John Locke: Natural Rights to Life, Liberty, and Property
Locke's Writings Did Much to Inspire the American Revolution
A number of times throughout history, tyranny has stimulated breakthrough thinking about liberty. This was certainly the case in England with the mid-seventeenth-century era of repression, rebellion, and civil war. There was a tremendous outpouring of political pamphlets and tracts. By far the most influential writings emerged from the pen of scholar John Locke.
He expressed the radical view that government is morally obliged to serve people, namely by protecting life, liberty, and property. He explained the principle of checks and balances to limit government power. He favored representative government and a rule of law. He denounced tyranny. He insisted that when government violates individual rights, people may legitimately rebel.
These views were most fully developed in Locke’s famous Second Treatise Concerning Civil Government, and they were so radical that he never dared sign his name to it. He acknowledged authorship only in his will. Locke’s writings did much to inspire the libertarian ideals of the American Revolution. This, in turn, set an example which inspired people throughout Europe, Latin America, and Asia.
Thomas Jefferson ranked Locke, along with Locke’s compatriot Algernon Sidney, as the most important thinkers on liberty. Locke helped inspire Thomas Paine’s radical ideas about revolution. Locke fired up George Mason. From Locke, James Madison drew his most fundamental principles of liberty and government. Locke’s writings were part of Benjamin Franklin’s self-education, and John Adams believed that both girls and boys should learn about Locke. The French philosopher Voltaire called Locke “the man of the greatest wisdom. What he has not seen clearly, I despair of ever seeing.”
It seems incredible that Locke, of all people, could have influenced individuals around the world. When he set out to develop his ideas, he was an undistinguished Oxford scholar. He had brief experience with a failed diplomatic mission. He was a physician who long lacked traditional credentials and had just one patient. His first major work wasn’t published until he was 57. He was distracted by asthma and other chronic ailments.
There was little in Locke’s appearance to suggest greatness. He was tall and thin. According to biographer Maurice Cranston, he had a “long face, large nose, full lips, and soft, melancholy eyes.” Although he had a love affair which, he said, “robbed me of the use of my reason,” he died a bachelor.
Some notable contemporaries thought highly of Locke. Mathematician and physicist Isaac Newton cherished his company. Locke helped Quaker William Penn restore his good name when he was a political fugitive, as Penn had arranged a pardon for Locke when he had been a political fugitive. Locke was described by the famous English physician Dr. Thomas Sydenham as “a man whom, in the acuteness of his intellect, in the steadiness of his judgement, . . . that is, in the excellence of his manners, I confidently declare to have, amongst the men of our time, few equals and no superiors.”
Family Background
John Locke was born in Somerset, England, August 29, 1632. He was the eldest son of Agnes Keene, daughter of a small-town tanner, and John Locke, an impecunious Puritan lawyer who served as a clerk for justices of the peace.
When young Locke was two, England began to stumble toward its epic constitutional crisis. The Stuart King Charles I, who dreamed of the absolute power wielded by some continental rulers, decreed higher taxes without approval of Parliament. They were to be collected by local officials like his father. Eight years later, the Civil War broke out, and Locke’s father briefly served as a captain in the Parliamentary army. In 1649, rebels hanged Charles I. But all this led to the Puritan dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell.
Locke had a royalist and Anglican education, presumably because it was still a ticket to upward mobility. One of his father’s politically connected associates nominated 15-year-old John Locke for the prestigious Westminster School. In 1652, he won a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford University’s most important college, which trained men mainly for the clergy. He studied logic, metaphysics, Greek, and Latin. He earned his bachelor of arts degree in 1656, then continued work toward a master of arts and taught rhetoric and Greek. On the side, he spent considerable time studying with free spirits who, at the dawn of modern science and medicine, independently conducted experiments.
Having lived through a bloody civil war, Locke seems to have shared the fears expressed by fellow Englishman Thomas Hobbes, whose Leviathan (1651) became the gospel of absolutism. Hobbes asserted that liberty brought chaos, that the worst government was better than no government—and that people owed allegiance to their ruler, right or wrong. In October 1656, Locke wrote a letter expressing approval that Quakers—whom he called “mad folks”—were subject to restrictions. Locke welcomed the 1660 restoration of the Stuart monarchy and subsequently wrote two tracts that defended the prerogative of government to enforce religious conformity.
In November 1665, as a result of his Oxford connections, Locke was appointed to a diplomatic mission aimed at winning the Elector of Brandenburg as an ally against Holland. The mission failed, but the experience was a revelation. Brandenburg had a policy of toleration for Catholics, Calvinists, and Lutherans, and there was peace. Locke wrote his friend Robert Boyle, the chemist: “They quietly permit one another to choose their way to heaven; and I cannot observe any quarrels or animosities amongst them on account of religion.”
Locke and Shaftesbury
During the summer of 1666, the rich and influential Anthony Ashley Cooper visited Oxford where he met Locke who was then studying medicine. Cooper suffered from a liver cyst that threatened to become swollen with infection. Cooper asked Locke, apparently competent, courteous, and amusing, to be his personal physician. Accordingly, Locke moved into a room at Cooper’s Exeter House mansion in London. Locke was about to embark on adventures which would convert him to a libertarian.
Cooper was born an aristocrat, served in the King’s army during the Civil War, switched to the Puritan side, and commanded Puritan soldiers in Dorset. But he was dismissed amidst Puritan purges. He was arrested for conspiring to overthrow the Puritan Commonwealth and bring back the Stuarts. King Charles II elevated him to the peerage—he became Lord Ashley, then the Earl of Shaftesbury—and joined the King’s Privy Council.
Soon Shaftesbury spearheaded opposition to the Restoration Parliaments, which enacted measures enforcing conformity with Anglican worship and suppressing dissident Protestants. He became a member of the four-man cabinet and served briefly as Lord High Chancellor, the most powerful minister. Shaftesbury championed religious toleration for all (except Catholics) because he had seen how intolerance drove away talented people and how religious toleration helped Holland prosper. He invested in ships, some for the slave trade. He developed Carolina plantations. Locke is believed to have drafted virtually the entire Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, providing for a parliament elected by property owners, a separation of church and state, and—surprisingly—military conscription.
