The Origin of John Locke's Natural Rights Philosophy
Nancy Salvato, Director of Constitutional Studies
This is an abridged version of Chapter 2: Historical Antecedents Of The Declaration: The Natural Rights Philosophy, The Declaration of Independence: A Study on the History of Political Ideas [1922], Carl Becker

Natural Rights Philosophy
The Declaration of Independence embodied the ’sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or the elementary books of public right… Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney. Basically, there is a ‘natural order’ of things in the world, cleverly and expertly designed by God for the guidance of mankind; the ‘laws’ of this natural order may be discovered by human reason; these laws so discovered furnish a reliable and immutable standard for testing the ideas, the conduct, and the institutions of men.

How did this become the prevailing idea “back in the day”?

Education
A good number of Americans were educated at British universities, where the doctrines of Newton and Locke were commonplaces; while those who were educated at Princeton, Yale, or Harvard could read, if they would, these authors in the original, or become familiar with their ideas through books of exposition.

Many were initiated, in youth, in the doctrines of civil liberty, as they were taught by such men as Plato, Demosthenes, Cicero and other renowned persons among the ancients; and such as Sidney and Milton, Locke and Hoadley, among the moderns, It would not have been uncommon to read, as a teenager, Algernon Sidney’s Works, John Locke’s Works, Lord Bacon’s Works, Gordon’s Tacitus, and Cato’s Letters.

Intelligent Design
Both in England and America preachers and theologians preached intelligent design, as an effective weapon against lack of faith, deriving a proof of Divine Providence from the physical construction of the universe as demonstrated by Sir Isaac Newton. There crept into the mind of the average man this conception of Natural Law to confirm his faith in the majesty of God while destroying his faith in the majesty of Kings.

The Majesty of Kings
The divine right of kings goes back to the ancient covenant which God had formerly made with his chosen people of Israel; God on the one side, and people and king on the other.

Kings also entered a second compact with their subjects to rule justly, and they with him to be obedient. Thus kings were under binding contract to rule justly, while subjects had a covenant with God to see that they do so.

Natural Law
In the mediaeval hierarchy of laws of the 13th century, it was held by Thomas Aquinas that the highest of all laws, comprehending all others, was the Eternal Law, which was nothing less than the full mind of God. Something, but not all, of the mind of God could be known to man: part of it had been revealed in the Bible or might be communicated through the Church (Positive Divine Law); and part of it could be discovered by human reason (Natural Law); Natural Law was that part of the mind of God which man could discover by using his reason, but God had provided beforehand, through the Bible and the Church, a sure means of letting man know when his reason was not right reason but unreason.

In mediaeval times, philosophers conceived of the authority of princes as resting upon a compact, an agreement or covenant with their subjects, a compact on their part to rule righteously. Should they fail, their subjects were absolved from allegiance. Because the Pope had divine right authority over princes as well as over other men, Subjects relied on the Pope intervening on their behalf.

Eventually kings had got the upper hand, and became coequals with the Pope in God’s favor; so that in the seventeenth century the right of kings to rule was commonly thought to come directly from God, This clearly closed the door to relief in case there should be any bad kings.

Reformation
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there were a number of bad kings. Popular resistance to kings was commonly taught both by the Jesuits and the Protestant dissenters: by the Jesuits (by Catholic monarchists called “dissenters”) on the ground that only the Pope has Divine authority; by Protestant Dissenters (by Protestant monarchists called “Jesuits”) on the ground that it was possible for subjects themselves to claim as intimate relations with God as either king or Pope. Calvin fell into the latter category.

The Protestant Reformation did much to diminish the authority of the Church as the official interpreter of God’s will.

Scientific Discovery
The progress of scientific investigation had been creating, since the time of Copernicus, a strong presumption that the mind of God could be made out with greater precision by studying the mechanism of his created universe than by meditating on the words of his inspired prophets. Some of the ‘laws’ had already been formulated by Kepler and Galileo.

Since the later seventeenth century, God had been withdrawing from immediate contact with men, and had become, in proportion as he receded into the dim distance, no more than the Final Cause, or Great Contriver, or Prime Mover of the universe; and as such was conceived as exerting his power and revealing his will indirectly through his creation rather than directly by miraculous manifestation or through inspired books.

Locke echoed this notion, writing, “I myself can only be the judge in my own conscience, as I will answer it, at the great day, to the supreme judge of all men.” If we resist kings, God will no doubt judge us for it in the last day; but men will judge us now. Let us, therefore, ask whether there is not happily a compact between men and kings, God not interfering, on which we can stand to be judged by men when we resist kings.

In the eighteenth century there was no longer any way to know God’s will except by discovering the ‘laws’ of Nature, which would doubtless be the laws of ‘nature’s god’ as Jefferson said.

Having deified Nature, the eighteenth century could conveniently dismiss the Bible and drop the concept of Eternal Law altogether.

