Two Treatises of Government quotes

Secondly, That

I shall not take railing for arguments

, nor think either of these worth my notice; though I shall always look on myself as bound to give satisfaction to anyone, who shall appear to be conscientiously scrupulous in the point, and shall show any just grounds for his scruples.

Slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man, and so directly opposite to the generous temper and courage of our nation, that it is hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman, much less a gentleman, should plead for it.

And truly, I should have taken Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, as any other treatise, which would persuade all men that they are slaves, and ought to be so, for such another exercise of wit as was his who writ the encomium of Nero;

To this foreseen objection, our A. answers very logically, “He was governor in habit, and not in act”: a very pretty way of being a governor without government, a father without children, and a king without subjects.

And thus Sir Robert was an author before he writ his book; not in act, it is true, but in habit

; for when he had once published it, it was due to him, by the right of nature, to be an author, as much as it was to Adam to be governor of his children, when he had begot them;

19. It will perhaps be answered again in favour of our author, that these words are not spoken personally to Adam, but in him, as their representative, to all mankind, this being a curse upon mankind, because of the fall.

God, I believe, speaks differently from men, because he speaks with more truth, more certainty

: but when he vouchsafes to speak to men, I do not think he speaks differently from them, in crossing the rules of language in use amongst them:

Sir Robert has too much lessened a subject’s authority to leave himself the hopes of establishing anything by his bare saying it; one slave’s opinion without proof, is not of weight enough to dispose of the liberty and fortunes of all mankind.

If all men are not, as I think they are, naturally equal, I am sure all slaves are

; and then I may without presumption oppose my single opinion to his; and be confident that my saying, “that begetting of children makes them not slaves to their fathers,” as certainly sets all mankind free, as his affirming the contrary makes them all slaves.

but in the way of proof or argument is very unbecoming, and will little advantage his plea for absolute monarchy.

Sir Robert has too much lessened a subject’s authority to leave himself the hopes of establishing anything by his bare saying it; one slave’s opinion without proof, is not of weight enough to dispose of the liberty and fortunes of all mankind.

If all men are not, as I think they are, naturally equal, I am sure all slaves are; and then I may without presumption oppose my single opinion to his;

But had men skill and power to make their children, it is not so slight a piece of workmanship, that it can be imagined they could make them without designing it.

What father of a thousand, when he begets a child, thinks farther than the satisfying his present appetite?

God in his infinite wisdom has put strong desires of copulation into the constitution of men, thereby to continue the race of mankind, which he doth most commonly without the intention, and often against the consent and will of the begetter.

and the preservation of their young, as the strongest principle in them, overrules the constitution of their particular natures.

Thus we see, when their young stand in need of it, the timorous become valiant, the fierce and savage kind, and the ravenous tender and liberal.

But if the example of what hath been done, be the rule of what ought to be, history would have furnished our author with instances of this absolute fatherly power in its height and perfection, and he might have showed us in Peru people that …

and cannot but recommend their opinion, by founding it on the most shameful action, and most unnatural murder, human nature is capable of.

The dens of lions and nurseries of wolves know no such cruelty as this

; these savage inhabitants of the desert obey God and nature in being tender and careful of their offspring: they will hunt, watch, fight, and almost starve for the preservation of their young; never part with them;

and they served the mothers after the same fashion, when they grew past childbearing, and ceased to bring them any more roasters.” Garcilaso de la Vega Hist. des Yncas de Peru, l. I c. 12.

Thus far can the busy mind of man carry him to a brutality below the level of beasts, when he quits his reason, which places him almost equal to angels.

Nor can it be otherwise in a creature, whose thoughts are more than the sands, and wider than the ocean, where fancy and passion must needs run him into strange courses, if reason, which is his only star and compass, be not that he steers …

and a man can never be obliged in conscience to submit to any power, unless he can be satisfied who is the person who has a right to exercise that power over him.

If this were not so, there would be no distinction between pirates and lawful princes; he that has force is without any more ado to be obeyed

, and crowns and sceptres would become the inheritance only of violence and rapine.

If this were not so, there would be no distinction between pirates and lawful princes; he that has force is without any more ado to be obeyed, and crowns and sceptres would become the inheritance only of violence and rapine.

Men too might as often and as innocently change their governors, as they do their physicians

, if the person cannot be known who has a right to direct me, and whose prescriptions I am bound to follow.

The great question which in all ages has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of those mischiefs which have ruined cities, depopulated countries, and disordered the peace of the world, has been, not whether there be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it.

The settling of this point being of no smaller moment than the security of princes, and the peace and welfare of their estates and kingdoms, a reformer of politics, one would think, should lay this sure, and be very clear in it:

for if only one man hath a divine right to the obedience of mankind, nobody can claim that obedience, but he that can show that right; nor can men’s consciences by any other pretence be obliged to it.