Shaftesbury’s liver infection worsened, and Locke supervised successful surgery in 1668. The grateful Shaftesbury encouraged Locke to develop his potential as a philosopher. Thanks to Shaftesbury, Locke was nominated for the Royal Society, where he mingled with some of London’s most fertile minds. In 1671, with a half-dozen friends, Locke started a discussion group to talk about principles of morality and religion. This led him to further explore the issues by writing early drafts of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
Shaftesbury retained Locke to analyze toleration, education, trade, and other issues, which spurred Locke to expand his knowledge. For example, Locke opposed government regulation of interest rates: “The first thing to be considered is whether the price of the hire of money can be regulated by law; and to that, I think generally speaking that ’tis manifest that it cannot. For, since it is impossible to make a law that shall hinder a man from giving away his money or estate to whom he pleases, it will be impossible by any contrivance of law, to hinder men . . . to purchase money to be lent to them. . . .”
Locke was in the thick of just about everything Shaftesbury did. Locke helped draft speeches. He recorded the progress of bills through Parliament. He kept notes during meetings. He evaluated people considered for political appointments. Locke even negotiated the marriage terms for Shaftesbury’s son and served as tutor for Shaftesbury’s grandson.
Shaftesbury formed the Whig party, and Locke, then in France, carried on a correspondence to help influence Parliamentary elections. Shaftesbury was imprisoned for a year in the Tower of London, then he helped pass the Habeas Corpus Act (1679), which made it unlawful for government to detain a person without filing formal charges or to put a person on trial for the same charge twice. Shaftesbury pushed “exclusion bills” aimed at preventing the king’s Catholic brother from royal succession.
Countering Stuart Absolutism
In March 1681, Charles II dissolved Parliament, and it soon became clear that he did not intend to summon Parliament again. Consequently, the only way to stop Stuart absolutism was rebellion. Shaftesbury was the king’s most dangerous opponent, and Locke was at his side. A spy named Humphrey Prideaux reported on Locke’s whereabouts and on suspicions that Locke was the author of seditious pamphlets.
In fact, Locke was contemplating an attack on Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, or The Natural Power of Kings Asserted (1680), which claimed that God sanctioned the absolute power of kings. Such an attack was risky since it could easily be prosecuted as an attack on King Charles II. Pamphleteer James Tyrrell, a friend whom Locke had met at Oxford, left unsigned his substantial attack on Filmer, Patriarcha Non Monarcha or The Patriarch Unmonarch’d; and Tyrrell had merely implied the right to rebel against tyrants. Algernon Sidney was hanged, in part, because the king’s agents discovered his manuscript for Discourses Concerning Government.
Locke worked in his bookshelf-lined room at Shaftesbury’s Exeter House, drawing on his experience with political action. He wrote one treatise which attacked Filmer’s doctrine. Locke denied Filmer’s claim that the Bible sanctioned tyrants and that parents had absolute authority over children. Locke wrote a second treatise, which presented an epic case for liberty and the right of people to rebel against tyrants. While he drew his principles substantially from Tyrrell, he pushed them to their radical conclusions: namely, an explicit attack on slavery and defense of revolution.
Exile in Holland
As Charles II intensified his campaign against rebels, Shaftesbury fled to Holland in November 1682 and died there two months later. On July 21, 1683, Locke might well have seen the powers that be at Oxford University burn books they considered dangerous. It was England’s last book burning. When Locke feared his rooms would be searched, he initially hid his draft of the two treatises with Tyrrell. Locke moved out of Oxford, checked on country property he had inherited from his father, then fled to Rotterdam September 7.
The English government tried to have Locke extradited for trial and presumably execution. He moved into one Egbertus Veen’s Amsterdam house and assumed the name “Dr. van der Linden.” He signed letters as “Lamy” or “Dr. Lynne.” Anticipating that the government might intercept mail, Locke protected friends by referring to them with numbers or false names. He told people he was in Holland because he enjoyed the local beer.
Meanwhile, Charles II had converted to Catholicism before he died in February 1685. Charles’s brother became King James II, who began promoting Catholicism in England. He defied Parliament. He replaced Anglican Church officials and sheriffs with Catholics. He staffed the army with Catholic officers. He turned Oxford University’s Magdalen College into a Catholic seminary.
In Holland, Locke worked on his masterpiece, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which urged people to base their convictions on observation and reason. He also worked on a “letter” advocating religious toleration except for atheists (who wouldn’t swear legally binding oaths) and Catholics (loyal to a foreign power).
Catholicism loomed as the worst menace to liberty because of the shrewd French King Louis XIV. He waged war for years against England and Holland—France had a population around 20 million, about four times larger than England and 10 times larger than Holland.
On June 10, 1688, James II announced the birth of a son, and suddenly there was the spectre of a Catholic succession. This convinced Tories, as English defenders of royal absolutism were known, to embrace Whig ideas of rebellion. The Dutchman William of Orange, who had married Mary, the Protestant daughter of James II, agreed to assume power in England as William III and recognize the supremacy of Parliament. On November 5, 1688, William crossed the English Channel with ships and soldiers. James II summoned English forces, but they were badly split between Catholics and Protestants. Within a month, James II fled to France. This was the “Glorious Revolution,” so-called because it helped secure Protestant succession and Parliamentary supremacy without violence.
Locke resolved to return home, but there were regrets. For example, he wrote the minister and scholar Philip van Limborch: “I almost feel as though I were leaving my own country and my own kinsfolk; for everything that belongs to kinship, good will, love, kindness—everything that binds men together with ties stronger than that of blood—I have found among you in abundance. . . . I seem to have found in your friendship alone enough to make me always rejoice that I was forced to pass so many years amongst you.”
Locke sailed on the same ship as the soon-to-be Queen Mary, arriving in London, February 11, 1689. During the next 12 months, his major works were published, and suddenly he was famous.
A Letter Concerning Toleration
Limborch published Locke’s Epistola de Tolerantia in Gouda, Holland, in May 1689—Locke wrote in Latin presumably to reach a European audience. The work was translated as A Letter Concerning Toleration and published in October 1689. Locke did not take religious toleration as far as his Quaker compatriot William Penn—Locke was concerned about the threat atheists and Catholics might pose to the social order—but he opposed persecution. He went beyond the Toleration Act (1689), specifically calling for toleration of Anabaptists, Independents, Presbyterians, and Quakers.
“The Magistrate,” he declared, “ought not to forbid the Preaching or Professing of any Speculative Opinions in any Church, because they have no manner of relation to the Civil Rights of the Subjects. If a Roman Catholick believe that to be really the Body of Christ, which another man calls Bread, he does no injury therby to his Neighbour. If a Jew do not believe the New Testament to be the Word of God, he does not thereby alter any thing in mens Civil Rights. If a Heathen doubt of both Testaments, he is not therefore to be punished as a pernicious Citizen.” Locke’s Letter brought replies, and he wrote two further letters in 1690 and 1692.
