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John Locke and the Problem of Naturalization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

David Resnick
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Extract

This article explores a hitherto unexamined aspect of John Locke's political thought, his advocacy of general naturalization. It is based upon an unpublished manuscript of Locke's which appears in the Appendix. Although naturalization was supported by a number of Locke's contemporaries, the arguments for naturalization which rely on the tradition of classical republicanism must be distinguished from those such as Locke's which rely on the new political economy. The classical republicans ground naturalization in the need for increasing the number of citizens available for a civic militia; this need, in turn, is intertwined with a vision of imperialistic conquest on the Roman model. Locke's arguments are based on a theory of an expanding commercial society and the productive power of labor. They reflect a new concept of individualistic voluntaristic citizenship which provides an alternative to the common law notions of natural allegiance of Locke's day.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , Summer 1987 , pp. 368 - 388
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1987

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References

Notes

1 For an authoritative account of the influence of Machiavelli and the history of civic humanism see Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975)Google Scholar. Pocock's influence is such that the Machiavellian moment is now swallowing up British political economy. See Donald Winch's interesting, but not totally convincing, “essay in historiographic revision” on Smith, Adam (Adam Smith's Politics [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978])Google Scholar; for more traditional accounts of the tradition of political economy see Johnson, E. A. J., Predecessors of Adam Smith (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1960)Google Scholar; Letwin, William, The Origins of Scientific Economics (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1964)Google Scholar; and Appleby, Joyce O., Economic Thought and Ideology in 17th Century England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978)Google Scholar. An approach such as Pocock's has particular difficulty in coming to grips with the uniqueness and influence of John Locke's political thought. See Resnick, David, “Locke and the Rejection of the Ancient Constitution,” Political Theory 12 (02 1984): 97–114 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a recent account which rescues early American political thought from those who overemphasize the theme of classical republicanism at the expense of Lockean liberalism see Diggins, John R., The Lost Soul of American Politics (New York: Basic Books, 1984).Google Scholar

2 Robbins, , “Naturalization under the Later Stuarts,” Journal of Modern History 34 (06 1962): 170.Google Scholar

3 Robbins, Caroline, The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthman (New York: Atheneum, 1968), p. 12 Google Scholar; see also pp. 89, 95, 106–7, 113–14, 191, 293.

4 Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius in The Prince and the Discourses (New York: Random House, 1950), I, 6, p. 127.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., II, 3, pp. 288–89.

6 Ibid., p. 289.

7 Harrington, James, The Commonwealth of Oceana in The Political Works of James Harrington, ed. Pocock, J. G. A. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 273–74.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., pp. 324–26.

9 Ibid., p. 63.

10 Ibid., p. 328.

11 Ibid., p. 323.

12 Ibid., p. 72.

13 Sydney, Algernon, Discourses Concerning Government in The Works of Algernon Sydney (London, 1772), p. 173.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., p. 174.

15 Ibid., p. 178.

16 Moyle, Walter, Upon the Constitution of the Roman Republic in Two English Republic Tracts, ed. Robbins, Caroline (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 228.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., pp. 237–38.

18 Some Considerations of the Consequences of lowering the interest … in The Works of John Locke in ten volumes, (London, 1823), 5:13.Google Scholar

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid., p. 21.

21 Ibid.

22 This bill created a minor scandal because of a vituperative attack on it by Sir John Knight. The speech was printed, distributed, and subsequently judged libelous by the house and ordered to be burnt in the Palace-Yard, Westminster, by the common hangman ( Cobbett, William, Parliamentary History [London, 1810], 5:858 Google Scholar). It was reprinted in 1747 when there was another serious attempt at passing a general naturalization bill. Parry, Clive, British Nationality Law and the History of Naturalization (Milan: Universita di Milano, 1954), p. 91 Google Scholar. A measure for general naturalization was finally passed in 1709, but was repealed three years later. After the rather short-lived experiment under the Act of Anne, general naturalization by statute was not reintroduced in England until the Aliens Act of 1844 (ibid., p. 102).

23 Locke, John, “For a General Naturalization: 1693,” MS in The Houghton Library of Harvard University, Appendix, p. 385.Google Scholar

24 McCulloch, J. R., ed. Early English Tracts on Commerce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), p. 219.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., p. 358.

26 Child, , A Discourse About Trade (London, 1689), p. 122.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., p. 125.

