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III. The English Revolution and Locke's ‘Two Treatises of Government’1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

Peter Laslett
Peter Laslett
Affiliation:
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
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Extract

John Locke received the following letter from the Hague on 31 January 1689, whilst he was waiting in Rotterdam for a ship to take him home, now that his exile in Holland could come to an end after the Revolution:

I have been very ill this fortnight. The beginning was what is called the disease of one's country, impatience to be there, but it ended yesterday with violence, as all great things do but kings. Ours went out like a farthing candle, and has given us by this Convention an occasion not only of mending the Government but of melting it down and making all new, which makes me wish you were there to give them a right scheme of government, having been infected by that great man Lord Shaftesbury.

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Articles
Information
Cambridge Historical Journal , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , 1956 , pp. 40 - 55
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1956

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References

2 Paraphrased. In the original she seems to write: ‘ours whent out: Lyke a farding candle & has given us by this convension an occasion of mending the government but of melting itt down & make all new’.

3 This date makes it practically impossible that Locke had anything to do with its composition, or with any of the arguments offered to the Convention, though some of them are very like what he wrote in Two T[reatises] (Compare, for example, the ‘Proposals offered to the present Convention’, printed in State Tracts, 1693, with Two T 11 §§217, 219. His papers contain nothing to suggest that he communicated his views from Holland to such writers or to members of the Convention.)

4 First T[reatise] §129: ‘Judge Jefferies, pronounced sentence of death in the late Times’, ‘late’ meaning ‘just recent’.

5 H. R. Fox Bourne, Life of John Locke (London, 2 vols. 1876) I, p. 466; ii, p. 166. His ‘grounds’ included an argument from Locke's Preface, and the lacuna in his text, which will be considered shortly. The neglect of this Life as a source by historians is noticed elsewhere, see Laslett, ‘John Locke, The Board of Trade and Virginia, 1695–1699’, to be published in the W[illiam] and M[ary] Q[uarterly], For its date and sources, it is excellent.

6 For the reprints in circulation see Laslett, , ‘The 1690 Edition of Locke's Two Treatises of Government: Two States’, in Trans[actions of the] C[ambridge] Bibliographical] Soc[iety], 1, pt. iv (1952), p. 342, n. 2Google Scholar, and his contribution to ‘Further Observations [on Locke's Two Treatises of Government]’, ibid, ii, pt. 1 (1954), p. 83, n.i. The carelessness and irresponsibility of the editors of this work of Locke's are almost impossible to believe.

7 The Everyman; see the articles referred to above.

8 In Great Britain, that is. It is included in the only reliable edition in our language since 1764, the Hafner edition (New York, 1947, ed. T. I. Cook), in the German one of 1906, and the Italian of 1947 (ed. L. Pareyson, the only critical edition in existence). It must have been printed also in the last collected English edition of Locke, which appeared as long ago as 1854, and which I have never seen.

9 On Filmer see Laslett, , ‘The Gentry of Kent in 1640’, in C[ambridge] H[istorical] J[ournal], IX, no. 2 (1948)Google Scholar, ‘Sir Robert Filmer’, in W. and M.Q. 3rd ser. V, no. 4 (Oct. 1948)Google Scholar, and his edition of Filmer's Patriarcha [and other political works] (Oxford, Blackwell's Political Texts, 1949)Google Scholar, Introduction. The apologetic tone of Locke's Preface may be due to the fact that he was acquainted with the Filmer family in Kent. From his diary and letters we now know that he was a friend of the Digges family whose home was only a little way from East Sutton, where the Filmers lived.

10 Which was considerable, about 500 modern pages, say as long as Sidney's unmanageable Discourses, devoted to exactly the same theme.

11 See Aaron, R. I., Locke (1st ed. 1936, 2nd ed. 1955)Google Scholar; A. H. Maclean, who in his unpublished dissertation in the Cambridge University Library, and in ‘George Lawson and John Locke’ in C.H.J. IX, no. 1 (1947)Google Scholar, showed considerable knowledge of Locke's papers in the Bodleian; and Gough, J. W., John Locke's Political Philosophy (Oxford, 1950)Google Scholar, a book which, as the author tells us, is largely based on Maclean. These writers, especially Gough in his somewhat wandering discussion of this point, leave the impression that they are unable to decide it.

12 See F. Bowers and J. Gerritsen, contributions to ‘Further Observations…’, in Trans. C.B. Soc. II, no. 1 (1954).Google Scholar The detailed interpretation stated here is Laslett's construction on this case; see Laslett in the same discussion.

13 Laslett, , ‘Sir Robert Filmer’, in W. andM.Q. 3rd ser. V, no. 4 (Oct. 1948)Google Scholar and Patriarcha (1949).

14 It could even be maintained that the cross-references in the First Treatise to the Second were subsequent insertions, but their contexts would, I think, make this most unlikely.

15 Bibliotheca Politica, 1st Dialogue.

16 Tyrell to Locke, 20 Dec. 1689; Benjamin Furly to Locke, 10 June 1689.

17 Locke bought political pamphlets only sporadically. Quite a number in his catalogue date from the years 1679–82, but a superficial survey of the dates of the literature of this sort which he possessed shows that he bought as much in 1689 as in all other years put together. This has an interesting bearing on the nature and extent of the revision he made to Two Treatises in 1689.