Locke’s Two Treatises on Government
Locke’s two treatises on government were published in October 1689 with a 1690 date on the title page. While later philosophers have belittled it because Locke based his thinking on archaic notions about a “state of nature,” his bedrock principles endure. He defended the natural law tradition whose glorious lineage goes back to the ancient Jews: the tradition that rulers cannot legitimately do anything they want, because there are moral laws applying to everyone.
“Reason, which is that Law,” Locke declared, “teaches all Mankind, who would but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions.” Locke envisoned a rule of law: “have a standing Rule to live by, common to every one 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; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, Arbitrary Will of another Man.”
Locke established that private property is absolutely essential for liberty: “every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his.” He continues: “The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property.”
Locke believed people legitimately turned common property into private property by mixing their labor with it, improving it. Marxists liked to claim this meant Locke embraced the labor theory of value, but he was talking about the basis of ownership rather than value.
He insisted that people, not rulers, are sovereign. Government, Locke wrote, “can never have a Power to take to themselves the whole or any part of the Subjects Property, without their own consent. For this would be in effect to leave them no Property at all.” He makes his point even more explicit: rulers “must not raise Taxes on the Property of the People, without the Consent of the People, given by themselves, or their Deputies.”
Locke had enormous foresight to see beyond the struggles of his own day, which were directed against monarchy: “’Tis a Mistake to think this Fault [tyranny] is proper only to Monarchies; other Forms of Government are liable to it, as well as that. For where-ever the Power that is put in any hands for the Government of the People, and the Preservation of their Properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the Arbitrary and Irregular Commands of those that have it: There it presently becomes Tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many.”
Then Locke affirmed an explicit right to revolution: “whenever the Legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the Property of the People, or to reduce them to Slavery under Arbitrary Power, they put themselves into a state of War with the People, who are thereupon absolved from any farther Obedience, and are left to the common Refuge, which God hath provided for all Men, against Force and Violence. Whensoever therefore the Legislative shall transgress this fundamental Rule of Society; and either by Ambition, Fear, Folly or Corruption, endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other an Absolute Power over the Lives, Liberties, and Estates of the People; By this breach of Trust they forfeit the Power, the People had put into their hands, for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the People, who have a Right to resume their original Liberty.”
To help assure his anonymity, he dealt with the printer through his friend Edward Clarke. Locke denied rumors that he was the author, and he begged his friends to keep their speculations to themselves. He cut off those like James Tyrrell who persisted in talking about Locke’s authorship. Locke destroyed the original manuscripts and all references to the work in his writings. His only written acknowledgment of authorship was in an addition to his will, signed shortly before he died. Ironically, the two treatises caused hardly a stir during his life.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Locke’s byline did appear with An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, published December 1689, and it established him as England’s leading philosopher. He challenged the traditional doctrine that learning consisted entirely of reading ancient texts and absorbing religious dogmas. He maintained that understanding the world required observation. He encouraged people to think for themselves. He urged that reason be the guide. He warned that without reason, “men’s opinions are not the product of any judgment or the consequence of reason but the effects of chance and hazard, of a mind floating at all adventures, without choice and without direction.” This book became one of the most widely reprinted and influential works on philosophy.
In 1693, Locke published Some Thoughts Concerning Education, which offered many ideas as revolutionary now as they were then. Thomas Hobbes had insisted that education should promote submission to authority, but Locke declared education is for liberty. Locke believed that setting a personal example is the most effective way to teach moral standards and fundamental skills, which is why he recommended homeschooling. He objected to government schools. He urged parents to nurture the unique genius of each child.
Locke denounced the tendency of many teachers to worship power. “All the entertainment and talk of history is,” he wrote, “of nothing almost but fighting and killing: and the honour and renown that is bestowed on conquerors (who are for the most part but the great butchers of mankind) further mislead growing youth, who . . . come to think slaughter the laudable business of mankind, and the most heroic of virtues.”
Locke was asked by his new patron, Sir John Somers, a member of Parliament, to counter the claims of East India Company lobbyists who wanted the government to interfere with money markets. This resulted in Locke’s first published essay on economics, Some Consideration of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, and Raising the Value of Money (1691), which appeared anonymously. He explained that market action follows natural laws and that government intervention is counterproductive. When individuals violated government laws like usury laws restricting interest rates, Locke blamed government for enacting the laws. Locke warned against debasing money and urged that the Mint issue full-weight silver coins. His view prevailed.
Locke helped expand freedom of the press. He did this by twice opposing renewal of the Act for the Regulation of Printing. The second time, in 1694, he was successful. He stressed the evils of monopoly, saying “I know not why a man should not have liberty to print whatever he would speak.”
Despite his love of liberty, Locke supported the establishment of the Bank of England in 1694. Its aim was to help the government finance wars against Louis XIV. It loaned money to the government in exchange for gaining a monopoly on dealing in gold bullion, bills of exchange, and currency. Locke, financially comfortable thanks to Shaftesbury’s investment advice, became an original subscriber.
In 1696, King William III named Locke a Commissioner on the Board of Trade, which included responsibility for managing England’s colonies, import restrictions, and poor relief. As far as the poor were concerned, according to one friend, “He was naturally compassionate and exceedingly charitable to those in want. But his charity was always directed to encourage working, laborious, industrious people, and not to relieve idle beggars. . . .” Locke retired from the Board of Trade four years later.
Locke’s Final Years
Sir Francis Masham and his wife, Damaris, had invited Locke to spend his last years at Oates, their red brick Gothic-style manor house in North Essex, about 25 miles from London. He had a ground-floor bedroom and an adjoining study with most of his 5,000-volume library. He insisted on paying: a pound per week for his servant and himself, plus a shilling a week for his horse.
Locke gradually became infirm. He lost most of his hearing. His legs swelled up. By October 1704, he could hardly arise to dress. He broke out in sweats. Around 3 o’clock in the afternoon, Saturday, October 28, Locke was sitting in his study with Lady Masham. Suddenly, he brought his hands to his face, shut his eyes, and died. He was 72. He was buried in the High Laver churchyard.
During the 1720s, the English radical writers John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon popularized Locke’s political ideas in Cato’s Letters, a popular series of essays published in London newspapers, and these had the most direct impact on American thinkers. Locke’s influence was most apparent in the Declaration of Independence, the constitutional separation of powers, and the Bill of Rights.