And thus this doctrine cuts up all government by the roots.

Thus we see how our author, laying it for a sure foundation, that the very person that is to rule, is the ordinance of God, and by divine institution;

and so this divine institution, which assigns it to a person whom we have no rule to know, is just as good as an assignment to nobody at all.

But whatever our author does, divine institution makes no such ridiculous assignments

: nor can God be supposed to make it a sacred law, that one certain person should have a right to something, and yet not give rules to mark out, and know that person by:

for “dominion of life and death,” says he, “we find, Judah the father pronounced sentence of death against Thamar his daughter-in-law for playing the harlot,” p. 13. How does this prove that Judah had absolute and sovereign authority? “he pronounced sentence of death.”

The pronouncing of sentence of death is not a certain mark of sovereignty, but usually the office of inferior magistrates.

The power of making laws of life and death is indeed a mark of sovereignty, but pronouncing the sentence according to those laws, may be done by others, and therefore this will but ill prove that he had sovereign authority:

… been tories in Ireland, (whatever there are in other countries) who would have thanked our author for so honourable an opinion of them, especially if there had been nobody near with a better title of 500 armed men, to question their royal authority of 400.

It is a shame for men to trifle so

, to say no worse of it, in so serious an argument. Here Esau is brought as a proof that Adam’s lordship, “Adam’s absolute dominion, as large as that of any monarch, descended by right to the patriarchs,” and in this very chap. p.

and therefore in such controversies, where the question is put, who shall be judge? it cannot be meant, who shall decide the controversy; everyone knows what Jephthah here tells us, that “the Lord the Judge” shall judge.

Where there is no judge on earth, the appeal lies to God in heaven.

That question then cannot mean, who shall judge, whether another hath put himself in a state of war with me, and whether I may, as Jephthah did, appeal to heaven in it?

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 another power over it.

Indeed, having by his fault forfeited his own life, by some act that deserves death;

a part of him, that another can no longer have any right to it, before it can do him any good for the support of his life.

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 labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.

so little, that even amongst us, land that is left wholly to nature, that hath no improvement of pasturage, tillage, or planting, is called, as indeed it is, waste; and we shall find the benefit of it amount to little more than nothing.

This shows how much numbers of men are to be preferred to largeness of dominions

; and that the increase of lands, and the right of employing of them, is the great art of government:

It would not be worth the enclosing, and we should see him give up again to the wild common of nature, whatever was more than would supply the conveniencies of life to be had there for him and his family.

Thus in the beginning all the world was America, and more so than that is now; for no such thing as money was anywhere known.

Find out something that hath the use and value of money amongst his neighbours, you shall see the same man will begin presently to enlarge his possessions.

Their parents have a sort of rule and jurisdiction over them, when they come into the world, and for some time after; but it is but a temporary one.

The bonds of this subjection are like the swaddling clothes they are wrapt up in, and supported by, in the weakness of their infancy: age and reason, as they grow up, loosen them, till at length they drop quite off, and leave a man at his own free disposal.

Adam was created a perfect man, his body and mind in full possession of their strength and reason, and so was capable from the first instant of his being to provide for his own support and preservation;

… seems no more than that duty which God and nature has laid on man, as well as other creatures, to preserve their offspring, till they can be able to shift for themselves, and will scarce amount to an instance or proof of parents regal authority.

Thus we are born free, as we are born rational; not that we have actually the exercise of either: age, that brings one, brings with it the other too.

And thus we see how natural freedom and subjection to parents may consist together, and are both founded on the same principle.

and so is exposed to all the misery and inconveniencies, that a man can fear from one, who being in the unrestrained state of nature, is yet corrupted with flattery, and armed with power.

For he that thinks absolute power purifies men’s blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read but the history of this or any other age, to be convinced of the contrary.

He that would have been so insolent and injurious in the woods of America, would not probably be much better in a throne;

… quitting the state of nature entered into society, they agreed that all of them but one should be under the restraint of laws, but that he should still retain all the liberty of the state of nature, increased with power, and made licentious by impunity.

This is to think, that men are so foolish, that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by polecats, or foxes; but are content, nay think it safety, to be devoured by lions.

But whatever flatterers may talk to amuse people’s understandings, it hinders not men from feeling;

we may as well suppose the armies of Salmanasser or Xerxes were never children, because we hear little of them, till they were men, and embodied in armies.

Government is everywhere antecedent to records, and letters seldom come in amongst a people till a long continuation of civil society has, by other more necessary arts, provided for their safety, ease, and plenty

: and then they begin to look after the history of their founders, and search into their original, when they have outlived the memory of it: for it is with commonwealths, as with particular persons, they are commonly ignorant of their own births and infancies:

when they are hindered by any force from what is so necessary to the society, and wherein the safety and preservation of the people consists, the people have a right to remove it by force.