Newton reestablished harmonious relations between God and nature. Natural science could replace theology. The contradictory Gods of the revealed religions will be replaced by a new idea, that of a being who is known to us through his works, and to whom we can attain only through science. The universal order is accessible to the mind, it is not preestablished mysteriously.

Deism
But Natural Philosophy is subservient to purposes of a higher kind, and is chiefly to be valued as it lays a sure foundation for Natural Religion and Moral Philosophy; by leading us, in a satisfactory manner, to the knowledge of the Author and Governor of the universe….

We are, from His works, to seek to know God. To study Nature is to study into His workmanship; every new discovery opens up to us a new part of His scheme…. The eighteenth century, obviously, did not cease to bow down and worship; it only gave another form and a new name to the object of worship: it deified Nature and denatured God. Since Nature was now the new God, source of all wisdom and righteousness, it was to Nature that the eighteenth century looked for guidance, from Nature that it expected to receive the tablets of the law.

Locke: God revealed the truth that is necessary for man’s guidance from experience, from which it follows that man, as a thinking and an acting creature, is part and parcel of the world in which he lives, intimately and irrevocably allied to that Universal Order which is at once the work and the will of God.

God had manifestly given man reason and conscience, as natural guides, precisely in order that he might distinguish that part of his own thought and conduct which was naturally good from that which was naturally bad. Natural law, as a basis for good government, could never be found in the undifferentiated nature of man, but only in human reason applying the test of good and bad to human conduct.

The question which Locke had to answer was therefore this: What kind of political compact would men enter into, if they acted according to the nature which God had given them?

To answer this question, Locke says, we must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the leave of any other man. A state also of equality, wherein all power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another.

What Is This Law of Nature?
The state of nature has a law to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions….
In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity, which is that measure God has set to the actions of men….

A criminal, who having renounced reason, the common rule and measure God bath given to mankind, hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed no one, declared war against all mankind.

Reason is the ‘common rule and measure God hath given to mankind’; reason would at once bind and make free; it would, as Locke says, oblige every one: but it would oblige them precisely in this, that it would teach them that all are perfectly free and equal and that no one ‘ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.’

Such a state as this, an ideal state, in which all men follow the law of reason and no compulsion is necessary — such a state never in fact existed.

Suppose a few men in this rational state, refusing to act rationally, violate the law of nature which is reason, by taking away the ‘life, health, liberty or possessions of another.’ What is to be done about it? In that case, Locke says, “the execution of the law of nature is….put into every man’s hands, whereby every one has a right to punish the transgressor of the law,….but only….so far as calm reason and conscience dictate, what is proportionate to his transgression.” Any one who should, for example, commit a murder, might, according to the law of reason, be put to death.

Suppose that a good many Cains appear, so that all the Abels, the great majority who still live by reason, are in danger of their lives, and are at great inconvenience to defend them. And suppose further that all these rational and conscientious Abels, being a great majority, come together saying: Why should we all be forever going up and down to watch where many Cains come to strike? Let us appoint a few to watch for all. The question is, how might these many Abels be supposed to proceed in this business? Would they not say: These few, whom we appoint to watch for us, that we may be safe in our lives, our health, our liberty and our possessions, are to make what rules are necessary for that purpose, but for that purpose only; and we agree in return to abide by those rules, so long as the few whom we appoint to make the rules do effectively, by means of these rules, make us safe in our lives, our liberties, and our possessions. Such is the modified version of the original compact which Locke finds in the state of nature.

Men being free, equal, and independent cannot be put out of his estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his consent. The only way, whereby any one divests himself of his liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community, for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any, that are not of it…. When any number of men have so consented to make one community or government, they are thereby presently incorporated, and make one body politic, wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude the rest.

The question which Locke asked was a simple one: ‘I desire to know what kind of government that is….where one man….may do to all his subjects whatever he pleases, without the least liberty to any one to question or control those who execute his pleasure?’ This, generally speaking, was what the eighteenth century desired to know. The answer which it gave to that question seemed self-evident: Such a government is a bad government; since governments exist for men, not men for governments, all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

While Locke’s philosophy was not particularly cogent and his argument relied on unproven premises, it was Locke’s conclusion that seemed to the colonists sheer common sense, needing no argument at all. Locke did not need to convince the colonists because they were already convinced; and they were already convinced because they had long been living under governments which did, in a rough and ready way, conform to the kind of government for which Locke furnished a reasoned foundation. The colonists had never in fact lived under a government where ‘one man….may do to all his subjects whatever he pleases.’ They were accustomed to living under governments which proceeded, year by year, on a tacitly assumed compact between rulers and ruled, and which were in fact very largely dependent upon ‘the consent of the governed.’ How should the colonists not accept a philosophy, however clumsily argued, which assured them that their own governments, with which they were well content, were just the kind that God had designed men by nature to have!