However, if the people are pushed too far by a tyrannical government, revolution is not only legitimate but possible. “But if a long train of abuses, prevarications, and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people, it is not to be wondered that they should then rouse themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was at first erected.…” (19, 225)
The Declaration not only captures the essence of Locke’s point in this regard, but it borrows certain of his phrases and words. “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
EXAMPLE 5
Having set forth the philosophical foundation for the new nation in the Declaration, much of what remains of the proclamation is a bill of particulars—the “long train of abuses”—indicting the king for his tyrannical acts and justifying the dissolution of his rule and the advent of revolution. “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.” Hence, in this the Founders, and Jefferson specifically, once again turn to Locke for guidance when reciting the twenty-seven allegations against George III.
In the Declaration’s first ten charges, the king is accused of refusing to accept the laws of the colonies, interfering with the operations of the colonies, supplanting colonial law with his own dictates, and dissolving representative legislatures—that is, an obvious plan of subjugation against the colonists by means of usurpation, abuse, obstruction, and neglect. Indeed, under the Declaration’s sixth charge, the Founders assert that whatever authority the king once had over the colonies has already been dissolved. “[T]he legislative powers … have returned to the people at large for their exercise.…” By Locke’s standards, the charges provided more than enough evidence of tyranny and validation for revolution. The remaining seventeen charges accuse the king of waging war against the colonies, making his own government illegitimate and allegiance to it self-defeating. After all, men adhere to governments that have as their purpose the preservation and protection of their inalienable rights.
EXAMPLE 6
Locke’s writings also include emphatic condemnations of slavery. Slavery conflicted with Locke’s view of liberty, rights, labor, and property. In the first sentence of the first chapter of the First Treatise of Government, Locke writes bluntly, “Slavery is so vile and miserable an Estate of Man, and so directly opposite to the generous Temper and Courage of our Nation; that ’tis hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman, much less Gentleman, should plead for’t” (1, 1).
In the Second Treatise, Locke elaborates on slavery’s perniciousness. “Though the earth and all inferior creatures be common to all men, yet every man has a ‘property’ in his own ‘person.’ This nobody has any right to but himself. The ‘labor’ of his body and the ‘work’ of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labor with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, it hath by his labor something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. For this ‘labor’ being the unquestionable property of the laborer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good left in common for others” (5, 16).
Locke also observed, “The Natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of Nature for his rule. The liberty of man in society is to be under no legislative power but that established by consent in the commonwealth, nor under the domination of any will, restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact according to the trust put in it.… [F]reedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to everyone of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it. A liberty to follow my own will in all things where the rule prescribes not, not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man, as freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint by the law of Nature” (4, 21). “For a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot by compact or his own consent enslave himself to anyone, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another to take away his life when he pleases. Nobody can give more power than he has himself, and he that cannot take away his own life cannot give that power over it” (4, 22).
Although Jefferson was a slaveholder, his original draft of the Declaration included a charge against the king for his promotion of slavery, which was removed by Congress in the Declaration’s final version because of objections by members from Georgia and South Carolina. However, Jefferson’s original version provided that “he [the king] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce…”3
Even with the deletion of the antislavery charge, Jefferson and many of those signing the Declaration were setting in motion a course of events that would eventually challenge the legitimacy of slavery. After all, it was not possible to establish a nation based on inalienable rights—acknowledging every man’s sovereignty and equal right to the fruits of his own labor as a law of nature and thus God’s law—yet thereafter sanction slavery. And each of the original colonies gave allegiance to the Declaration, without exception. The idea and principle of the inseparability of liberty and property were at the core of America’s origin.
Locke’s impact on another important founder, George Mason, is evident in Mason’s original draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which was written between May 20 and 26, 1776, and preceded by several weeks the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Mason would later become a delegate from Virginia to the Constitutional Convention and ultimately refused to sign the Constitution, for he insisted on the inclusion of a bill of rights. (Of course, a bill of rights was later adopted.) Mason was a slaveholder, but he argued, among other things, that the Constitution did not do enough to prohibit the slave trade and the spread of slavery.
The similarities between Mason’s draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the subsequent Declaration of Independence are obvious. And, again, Locke’s influence is visible throughout the document. Mason wrote, “That all Men are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent natural Rights, of which they can not by any Compact, deprive or divest their Posterity; among which are the Enjoyment of Life and Liberty, with the Means of acquiring and possessing Property, and pursuing and obtaining Happiness and Safety. That Power is, by God and Nature, vested in, and consequently derived from the People.…” Mason shares Locke’s view of God-given, immutable natural rights, which all men are vested with at birth, and which government has neither the power to grant nor deny.
The draft included, “That Government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common
Benefit, Protection, and Security of the People, Nation, or Community; of all the various Modes and Forms of Government, that is best, which is capable of producing the greatest Degree of Happiness and Safety, and is most effectually secured against the Danger of mal-administration. And that whenever any Government shall be found inadequate, or contrary to these Purposes, a Majority of the Community had an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible Right to reform, alter or abolish it, in such Manner as shall be judged most conducive to the Public Weal.” Consistent with Locke’s view, if the government ceases to nurture, preserve, and protect man’s inalienable rights, the people are free if not obligated to alter it.
Furthermore, Mason wrote that government cannot simply seize someone’s property. Nor are the people required to comply with laws imposed by a government established without their consent. “That no part of a Man’s Property can be taken from him, or applied to public uses, without the Consent of himself, or his legal Representatives; nor are the People bound by any Laws, but such as they have in like Manner assented to for their common Good.” Again, this is a Lockean formulation.
