered by investigation, but obtruded by experience; and the demonstrator will find, after an operose deduction, that he has been trying to make that seen, which can be only felt.
Of this kind is the position, that “the supreme power of every community has the right of requiring, from all its subjects, such contributions as are necessary to the publick safety or publick prosperity,” which was considered, by all mankind, as comprising the primary and essential condition of all political society, till it became disputed by those zealots of anarchy, who have denied, to the parliament of Britain the right of taxing the American colonies.
That our commerce with America is profitable, however less than ostentatious or deceitful estimates have made it, and that it is our interest to preserve it, has never been denied; but, surely, it will most effectually be preserved, by being kept always in our own power. Concessions may promote it for a moment, but superiority only can ensure its continuance. There will always be a part, and always a very large part of every community, that have no care but for themselves, and whose care for themselves reaches little further than impatience of immediate pain, and eagerness for the nearest good. The blind are said to feel with peculiar nicety. They who look but little into futurity, have, perhaps, the quickest sensation of the present. A merchant’s desire is not of glory, but of gain; not of publick wealth, but of private emolument; he is, therefore, rarely to be consulted about war and peace, or any designs of wide extent and distant consequence.
Yet this, like other general characters, will sometimes fail. The traders of Birmingham have rescued themselves from all imputation of narrow selfishness, by a manly recommendation to parliament of the rights and dignity of their native country.
To these men I do not intend to ascribe an absurd and enthusiastick contempt of interest, but to give them the rational and just praise of distinguishing real from seeming good; of being able to see through the cloud of interposing difficulties, to the lasting and solid happiness of victory and settlement.
Lest all these topicks of persuasion should fail, the greater actor of patriotism has tried another, in which terrour and pity are happily combined, not without a proper superaddition of that admiration which latter ages have brought into the drama. The heroes of Boston, he tells us, if the stamp act had not been repealed, would have left their town, their port, and their trade, have resigned the splendour of opulence, and quitted the delights of neighbourhood, to disperse themselves over the country, where they would till the ground, and fish in the rivers, and range the mountains, and be free.
These, surely, are brave words. If the mere sound of freedom can operate thus powerfully, let no man, hereafter, doubt the story of the Pied Piper. The removal of the people of Boston into the country, seems, even to the congress, not only difficult in its execution, but important in its consequences. The difficulty of execution is best known to the Bostonians themselves; the consequence alas! will only be, that they will leave good houses to wiser men.
Yet, before they quit the comforts of a warm home, for the sound of something which they think better, he cannot be thought their enemy who advises them, to consider well whether they shall find it. By turning fishermen or hunters, woodmen or shepherds, they may become wild, but it is not so easy to conceive them free; for who can be more a slave than he that is driven, by force, from the comforts of life, is compelled to leave his house to a casual comer, and, whatever he does, or where ever he wanders, finds, every moment, some new testimony of his own subjection? If choice of evil be freedom, the felon in the galleys has his option of labour or of stripes. The Bostonian may quit his house to starve in the fields; his dog may refuse to set, and smart under the lash, and they may then congratulate each other upon the smiles of liberty, “profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight.”
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But Columbus came five or six hundred years too late for the candidates of sovereignty. When he formed his project of discovery, the fluctuations of military turbulence had subsided, and Europe began to regain a settled form, by established government and regular subordination. No man could any longer erect himself into a chieftain, and lead out his fellow-subjects, by his own authority, to plunder or to war. He that committed any act of hostility, by land or sea, without the commission of some acknowledged sovereign, was considered, by all mankind, as a robber or pirate, names which were now of little credit, and of which, therefore, no man was ambitious.
Columbus, in a remoter time, would have found his way to some discontented lord, or some younger brother of a petty sovereign, who would have taken fire at his proposal, and have quickly kindled, with equal beat, a troop of followers: they would have built ships, or have seized them, and have wandered with him, at all adventures, as far as they could keep hope in their company. But the age being now past of vagrant excursion and fortuitous hostility, he was under the necessity of travelling from court to court, scorned and repulsed as a wild projector, an idle promiser of kingdoms in the clouds; nor has any part of the world yet had reason to rejoice that he found, at last, reception and employment.
In the same year, in a year hitherto disastrous to mankind, by the Portuguese was discovered the passage of the Indies, and by the Spaniards the coast of America. The nations of Europe were fired with Boundless expectations, and the discoverers, pursuing their enterprise, made conquests in both hemispheres of wide extent. But the adventurers were not contented with plunder: though they took gold and silver to themselves, they seized islands and kingdoms in the name of their sovereigns. When a new region was gained, a governour was appointed by that power, which had given the commission to the conqueror; nor have I met with any European, but Stukely, of London, that formed a design of exalting himself in the newly found countries to independent dominion.
To secure a conquest, it was always necessary to plant a colony, and territories, thus occupied and settled, were rightly considered, as mere extensions, or processes of empire; as ramifications which, by the circulation of one publick interest, communicated with the original source of dominion, and which were kept flourishing and spreading by the radical vigour of the mother-country.
The colonies of England differ no otherwise from those of other nations, than as the English constitution differs from theirs. All government is ultimately and essentially absolute, but subordinate societies may have more immunities, or individuals greater liberty, as the operations of government are differently conducted. An Englishman in the common course of life and action feels no restraint.
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That slavery is a miserable state we have been often told, and, doubtless, many a Briton will tremble to find it so near as in America; but bow it will be brought hither the congress must inform us. The question might distress a common understanding; but the statesmen of the other hemisphere can easily resolve it. “Our ministers,” they say, “are our enemies, and if they should carry the point of taxation, may, with the same army, enslave us. It may be said, we will not pay them; but remember,” say the western sages, “the taxes from America, and, we may add, the men, and particularly the Roman catholicks of this vast continent, will then be in the power of your enemies. Nor have you any reason to expect, that, after making slaves of us, many of us will refuse to assist in reducing you to the same abject state.”
These are dreadful menaces; but suspecting that they have not much the sound of probability, the congress proceeds: “Do not treat this as chimerical. Know, that in less than half a century, the quitrents reserved to the crown, from the numberless grants of this vast continent, will pour large streams of wealth into the royal coffers. If to this be added the power of taxing America, at pleasure, the crown will possess more treasure than may be necessary to purchase the remains of liberty in your island.”
All this is very dreadful; but, amidst the terrour that shakes my frame, I cannot forbear to wish, that some sluice were opened for these streams of treasure. I should gladly see America return half of what England has expended in her defence; and of the stream that will “flow so largely in less than half a century,” I hope a small rill, at least, may be found to quench the thirst of the present generation, which seems to think itself in more danger of wanting money, than of losing liberty.
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“We are the acknowledged descendants of the earliest inhabitants of Britain, of men, who, before the time of history, took possession of the island desolate and waste, and, therefore, open to the first occupants. Of this descent, our language is a sufficient proof, which, not quite a century ago, was different from yours.

My reply was that the people who agreed with him and were writing similar work knew, but it wasn’t generally known.

I think that’s a fairly accurate belief. There’s a good consensus that it was largely composed and circulated among leading Whigs a good decade before its publication, as an Exclusion Tract; so when it appeared in print, as an after-the-fact defence of the Glorious Revolution, the concepts (and the authorship, or at least the locus of authorship) were familiar.