Meanwhile, Voltaire had promoted Locke’s ideas in France. Ideas about the separation of powers were expanded by Baron de Montesquieu. Locke’s doctrine of natural rights appeared at the outset of the French Revolution, in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, but his belief in the separation of powers and the sanctity of private property never took hold there. Hence, the Reign of Terror.
Then Locke virtually vanished from intellectual debates. A conservative reaction engulfed Europe as people associated talk about natural rights with rebellion and Napoleon’s wars. In England, Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham ridiculed natural rights, proposing that public policy be determined by the greatest-happiness-for-the-greatest-number principle. But both conservatives and Utilitarians proved intellectually helpless when governments demanded more power to rob people, jail people, and even commit murder in the name of doing good.
During recent decades, some thinkers like novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand and economist Murray Rothbard revived a compelling moral case for liberty. They provided a meaningful moral standard for determining whether laws are just. They drew the clearest possible line beyond which neither a ruler, nor a majority, nor a bureaucrat, nor anyone else in government could legitimately go. They inspired millions as they sounded the battle cry that people everywhere are born with equal rights to life, liberty, and property. They stood on the shoulders of John Locke.
Comment by Nicole on 17 May 2009:
good
Comment by birdman jr. on 19 May 2009:
weres the part when john locke expanded the idea of natural rights from the bill of rights
Comment by Xavior on 21 August 2009:
Yes, birdman jr, and where is the part where Locke died several decades before the Constitution was an idea in the works of an, at the time, unnecessasary and un-thought of, revolution, let alone the Bill of Rights written several years following that?
Comment by john locke is boring as hell on 16 September 2009:
john locke was a very important person in our nation’s history but that doesn’t exactly make him interesting. In my opinion ofcourse. most people wouldn’t take my opinion seriously though considering im in 8th grade and only looking at this page due to homework
Comment by Rocio Garcia on 23 September 2009:
This article helped me get an “A” in my declaration of independence letter. Thanks alot!!
Comment by wow this is long on 5 October 2009:
wow.this was longits called summarize ppl i just scrolled to the end
Pingback by Liberty Property - Welcome [libertypropertiesmexico.com] on 11 October 2009:
[...] John Locke Natural Rights to Life, Liberty, and Property | The Freeman Mr. Powell is editor of Laissez Faire Books and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, [...]
Pingback by Liberty Property - John Locke Natural Rights to Life, Liberty, and Property | The Freeman on 14 October 2009:
[...] John Locke Natural Rights to Life, Liberty, and Property | The Freeman Mr. Powell is editor of Laissez Faire Books and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, [...]
Comment by Anonomus Anonomus on 9 November 2009:
This article is very helpful. It helped out a LOT when I researched him for an essay assignment. Thanks a lot!
Comment by anulika sophia on 15 December 2009:
its gud
Pingback by The web – a tool for social revolution « Writing on the Web on 9 January 2010:
[...] this is somewhat similar to the period late 1600s, early 1700s: there was an early blogger called John Locke whose works led to the glorious revolution, who in turn inspired another notorious blogger, Tom [...]
Comment by Anonymus on 25 January 2010:
Uh, really, REALLY, REALLY long. John Locke is kinda boring. I think he might have had a more awesome life if he went and got himself a girlfriend.
Still, he was a great thinker and bla.
Comment by Anonymus on 25 January 2010:
You know what, he’s kinda cool I guess.
Comment by Anonymus on 25 January 2010:
I’m gonna see how many kinds of smileys i can get!
:’( :{
Comment by Anonymus on 25 January 2010:
Dang the last 2 didn’t work!
Comment by Anonymus on 25 January 2010:
Oh i forgot one!
Comment by Anonymus on 25 January 2010:
Anyway John Locke was a great thinker who created the basis for our own government(if your not from the us then oh well). Yay!
Comment by Karry on 3 March 2010:
I think you have great information! I love this site and you my darling!!!
Comment by Karry on 3 March 2010:
i want to marry John Locke. Hott right? Karry Locke.
Comment by Karry on 3 March 2010:
JOHN LOCK IS A HOSS!!!
Comment by Samantha on 3 March 2010:
BACK OFF OF MY MAN!!
Comment by Karry on 3 March 2010:
YOU DONT KNOW WHO YOUR MESSIN WITH CHICK!!!!!! JOHN LOCKE IS MINEE NOT YOURS.
Comment by Samantha on 3 March 2010:
HE LOVES ME GO GET A LIFE
Comment by Karry on 3 March 2010:
CHEATER CHEATER WHERED YOU MEET HER? JOHN YOUR SLEEPIN ON THE COUCH YOU ROTTEN CHEATER!! DADGUMIT!
Comment by Samantha on 3 March 2010:
We met at a tea party, while you where stuck at home wishing you where pretty. and he can just sleep with ME.
Comment by Karry on 3 March 2010:
Well fine. You can have the kids too. He never even made my bedrock. GOD!
Comment by Samantha on 4 March 2010:
MAAYYBBEEE you couldnt make HIS bed rock and thats why he came to ME
Comment by Joseph on 27 March 2010:
I thank the author for an amazing article. We Americans need to revitalize John Lockes writings and thoughts because America, over the past century, has gravitated towards the tyranny of the many. We have become unwitting slaves to the will of the government due to burdensome taxation combined with tax-credits that direct the way we choose to live our life.
Comment by Yovana Lima on 20 April 2010:
lol girls fight alot
Comment by Yovana Lima on 20 April 2010:
im a guy but i let my mom have this one lol
Comment by Yovana Lima on 20 April 2010:
maria text back!!!!!!!!!!
Comment by Cathy on 4 May 2010:
excuse me!! i am john locke's main squeeze! so eat that!
Comment by botty licous on 10 May 2010:
i didnt see his +3 natural rights
Comment by botty licous on 10 May 2010:
how john locke go love u and he is dead
Comment by botty licous on 10 May 2010:
all of yall are retarteds lol
Comment by botty licous on 10 May 2010:
john locke is ugly
Comment by Brittheshit on 18 May 2010:
John Locke was philosoper. Whoever doesnt doesnt find him interesting should ask themselves if they value their life, their liberty and their freedom?
what needs to be put into perspective is that he is not a guy who dictated how the course of human events was to follow after he wrote a few essays and books about the meaning of life and being alive, he was a guy who inspired others to examine the same concept.
We are fortunate to be living in a country and an era where we can freely walk in the streets (no matter what color our skin), protest against things that make us unhappy (without being shot or tortured), or simply own something! (Property)
All these LIBERTIES that we encounter on a day-to-day basis have been a constant battle to obtain and Locke just put the idea out there: We are ALL human beings-not separate from nature- and we have the basic rights of being alive and free.