Mason also insisted on impartial justice. “That in all controversies respecting Property, and in Suits between Man and Man, the ancient Trial by Jury is preferable to any other, and ought to be held sacred.” This is a main justification Locke provides for men to leave the state of nature and join a commonwealth. Locke wrote, “And thus all private judgment of every particular member being excluded, the community comes to be umpire, and by understanding indifferent rules and men authorized by the community for their execution, decides all the differences that may happen between any members of that society concerning any matter of right, and punishes those offenses which any member hath committed against the society with such penalties as the law has established.…” (7, 87)
It is also noteworthy that James Madison—a close Jefferson ally who later worked with Jefferson to create the Democratic-Republican Party, served as Jefferson’s secretary of state, replaced Jefferson as rector of the University of Virginia, and is considered by most the Father of the Constitution—was also significantly influenced by Locke, as were others.
Explaining why men transition from the state of nature to the commonwealth, Locke observed, as he did repeatedly in the Second Treatise, that liberty, labor, and property are part of a whole. He wrote that “it is not without reason that [man] seeks out and is willing to join in society with others who are already united, or have a mind to unite for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name—property” (9, 123). Furthermore, “the great and chief end … of men uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property.…” (9, 124) Locke also explained that there is inevitably an unequal distribution of property resulting from the manner in which a man applies his labor. “As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labor does, as it were, enclose it from the common” (5, 31). “He gave it to the use of the industrious and rational (and labor was to be his title to it); not to the fancy or covetousness of the quarrelsome and contentious” (5, 33).
In Federalist 10, which is among the many essays comprising the Federalist Papers—the most prominent and brilliant advocacy for the Constitution’s ratification—Madison wrote, “The diversity in the faculties of men from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of Government.…”
In 1792, writing in the National Gazette, Madison underscored his embrace of Locke’s broad view of the mutual dependency of individual and property rights. Madison began his essay by arguing that the term property “means ‘that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.’”4 Madison borrows nearly the exact wording from William Blackstone, the great eighteenth-century British legal scholar.5 However, as Madison surely knew, and as is clear on the surface, Blackstone’s words reflect Locke’s concept of property rights.
Madison wrote further that property “in its larger and juster meaning … embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage. In the former sense, a man’s land, or merchandize, or money is called his property. In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them. He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them. He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.… Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.” Madison added, “That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.… That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens the free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property strictly so called.…”6
Madison also drafted the first version of the Takings Clause of what became the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing the legal protection of real property from confiscation by the federal government without lawful justification and compensation. He wrote that a person could not “be … obliged to relinquish his property, where it may be necessary for public use, without just compensation.”7 The final version, of course, reads that “private property shall [not] be taken for public use without just compensation.”8
Locke’s writings were not the only philosophical and political influences in the colonies. For example, especially Charles de Montesquieu, as well as several eighteenth-century thinkers who together make up the Enlightenment, played a significant role. However, Locke was the most prominent during the revolutionary period. Professor Bernard Bailyn, having conducted an extensive examination of the period’s pamphlets—which were among the most important manner of communication at the time—observed, “In pamphlet after pamphlet the American writers cited Locke on natural rights and on the social and governmental contract.…”9
So important was Locke to the founding that it is difficult to imagine what kind of nation, if any, the Founders would have established had Locke not lived. The Founders were enlightened and well-educated men who embraced science, reason, experience, tradition, and knowledge. They were men of faith who preached tolerance, morality, and virtue. They used all these qualities and values to draw upon their collective wisdom in organizing the nation around the principles of natural law and natural rights. As such, they appropriated and ratified philosophical arguments espoused by Locke, thereby amalgamating the philosophical with the political. They committed themselves in the founding document, in revolution, and in governance to a respect for human dignity and life through the enshrinement of inalienable individual rights and liberties; to free enterprise and private property rights, where the industrious not only enhance their own lives but contribute to the overall well-being of society; to a representative government of divided authority and limited powers directed at preserving and protecting the individual’s inalienable rights and liberties; and to a just law applied impartially to all individuals.
Looked at another way, the utopian models of Plato’s Republic, More’s Utopia, Hobbes’s Leviathan, and M
arx’s Communist Manifesto could not be more repugnant to America’s philosophical and political foundation. Each of the utopias, in their own way, are models for totalitarian regimes managed by masterminds who rule over men as subjects. The individual exists to serve the state, to be reshaped and molded by the state, and the state exists to serve the masterminds’ cause. There are no inalienable rights, only those liberties and rights conferred on men by the state, should the state decide to confer them at all. The individual’s labor and property belong to the state or are controlled by the state, which determines how best to allocate them, thereby enslaving the individual to the state. There is no impartial law or impartial adjudication of the law, only rule by torment and, if necessary, iron fist to ensure compliance with utopian faith. There is no tolerance for individual self-interest or even self-preservation, for equality in terms of conformity and outcomes is paramount.
Whereas the utopians start from the premise that the individual must be managed and suppressed by masterminds for the greater good, Locke opposed authoritarianism and sought to uncover the true nature of man and the environment most conducive to his fulfillment and happiness. Having experienced the wrath of monarchy, in Locke the Founders discovered a patron saint.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHARLES DE MONTESQUIEU AND REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT
JUST AS JOHN LOCKE’S influence on the Founders and the Declaration of Independence was profound, French philosopher Charles de Montesquieu, who lived from 1689 to 1755, was enormously important to the Framers of the Constitution, particularly respecting the form of government and separation of powers. However, in his seminal and extensive work, The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu also wrote at length about the nature of man and societies.
Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America Page 11
