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Locke's Second Treatise and “The Best Fence Against Rebellion”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Nathan Tarcov
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Extract

Locke is at once a traditional and a subversive author for us. As an authority for the American Founders he stands at the source of our tradition. But he was an authority for those revolutionaries because his political teaching culminates in the last chapter of the Second Treatise, a defense of the right of resistance. Insofar as we remain a revolutionary or rebellious people (with a particular proclivity to tax rebellions), Locke's political teaching lives in us. But insofar as we have become traditional and taken our revolution for granted, even coming to look at our founding with “sanctimonious reverence” and ascribing to our founders “a wisdom more than human,” as Jefferson feared we would, Locke has lost his vitality for us. It is no wonder then that we do not read his defense of the right of resistance with the care it deserves, even as we sometimes see or feel its revolutionary spirit still around us. But careful attention to the structure of Locke's argument for the right of resistance shows that he was more consistent and more radical than is usually supposed.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , April 1981 , pp. 198 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1981

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References

1 Cf. Jefferson's letter to Kercheval, Samuel, 12 07 1816Google Scholar, in Peterson, Merrill D., ed., The Portable Jefferson (New York, 1975), pp. 558–59.Google Scholar

2 Since writing this article, I have read Franklin, Julian H., John Locke and the Theory of Sovereignty: Mixed Monarchy and the Right of Resistance in the Political Thought of the English Revolution (Cambridge, 1978)Google Scholar, which makes clear in other respects how Locke's doctrine of the right of resistance was radical and consistent.

3 Unless otherwise noted, parenthetical references are to Locke's numbered sections in the Second Treatise in Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter (New York, 1965).Google Scholar

4 For a subtle and sophisticated consideration of those questions that gives more credit for subtlety and sophistication to Locke than he always receives, cf. Seliger, Martin, The Liberal Politics of John Locke (New York, 1969), pp. 107–109, 124–38, 294–323.Google Scholar Cf. also Mansfield, Harvey C. Jr., “The Right of Revolution,” Daedalus (Fall 1976), pp. 151–62.Google Scholar

5 For a neat statement of our two questions, cf. Laslett's Introduction to Locke, , Two Treatises, pp. 128–29.Google Scholar

6 Hobbes, , Leviathan, chaps. 13, 18 end, 21.Google Scholar

7 Cf. e.g., Polin, Raymond, La Politique Morale dejohn Locke (Paris, 1960), pp. 225–36.Google Scholar

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12 Laslett, , Introduction, pp. 129–30Google Scholar; for a discussion of how seriously the American Founders took these questions, at least after winning their victory, and evidence that Madison and a majority understood the issue much as I argue that Locke did, cf. Berns, Walter, The First Amendment and the Future of American Democracy (New York, 1976), pp. 16–18.Google Scholar

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14 Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago, 1953), p. 232 n.100Google Scholar; cf. Seliger, , Liberal Politics, p. 124 n.42.Google Scholar

15 Cf. Macpherson, C. B.'s immediately retracted suggestion, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (London, 1962), p. 241.Google Scholar

16 Seliger, , Liberal Politics, pp. 107–108, 125–28.Google Scholar

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18 Ibid., p. 181 n.2.

19 Ibid.

20 I am indebted here to Goldwin, Robert A., “John Locke,” in Strauss, Leo and Cropsey, Joseph, eds., History of Political Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1972), pp. 452–60.Google Scholar

21 Hobbes, , Leviathan, chap. 14 beg.Google Scholar

22 Cf. Schochet, Gordon J., Patriarchalism in Political Thought: The Authoritarian Family and Political Speculation and Attitudes Especially in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford, 1975), pp. 54, 255Google Scholar and n.51, 259 n.60, 264 n.73.

23 Cf. also 222; this is the only context in which Locke defends freedom of speech; in his writings on toleration speech has no greater freedom than conduct.

24 This may be an afterthought of 1689 as Laslett suggests in his note to this passage, but not because it is inconsistent with what Locke says elsewhere about the dissolution of government as opposed to the dissolution of society. It is hard to see how Dunn can read this passage to say that society remains, Political Thought, p. 181 n.2.Google Scholar

25 Cf. Dunn, , Political Thought, p. 181 n. 2.Google Scholar

26 Cf. Seliger, , Liberal Politics, p. 126.Google Scholar

27 Hobbes, , LeviathanGoogle Scholar, chap. 21 end.

28 Ibid., chap. 13; Machiavelli, , The PrinceGoogle Scholar, chap. 3, Discourses, bk. I, chap. 52.

29 Contrast Seliger, , Liberal Politics, pp. 312–15Google Scholar; cf. Machiavelli, , DiscoursesGoogle Scholar, bk. I, chap. 25.

30 Cf. Hobbes, , LeviathanGoogle Scholar, chap. 28: “a relapse into the condition of warre, commonly called Rebellion.”

31 Machiavelli, , The PrinceGoogle Scholar, chap. 15. Discourses, bk. II, chap. 2; bk. III, chap. 1.

32 Following Locke's terms, the American Tory “Massachusettensis” denied there was any “oppression that could be either seen or felt,” whereas “Novanglus” (John Adams) argued that the people “see and feel” perhaps only “too late” the calamities foreseen “by a few” who perceived the “design” of the Jensen, Tories Merrill, ed., Tracts of the American Revolution 1763–1776 (Indianapolis, 1967), pp. 283, 299–303.Google Scholar

33 Machiavelli, , DiscoursesGoogle Scholar, bk. III, chap. 29.

34 Contrast SirFilmer, Robert, PatriarchaGoogle Scholar, chap. 19, “Popular Government more Bloody than a Tyranny,” in Patriarcha and Other Political Works of Sir Robert Filmer, ed. Laslett, Peter (Oxford, 1949), pp. 90–93Google Scholar; Hobbes, , Leviathan, chap. 18 end.Google Scholar

35 Cf. Seliger, , Liberal Politics, p. 127.Google Scholar

36 This approach was reversed by one American Tory arguing from the last chapter of the Second Treatise but apparently also confusing Locke's distinction between the dissolutions of government and of society, Bailyn, Bernard, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 149–50.Google Scholar

37 Locke's doctrine of the right of resistance as an “appeal to heaven” is based on Jephtha, 's appeal “The Lord the Judge be Judge”Google Scholar when taking arms against the Ammonites (21, 176, 241; cf. Judges 11:27). It has been noted that by applying this appeal to heaven, equated with an appeal to arms, not only to relations between nations but also to relations between peoples and governments, Locke was able to oppose “the traditional Christian view which restricted the appeal to heaven of the governed to mere prayer” (Seliger, , Liberal Politics, pp. 63–64Google Scholar; cf. Strauss, , Natural Right, pp. 214–15).Google Scholar I would add that the same appeal, “The Lord be Judge,” is also invoked in Scripture in a relation between a subject and a ruler, David and Saul, but its meaning is precisely that the subject should not take arms against the ruler (1 Samuel 24:12 and 15). Cf. e.g., Luther, Martin, Works, vol. 46, The Christian in Society III, ed. Schultz, Robert C. (Philadelphia, 1967), pp. 112–13.Google Scholar

38 Cf. Machiavelli's dikes against fortune, The Prince, chap. 25.