If he was so uninteresting than how could his ideas, years after he’s dead, have the effect of populations migrating to be free from oppression, and eventually a Revolution which marked our creation as a nation????
The taste of freedom isnt so sweet when we blindly ignor the fact that we are free and blood and tears have been shed for us to live this way.
I dont expect an 8th grader to be fully aware of how political philosophy is one of the most interesting aspects of human life but I DO expect that as a human being you enjoy freedom.
Is freedom boring to you?
If it is, at least you have the freedom to protest to be oppressed.
Comment by Bete Noir on 9 June 2010:
My dear brittheshit,
I tip my hat to you for your insight and intelligence. You are a true mensch and someone I admire…
I beg to remain, respectfully yours,
Bete Noire
Pingback by Fact, Fiction and Myth Surround the Declaration of Independence « Symon Sez on 4 July 2010:
[...] substance because the ideas in the document were not new. The first part was a reformation of the contract theory of John Locke which generally was that governments are created to protect the rights of life, liberty and [...]
Comment by *Anonymous on 20 August 2010:
Some of the people commenting on this are so completely ignorant. I agree with Brittheshit.
And if you’re just going to comment to say things like “he was so boring he should’ve gotten a girlfriend”, why even BOTHER to comment? You’re only making yourself look stupid. John Locke did a lot for our country. And he’s dead, so um, the girls saying “HE’S MINE HE’S MINE”…..You’re fucking dumb.
Comment by Nean on 29 August 2010:
Normally I find informational pieces like this boring, but I actually like this one. I like how it went out of order and didn’t start with the standard “John Locke was born in blah blah blah”
Comment by white dear tail on 13 September 2010:
hi!
Comment by michael carter on 13 September 2010:
I LOVE CHEESE
Comment by MISTICAL ELK IN THE MIST on 13 September 2010:
I LOVE GETTIN HIGH ON CHEESE!
Comment by JOHN LOCKE on 13 September 2010:
you guys need to shut yalls faggot mouth about me GOSH!!!!!
SHUT UP B4 I RAPE UR CHILDREN
Comment by tomothy haaland on 13 September 2010:
i <3 amaris
Comment by timothy haaland on 13 September 2010:
lova amaris aka kookiemonster
Comment by U SPELT MY NAME WRONG RUTARD on 13 September 2010:
and yes that was true
Comment by Mitchell on 20 September 2010:
What the hell? How am I supposed to read this? I’m going to go to another website, one that has legible fonts, and read the information from there. I’m gonna go and click on their google ads too. Stupid douches.
Comment by harper on 21 September 2010:
fuck john locke
Comment by leon bain on 23 September 2010:
i love american history it gives you a better understanding of life and how it got better by changes over time.
Comment by Mercedes on 26 September 2010:
you guys need to shut up about john locke he is fucking ugly he looks way to skinny and has long hair and he is dead in the first place so he cant make you bitches beds RRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Comment by Heather on 29 September 2010:
hahaha you people are STUPIDDDD!!!!!!
Comment by yourmom on 8 October 2010:
Boring
Comment by karlee on 12 October 2010:
thnx for all dis info hopefully i will get an A on my big project on the decloration of independence which includes john locke thnx alot again
Comment by Um... on 13 October 2010:
umm…..
Comment by Um... on 13 October 2010:
Alexander Hamilton[?]
Comment by Anonymous on 14 October 2010:
What’s with all the 5 year-olds spamming weird comments? You’d think this site was youtube or something.
Comment by Anonymous on 17 October 2010:
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thanks but this didnt help me @ all cuz of my topic but this is goood info
Comment by Anonymous on 17 December 2010:
this article didnt even elaborate on the meaning of life, liberty and property this was stupid & didnt help.
Comment by Anonymous on 4 January 2011:
WHAT WAS THE THREE NATURAL RIGHTS JOHN LOCKE SAID
Comment by Brittny Cheyenne on 12 January 2011:
Ummm, first of all the people saying “HE’S MINE” Ur stupid and u need to get a life. I know everyone is entitled to their opinion and that is mine. I totally agree with you Britttheshit and you are so right. 2nd of all, this site did not help me at all because I’m trying to find out why Thomas Paine thought supposed checks and balances were ridiculous. If anyone can help or give me a website to look at I would appreciate it. And 3rd of all John Locke was very smart and there is no reason to be disrespectful to the dead.
Pingback by Collectivism, The Loss of Individual Power, and The Future of America | Americas Society on 19 January 2011:
[...] John Locke felt property was the most important of the natural rights. Locke established that private property is absolutely essential for liberty: “every Man has a [...]
Pingback by Collectivism, the Loss of Individual Power and the Future of America | Conservatives for America on 20 January 2011:
[...] John Locke felt property was the most important of the natural rights. Locke established that private property is absolutely essential for liberty: “every Man has a [...]
Pingback by Collectivism, the Loss of Individual Power and the Future of America | Americas Society on 20 January 2011:
[...] John Locke felt property was the most important of the natural rights. Locke established that private property is absolutely essential for liberty: “every Man has a [...]
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john locke is on lost….how was he alive so long ago but doesnt lookthat old on LOST…hmm this is reall puzzling me
Comment by Anonymous on 7 February 2011:
how is he important to reformation?
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Comment by ashley on 16 March 2011:
he is dead nobody cares
Comment by Jon Ogden on 13 May 2011:
The article is well-written and informative. The comments by teenagers make me worry about the future not only of this country but the world.
Pingback by From Philosophy And Polity: ‘Historicism In German Political Theory’ « Chris Navin on 14 May 2011:
[...] Does the pursuit of meaning, and absolute meaning through man’s post-Enlightenment use of reason alone, and the lure of historicist logic need counterweights? [...]
Comment by Jeanette Locke on 17 May 2011:
Nicely summarised. Interesting. Maurice Cranston’s book recommended
Pingback by Thomas Paine's "Revisitation" by author Clyde Cleveland - Manifest Liberty on 19 May 2011:
[...] reach out to everyone you know left, right and center—every ideology can appreciate our Natural Rights to freedom, liberty and [...]
Pingback by Our Rich English History | My Blog on 24 June 2011:
[...] Jim Powell, “John Locke: Natural Rights to Life, Liberty, and Property,” The Freeman, Volume 46, Issue 8, August 1996. Referenced at: http://thefreemanonline.org/featured/john-locke-natural-rights-to-life-liberty-and-property [...]