In all states and conditions, the true remedy of force without authority, is to oppose force to it.

The use of force without authority, always puts him that uses it into a state of war, as the aggressor, and renders him liable to be treated accordingly.

but only to show, that though the executive power may have the prerogative of convoking and dissolving such conventions of the legislative, yet it is not thereby superior to it.

Things of this world are in so constant a flux, that nothing remains long in the same state.

Thus people, riches, trade, power, change their stations, flourishing mighty cities come to ruin, and prove in time neglected desolate corners, whilst other unfrequented places grow into populous countries, filled with wealth and inhabitants.

judging rightly, that they did nothing herein to the prejudice of their laws, since they acted conformably to the foundation and end of all laws, the public good.

Such Godlike princes indeed had some title to arbitrary power

by that argument, that would prove absolute monarchy the best government, as that which God himself governs the universe by; because such kings partook of his wisdom and goodness.

Such Godlike princes indeed had some title to arbitrary power by that argument, that would prove absolute monarchy the best government, as that which God himself governs the universe by; because such kings partook of his wisdom and goodness. Upon this is founded that saying,

That the reigns of good princes have been always most dangerous to the liberties of their people

:

or that men are bound by promises, which unlawful force extorts from them.

Should a robber break into my house, and with a dagger at my throat, make me seal deeds to convey my estate to him, would this give him any title?

Just such a title, by his sword, has an unjust conqueror, who forces me into submission. The injury and the crime are equal, whether committed by the wearer of the crown, or some petty villain.

The injury and the crime are equal, whether committed by the wearer of the crown, or some petty villain. The title of the offender, and the number of his followers, make no difference in the offence, unless it be to aggravate it.

The only difference is, great robbers punish little ones, to keep them in their obedience; but the great ones are rewarded with laurels and triumphs;

because they are too big for the weak hands of justice in this world, and have the power in their own possession, which should punish offenders. What is my remedy against a robber, that so broke into my house? Appeal to the law for justice.

He can have no power over them but by their own consent, whatever he may drive them to say or do; and he has no lawful authority, whilst force, and not choice, compels them to submission.

Every man is born with a double right:

first, a right of freedom to his person, which no other man has a power over, but the free disposal of it lies in himself. Secondly, a right, before any other man, to inherit with his brethren his father’s goods.

Nobody, no power, can exempt them from the obligations of that eternal law. Those are so great, and so strong, in the case of promises, that omnipotency itself can be tied by them.

Grants, promises, and oaths, are bonds that hold the Almighty:

whatever some flatterers say to princes of the world, who all together, with all their people joined to them, are in comparison of the great God, but as a drop of the bucket, or a dust on the balance, inconsiderable, nothing.

there it presently becomes tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many. Thus we read of the thirty tyrants at Athens, as well as one at Syracuse; and the intolerable dominion of the decemviri at Rome was nothing better.

Wherever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to another’s harm;

and whosoever in authority exceeds the power given him by the law, and makes use of the force he has under his command, to compass that upon the subject, which the law allows not, ceases in that to be a magistrate;

Where there is no longer the administration of justice, for the securing of men’s rights, nor any remaining power within the community to direct the force, or provide for the necessities of the public; there certainly is no government left.

Where the laws cannot be executed, it is all one as if there were no laws;

and a government without laws is, I suppose, a mystery in politics, inconceivable to human capacity, and inconsistent with human society.

… provide for themselves, by erecting a new legislative, when by oppression, artifice, or being delivered over to a foreign power, their old one is gone, is only to tell them, they may expect relief when it is too late, and the evil is past cure.

This is in effect no more than to bid them first be slaves, and then to take care of their liberty; and when their chains are on, tell them, they may act like freemen.

This, if barely so, is rather mockery than relief; and men can never be secure from tyranny, if there be no means to escape it till they are perfectly under it:

They will wish, and seek for the opportunity, which in the change, weakness, and accidents of human affairs, seldom delays long to offer itself.

He must have lived but a little while in the world, who has not seen examples of this in his time; and he must have read very little, who cannot produce examples of it in all sorts of governments in the world.

Secondly, I answer, such revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in public affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all the slips of human frailty, will be borne by the people without mutiny or murmur.

and which is to be maintained only for the benefit of robbers and oppressors.

Who would not think it an admirable peace betwixt the mighty and the mean, when the lamb, without resistance, yielded his throat to be torn by the imperious wolf?

Polyphemus’s den gives us a perfect pattern of such a peace, and such a government, wherein Ulysses and his companions had nothing to do, but quietly to suffer themselves to be devoured.

and by showing the inconveniencies might happen, if they should offer to resist Polyphemus, who had now the power over them.

The end of government is the good of mankind:

and which is best for mankind, that the people should be always exposed to the boundless will of tyranny;