28 Harrison, John and Laslett, Peter, The Library of John Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971).Google Scholar

29 The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1899), p. 34.Google Scholar

30 Child, , Discourse About Trade Google Scholar, preface.

31 McCulloch, , Early English Tracts on Commerce, p. 219.Google Scholar

32 Johnson, , Predecessors of Adam Smith, pp. 237–56.Google Scholar

33 MS, p. 385.Google Scholar

34 For a sophisticated treatment of Locke's economic theory see Vaughn, Karen Iverson John Locke Economist and Social Scientist (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 Locke, , Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter (New York: Mentor, 1963), II, 40, p. 338.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., II, 42, p. 339–40.

37 Wood, Neil, John Locke and Agrarian Capitalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).Google Scholar

38 MS, p. 385 Google Scholar; see also Works, 5:72 Google Scholar on Spain.

39 For a discussion of the importance of the Dutch in seventeenth-century English economic thought see Appleby, , Economic Thought and Ideology, pp. 73–98.Google Scholar

40 MS, pp. 385–86.Google Scholar

41 Ibid., p. 386.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid., p. 387. Sir Josiah Child mentions that one of the proverbial errors of those who oppose naturalization is that “The admission of Strangers is to call in others to eat the Bread out of our own Mouthes” Discourse About Trade, Preface).

44 MS, p. 387.Google Scholar

45 Cobbett, , Parliamentary History, 5:854.Google Scholar

46 Some political economists in Locke's day argued that a new naturalization policy must be part of a more comprehensive reform of the English economy. Child, for example, maintained that to take full economic advantage of a general and easy naturalization it was necessary to totally reform the market for labor. This entailed ending restrictions which arise from the privileges of incorporated cities and towns, guild charters and the apprenticeship statute ( Discourse About Trade, pp. 122–23Google Scholar). For a discussion of the importance of Child in the development of economic theory see Letwin, , Origins of Scientific Economics, pp. 3–52.Google Scholar

47 MS, pp. 387–88.Google Scholar

48 Cobbett, , Parliamentary History, 5:853.Google Scholar

49 For an account of the English reactions to an earlier wave of immigration see Pollitt, Ronald, “Refuge of the Distressed Nations: Perceptions of Aliens in Elizabethan England,” Journal of Modern History 52 (03 1980): 169–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Unfortunately no comparable study exists for the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Sympathy for persecuted Protestants was one of the most important political motivations for the final passage of a general naturalization bill in 1709. It provided that a person should be deemed a natural born subject upon taking the statutory oaths of allegiance and receiving the sacraments in a church of any Protestant denomination. Though its purpose was to provide for the flood of Huguenot refugees, economic considerations were also stressed. The preamble of the bill notes that “The increase of people is a means of advancing the wealth and strength of a nation” ( Shaw, W. A., ed. Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization for Aliens in England and Ireland, 1603–1700 [Lymington: Hugenot Society of London, 1911], p. xi)Google Scholar. See also Parry, , British Nationality Law, p. 87 Google Scholar; Robbins, , “Naturalization under the Later Stuarts,” p. 171 Google Scholar; Politics in the Age of Anne (New York: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 105–106.Google Scholar

50 Cobbett, , Parliamentary History, 6:779.Google Scholar

51 Ibid., p. 780.

52 Kettner, James H., The Development of American Citizenship (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of the North Carolina Press, 1978), pp. 3–4 Google Scholar; Parry, , British Nationality Law, pp. 8–50.Google Scholar

53 Kattner, , Development of American Citizenship p. 18 Google Scholar; see also Jones, J. Mervyn, British Nationality Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 50–62.Google Scholar

54 Two Treatises, II, 4, p. 309.Google Scholar

55 See also Two Treatises, II, 114, p. 389.Google Scholar

56 Two Treatises, II, 118, p. 391–92Google Scholar; see also II, 117, p. 391. In commenting on the passage cited, Laslett asserts that though Pollock claims that this is an “opinion which no modern lawyer will accept, least of all a continental one” Locke is not necessarily wrong about the law in his own day (II, note, p. 391). On this point surely Pollock is correct and Laslett wrong. As has been argued above, English law at least since Coke's day claimed that subjects are born, not made as Locke would have it.

57 Locke himself takes a half-step in that direction in Two Treatises, II, 21–22, pp. 393–94Google Scholar, by distinguishing between active and passive consent, full membership and quasi membership.

58 Kettner, , Development of American Citizenship, p. 60.Google Scholar