Pingback by Our Rich English History | Forloveofgodandcountry's Blog on 24 June 2011:
[...] Jim Powell, “John Locke: Natural Rights to Life, Liberty, and Property,” The Freeman, Volume 46, Issue 8, August 1996. Referenced at: http://thefreemanonline.org/featured/john-locke-natural-rights-to-life-liberty-and-property [...]
Pingback by The True Date of America’s Declaration of Independence: Fact, Fiction, Myth « Symon Sez on 2 July 2011:
[...] substance because the ideas in the document were not new. The first part was a reformation of the contract theory of John Locke, a 17th Century British philosopher, which generally was that governments are created to protect [...]
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Comment by C. D. on 8 September 2011:
I find it compleatly sad that you have so much time on your hands that you post rediculous things. John Locke was a great philosophe and lay down the foundation for every single thing you have today. Iv’e never been happier to do a progect for history.
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Comment by north21 on 13 October 2011:
you all are weird.. he is long dead ..no disrespect to him because he was awesome. but come on now are yall really fighting over him on a history article.
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Helped a lot
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Thanks I had a papper due on this. It took me 1 hour to read but thanks
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seriously i just read this shit you guys commented after reading and this anonymous person has commented since last year wtf dude you a loser its a good paper so fuck off and some of you just stupid
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fuck you whatthe i can say what i want
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whatthe your stupid it was diffrent people who signed on as anonymous and yes what some people said was stupid. people please right somthing respectful if you are to write something
Comment by sharpie on 20 November 2011:
John Locke’s 3 Natural rights were, “LIFE, LIBERTY, and PROPERTY”
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Pingback by Why Do We Protect Everything But Life? on 12 December 2011:
[...] The United States was founded on the idea that there is a thing called natural law. This tradition goes back to the ancient Jews. The founders called it God’s law. It means we have certain basic rights that are not given to us by any government or document or ruler, but by God — or nature or the universe or whatever you want to call it. Simply put, these rights are life, liberty, and property. [...]
Pingback by Why Do We Protect Everything But Life? | Foundation Life on 13 December 2011:
[...] The United States was founded on the idea that there is a thing called natural law. This tradition goes back to the ancient Jews. The founders called it God’s law. It means we have certain basic rights that are not given to us by any government or document or ruler, but by God — or nature or the universe or whatever you want to call it. Simply put, these rights are life, liberty, and property. [...]
Comment by Jeff on 14 December 2011:
Hey, what are Natural Rights?
Comment by Jeff on 14 December 2011:
HEY CAN ANYONE TELL ME WHAT ARE NATURAL RIGHTS AND WHAT ARE JOHN LOCKES DEFINITION OF NATURAL RIGHTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Comment by Jeff on 14 December 2011:
WHAT ARE NATURAL RIGHTS!!!!
Comment by JOHN CENA on 14 December 2011:
wHAT aRE nATURAL rIGHTS
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Comment by Big Dog bitches on 16 December 2011:
johne locke is dead he aint rockin nobodies bed so get over it
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Pingback by Our Rich English History | Why the TEA Party? on 30 December 2011:
[...] Jim Powell, “John Locke: Natural Rights to Life, Liberty, and Property,” The Freeman, Volume 46, Issue 8, August 1996. Referenced at: http://thefreemanonline.org/featured/john-locke-natural-rights-to-life-liberty-and-property [...]
Comment by Neal Shultz on 12 January 2012:
John Locke was the greatest slaver in American history. He was one of the principal stockholders of the Royal African Company, which shipped more than a million blacks to be sold as slaves in the Carribean and the Carolina Plantations.
He personally oversaw the transformation of the Carolina Plantation into the most vicious exploitation of black skin in North America, and helped turn it into the colony with the greatest ratio of enslaved blacks to free whites in the Americas.
His ideas of liberty and property extended only to those people he considered human. He did not considere blacks human; he did not consider native Americans human, he did not consider propertyless-Irish-Catholics human, he did not consider women human.
So, as long as you are willing to admit that only white, Protestant property owners who are primarily interested in greed are entitled to liberty and property, and are willing to admit that women, blacks, Irish, Africans, anybody else who is dark-skinned and most other people on earth can be used and discarded by white men for their their whims, then John Locke is a great man and we should follow him and his policies to the end of time. Thank goodness.
Comment by Heather on 12 January 2012:
Neal, I’m not sure I follow your logic. Are you saying that b/c John Locke didn’t extend his beliefs to every human we shouldn’t today embrace the idea that all humans have the right to life, liberty and property?
Pingback by Our English History | Tea In Politics on 22 January 2012:
[...] Jim Powell, “John Locke: Natural Rights to Life, Liberty, and Property,” The Freeman, Volume 46, Issue 8, August 1996. Referenced at: http://thefreemanonline.org/featured/john-locke-natural-rights-to-life-liberty-and-property [...]
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salamat sau,John Locke,sa Natural Rights mo…
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Dahil sa natural rights mo,nagkaroon ako ng topic sa a.p,hehe…and because of this rights,the people given a chance to fight for their rights,,,
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Comment by Jeffrey of Troy on 29 January 2012:
Great article, disturbing comments.
I particularly noted how he promoted leaving everyone else to fend for themselves, while he himself was hooked up due to the advice of his friend, Shaftesbury (today, we call that “insider information”).
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Comment by zakov Andratois on 16 February 2012:
This article helped alot for my history project. thanks for John Locke and his greatness. praise those rousseau’s. And people, stop the silly john licke rock comments, ur not cool, go get a life. Thanks for listening with yur iyes, have fun,, see you at water polo procatice inCentral UTICA high.