18 See below pp. 52–55 for an interpretation of evidence in Locke's MSS. as referring to a cover name for an earlier form, or forms, of the Treatises.

19 Lady Mordaunt's letter, see p. 40 above.

10 Quoted by Laslett, , ‘The 1690 Edition of Locke's Two Treatises of Government: Two States’, in Trans. C.B. Soc. 1, no. 4 (1952)Google Scholar, and Gerritsen, op. cit. n. 12 above. See also Furly to Locke, 21 Feb. 1688 etc., concerning the proposed printing of a book which does not look like a philosophical one.

21 Tyrell to Locke, 6 May 87: ‘your Discourse about Liberty of Conscience would not do amisse now to dispose people's minds to passe it when the Parlmt sits’.

22 This is the reference to Garcilasso de la Vega, see Laslett, art. cit. Trans. C.B. Soc. I, no. 4 (1952) p. 343, n. 1.Google Scholar It looks as if Locke wrote out the modification he wished to be made on the opposite blank page of his MS. and that the compositor of the first state of the first edition overlooked or misunderstood his directions. There can be no proof that Locke made this correction in 1689 rather than 1687, but in view of all the other indications that he worked on this book only before 1684 and after 1688, it seems extremely probable.

23 Two T II, §§ 133 and 200, corrected in 1694 and 1698 respectively. This cannot be pressed too far. James I was a literary figure and as late as 1692 Tyrell sometimes refers to him simply as ‘King James’ when it was obviously a literary reference.

24 Two T 11, passim and §256.

25 See State Papers, Domestic, 1683, Sergeant Holloway reporting that it would be profitable to search Mr Locke's chamber at Christ Church—he was ‘disaffected’, a confidant of Shaftesbury's—since a great deal of its contents was being secretly transported to Mr Tyrell's house at Oakley. Tyrell was ‘disaffected’ too.

26 See Tyrell to Locke, 19 Mar. 1691. There can be no doubt from this letter that Locke's chamber was broken open and perhaps rifled on one of these occasions, but I am unable to decide which, and on which of them Locke's books were being, or about to be, transported to Oakley.

27 Bod[leian Library], Locke MS. b.2.

28 Maclean, in art. cit. n. 11 above, ingeniously argues that Locke could have seen the book which he believes is so vital to Two Treatises, that is to say Lawson's Politica Sacra (see below n. 33), in the library of Benjamin Furly, with whom he lodged in Rotterdam. But Furly's catalogue (Bibliotheca Furleiana, 1714) does not contain enough of the right titles for it to be the collection used by Locke for Two Treatises.

29 He states in his Civil Magistrate (1660–1) that he had read only the Preface, and, though Hooker appears in note-books covering the years between (Bod. MS. Locke f. 14, for example), it is possible that this is all he had read before 1681, as distinct from looking the book up and making extracts.

30 Two T. 11, §§s, 15, 60, 61, 74, 90, 91, iii, 134, 136 and the explanation in §239.

31 a, dated 1676, not 1666. Locke possessed another Hooker in the 1690's, a ed. 1632, and it is not possible to prove exclusive use in the case of a common work. Furly had one. This account has interesting implications for Locke's intellectual debt to Hooker in his political thinking.

32 ‘on Hobbs…etc.’, i.e. to the tracts succeeding the Freeholder in the collection. Locke never refers to the Freeholder itself.

33 Bod. MS. Locke f. 28. It is remarkable that he notes on p. 40, headed 79, ‘Shaftesbury: Lawsons book of the English Government’. Maclean (art. cit.) is at pains to account for Locke's being able to read this book in 1687–9. The fact seems to be that Locke read it in 1679, at Shaftesbury's recommendation.

34 P[ublic] R[ecord] O[ffice] 30/24/6A item 349; cp. , Laslett, ‘Locke and the 1st Earl of Shaftesbury’, in Mind, LXVI, no. 241 (Jan. 1952).Google Scholar Locke's account of the Oxford Parliament is printed in Christie, W. D., Life of the First Earl of Shaftesbury (London and New York 1871), II, pp. cxii ff.Google Scholar

35 P.R.O. ibid, paper 3, no. 9.

36 Locke to Clarke, 21 Nov. 1683, printed in The Correspondence of John Locke and Edward Clarke, ed.Rand, B. (Oxford, 1927), p. 100.Google Scholar The additions in square brackets are my explanations and suggested amendments. These letters are unreliably transcribed, and the originals, which belonged to the late Mr Whitehouse of the Isle of Wight, are at present inaccessible. The 1566 De Morbo Gallico cannot be referred to in this letter. Tyrell had it along with Locke's other Oxford books until 1691, together with another with a similar title not otherwise mentioned except in this list.

37 Rand, op. cit. pp. 196–7, Locke to Clarke, 18 Feb. 1687.

38 See Laslett, Patriarcha, Introd., p. 37.

39 The dedication to The Elements of Law is signed on 6 May 1640, before a shot was fired in the Civil War. Filmer's Patriarcha was written by this time, probably in the late 1630's.