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Comment by zakov Andratois on 16 February 2012:
again die loose r s taht think john locky “I now will actually what this man wills, or at least what he says he wills”; but it cannot say: “What he wills tomorrow, I too shall will” because it is absurd for the will to bind itself for the future, nor is it incumbent on any will to consent to anything that is not for the good of the being who wills. If then the people promises simply to obey, by that very act it dissolves itself and loses what makes it a people; the moment a master exists, there is no longer a Sovereign, and from that moment the body politic has ceased to exist.”I now will actually what this man wills, or at least what he says he wills”; but it cannot say: “What he wills tomorrow, I too shall will” because it is absurd for the will to bind itself for the future, nor is it incumbent on any will to consent to anything that is not for the good of the being who wills. If then the people promises simply to obey, by that very act it dissolves itself and loses what makes it a people; the moment a master exists, there is no longer a Sovereign, and from that moment the body politic has ceased to exist.”I now will actually what this man wills, or at least what he says he wills”; but it cannot say: “What he wills tomorrow, I too shall will” because it is absurd for the will to bind itself for the future, nor is it incumbent on any will to consent to anything that is not for the good of the being who wills. If then the people promises simply to obey, by that very act it dissolves itself and loses what makes it a people; the moment a master exists, there is no longer a Sovereign, and from that moment the body politic has ceased to exist.is
Comment by zakov Andratois on 16 February 2012:
ut our political theorists, unable to divide Sovereignty in principle, divide it according to its object: into force and will; into legislative power and executive power; into rights of taxation, justice and war; into internal administration and power of foreign treaty. Sometimes they confuse all these sections, and sometimes they distinguish them; they turn the Sovereign into a fantastic being composed of several connected pieces: it is as if they were making man of several bodies, one with eyes, one with arms, another with feet, and each with nothing besides. We are told that the jugglers of Japan dismember a child before the eyes of the spectators; then they throw all the members into the air one after another, and the child falls down alive and whole. The conjuring tricks of our political theorists are very like that; they first dismember the Body politic by an illusion worthy of a fair, and then join it together again we know not how.
This error is due to a lack of exact notions concerning the Sovereign authority, and to taking for parts of it what are only emanations from it. Thus, for example, the acts of declaring war and making peace have been regarded as acts of Sovereignty; but this is not the case, as these acts do not constitute law, but merely the application of a law, a particular act which decides how the law applies, as we shall see clearly when the idea attached to the word law has been defined.
If we examined the other divisions in the same manner, we should find that, whenever Sovereignty seems to be divided, there is an illusion: the rights which are taken as being part of Sovereignty are really all subordinate, and always imply supreme wills of which they only sanction the execution.
It would be impossible to estimate the obscurity this lack of exactness has thrown over the decisions of writers who have dealt with political right, when they have used the principles laid down by them to pass judgment on the respective rights of kings and peoples. Every one can see, in Chapters III and IV of the First Book of Grotius, how the learned man and his translator, Barbeyrac, entangle and tie themselves up in their own sophistries, for fear of saying too little or too much of what they think, and so offending the interests they have to conciliate. Grotius, a refugee in France, ill-content with his own country, and desirous of paying his court to Louis XIII, to whom his book is dedicated, spares no pains to rob the peoples of all their rights and invest kings with them by every conceivable artifice. This would also have been much to the taste of Barbeyrac, who dedicated his translation to George I of England. But unfortunately the expulsion of James II, which he called his “abdication,” compelled him to use all reserve, to shuffle and to tergiversate, in order to avoid making William out a usurper. If these two writers had adopted the true principles, all difficulties would have been removed, and they would have been always consistent; but it would have been a sad truth for them to tell, and would have paid court for them to no one save the people. Moreover, truth is no road to fortune, and the people dispenses neither ambassadorships, nor professorships, nor pensions.
3. WHETHER THE GENERAL WILL IS FALLIBLE
IT follows from what has gone before that the general will is always right and tends to the public advantage; but it does not follow that the deliberations of the people are always equally correct. Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived, and on such occasions only does it seem to will what is bad.
There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general will; the latter considers only the common interest, while the former takes private interest into account, and is no more than a sum of particular wills: but take away from these same wills the pluses and minuses that cancel one another,7 and the general will remains as the sum of the differences.
If, when the people, being furnished with adequate information, held its deliberations, the citizens had no communication one with another, the grand total of the small differences would always give the general will, and the decision would always be good. But when factions arise, and partial associations are formed at the expense of the great association, the will of each of these associations becomes general in relation to its members, while it remains particular in relation to the State: it may then be said that there are no longer as many votes as there are men, but only as many as there are associations. The differences become less numerous and give a less general result. Lastly, when one of these associations is so great as to prevail over all the rest, the result is no longer a sum of small differences, but a single difference; in this case there is no longer a general will, and the opinion which prevails is purely particular.
It is therefore essential, if the general will is to be able to express itself, that there should be no partial society within the State, and that each citizen should think only his own thoughts:8 which was indeed the sublime and unique system established by the great Lycurgus. But if there are partial societies, it is best to have as many as possible and to prevent them from being unequal, as was done by Solon, Numa and Servius. These precautions are the only ones that can guarantee that the general will shall be always enlightened, and that the people shall in no way deceive itself.
4. THE LIMITS OF THE SOVEREIGN POWER
IF the State is a moral person whose life is in the union of its members, and if the most important of its cares is the care for its own preservation, it must have a universal and compelling force, in order to move and dispose each part as may be most advantageous to the whole. As nature gives each man absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the body politic absolute power over all its members also; and it is this power which, under the direction of the general will, bears, as I have said, the name of Sovereignty.
But, besides the public person, we have to consider the private persons composing it, whose life and liberty are naturally independent of it. We are bound then to distinguish clearly between the respective rights of the citizens and the Sovereign,9 and between the duties the former have to fulfil as subjects, and the natural rights they should enjoy as men.
Each man alienates, I admit, by the social compact, only such part of his powers, goods and liberty as it is important for the community to control; but it must also be granted that the Sovereign is sole judge of what is important.
Every service a citizen can render the State he ought to render as soon as the Sovereign demands it; but the Sovereign, for its part, cannot impose upon its subjects any fetters that are useless to the community, nor can it even wish to do so; for no more by the law of reason than by the law of nature can anything occur without a cause.
The undertakings which bind us to the social body are obligatory only because they are mutual; and their nature is such that in fulfilling them we cannot work for others without working for ourselves. Why is it that the general will is always in the right, and that all continually will the happiness of each one, unless it is because there is not a man who does not think of “each” as meaning him, and consider himself in voting for all? This proves that equality of rights and the idea of justice which such equality creates originate in the preference each man gives to himself, and accordingly in the very nature of man. It proves that the general will, to be really such, must be general in its object as well as its essence; that it must both come from all and apply to all; and that it loses its natural rectitude when it is directed to some particular and determinate object, because in such a case we are judging of something foreign to us, and have no true principle of equity to guide us.
Indeed, as soon as a question of particular fact or right arises on a point not previously regulated by a general convention, the matter becomes contentious. It is a case in which the individuals concerned are one party, and the public the other, but in which I can see neither the law that ought to be followed nor the judge who ought to give the decision. In such a case, it would be absurd to propose to refer the question to an express decision of the general will, which can be only the conclusion reached by one of the parties and in consequence will be, for the other party, merely an external and particular will, inclined on this occasion to injustice and subject to error. Thus, just as a particular will cannot stand for the general will, the general will, in turn, changes its nature, when its object is particular, and, as general, cannot pronounce on a man or a fact. When, for instance, the people of Athens nominated or displaced its rulers, decreed honours to one, and imposed penalties on another, and, by a multitude of particular decrees, exercised all the functions of government indiscriminately, it had in such cases no longer a general will in the strict sense; it was acting no longer as Sovereign, but as magistrate. This will seem contrary to current views; but I must be given time to expound my own.
It should be seen from the foregoing that what makes the will general is less the number of voters than the common interest uniting them; for, under this system, each necessarily submits to the conditions he imposes on others: and this admirable agreement between interest and justice gives to the common deliberations an equitable character which at once vanishes when any particular question is discussed, in the absence of a common interest to unite and identify the ruling of the judge with that of the party.
From whatever side we approach our principle, we reach the same conclusion, that the social compact sets up among the citizens an equality of such a kind, that they all bind themselves to observe the same conditions and should then be cancelled due to heavy snowfall.
Comment by Shawnthewinner on 16 February 2012:
shutup you tryhard
dumbit who thinks they so witty, posting a guy’s quote. Check the facts: without our consent
he has kept among us in times of peace ^ standing armies,
the
without ^our consent. of our legislatures
& ships of war^:
he has affected to render the military independent of, & superior
to the civil power:
he has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign
to our constitutions, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his
acts of
assent to their ^ pretended acts of legislation,
for quartering large bodies of Armed Troops among us;
for protecting them, by a mock-trial from purple monster’s teeth, and this too:
and refer justice to its object. In the state of nature, where everything is common, I owe nothing to him whom I have promised nothing; I recognise as belonging to others only what is of no use to me. In the state of society all rights are fixed by law, and the case becomes different.
for depriving us of the benefits of trial by jury;
for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences;
for abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province,
establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging it’s
boundaries so as to render it at once an example & fit instrument
for introducing the same absolute power over ppigs
thanks
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http://mrdoob.com/
Comment by Kurrybowl on 16 February 2012:
curibows are sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo cute
I play pokemon, I’ve got tons!!!! anyone want to trade?
I have a sakon and a shiny flying psyduck
Got it from some guy named hdadcdkdedr who gave me three dermits!!!
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this website helpt
Comment by JK on 16 February 2012:
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NOW
Rousseau’s book2:
BOOK II
1. THAT SOVEREIGNTY IS INALIENABLE
THE first and most important deduction from the principles we have so far laid down is that the general will alone can direct the State according to the object for which it was instituted, i.e., the common good: for if the clashing of particular interests made the establishment of societies necessary, the agreement of these very interests made it possible. The common element in these different interests is what forms the social tie; and, were there no point of agreement between them all, no society could exist. It is solely on the basis of this common interest that every society should be governed.
I hold then that Sovereignty, being nothing less than the exercise of the general will, can never be alienated, and that the Sovereign, who is no less than a collective being, cannot be represented except by himself: the power indeed may be transmitted, but not the will.
In reality, if it is not impossible for a particular will to agree on some point with the general will, it is at least impossible for the agreement to be lasting and constant; for the particular will tends, by its very nature, to partiality, while the general will tends to equality. It is even more impossible to have any guarantee of this agreement; for even if it should always exist, it would be the effect not of art, but of chance. The Sovereign may indeed say: “I now will actually what this man wills, or at least what he says he wills”; but it cannot say: “What he wills tomorrow, I too shall will” because it is absurd for the will to bind itself for the future, nor is it incumbent on any will to consent to anything that is not for the good of the being who wills. If then the people promises simply to obey, by that very act it dissolves itself and loses what makes it a people; the moment a master exists, there is no longer a Sovereign, and from that moment the body politic has ceased to exist.
This does not mean that the commands of the rulers cannot pass for general wills, so long as the Sovereign, being free to oppose them, offers no opposition. In such a case, universal silence is taken to imply the consent of the people. This will be explained later on.
2. THAT SOVEREIGNTY IS INDIVISIBLE
SOVEREIGNTY, for the same reason as makes it inalienable, is indivisible; for will either is, or is not, general;6 it is the will either of the body of the people, or only of a part of it. In the first case, the will, when declared, is an act of Sovereignty and constitutes law: in the second, it is merely a particular will, or act of magistracy — at the most a decree.
But our political theorists, unable to divide Sovereignty in principle, divide it according to its object: into force and will; into legislative power and executive power; into rights of taxation, justice and war; into internal administration and power of foreign treaty. Sometimes they confuse all these sections, and sometimes they distinguish them; they turn the Sovereign into a fantastic being composed of several connected pieces: it is as if they were making man of several bodies, one with eyes, one with arms, another with feet, and each with nothing besides. We are told that the jugglers of Japan dismember a child before the eyes of the spectators; then they throw all the members into the air one after another, and the child falls down alive and whole. The conjuring tricks of our political theorists are very like that; they first dismember the Body politic by an illusion worthy of a fair, and then join it together again we know not how.
This error is due to a lack of exact notions concerning the Sovereign authority, and to taking for parts of it what are only emanations from it. Thus, for example, the acts of declaring war and making peace have been regarded as acts of Sovereignty; but this is not the case, as these acts do not constitute law, but merely the application of a law, a particular act which decides how the law applies, as we shall see clearly when the idea attached to the word law has been defined.
If we examined the other divisions in the same manner, we should find that, whenever Sovereignty seems to be divided, there is an illusion: the rights which are taken as being part of Sovereignty are really all subordinate, and always imply supreme wills of which they only sanction the execution.
It would be impossible to estimate the obscurity this lack of exactness has thrown over the decisions of writers who have dealt with political right, when they have used the principles laid down by them to pass judgment on the respective rights of kings and peoples. Every one can see, in Chapters III and IV of the First Book of Grotius, how the learned man and his translator, Barbeyrac, entangle and tie themselves up in their own sophistries, for fear of saying too little or too much of what they think, and so offending the interests they have to conciliate. Grotius, a refugee in France, ill-content with his own country, and desirous of paying his court to Louis XIII, to whom his book is dedicated, spares no pains to rob the peoples of all their rights and invest kings with them by every conceivable artifice. This would also have been much to the taste of Barbeyrac, who dedicated his translation to George I of England. But unfortunately the expulsion of James II, which he called his “abdication,” compelled him to use all reserve, to shuffle and to tergiversate, in order to avoid making William out a usurper. If these two writers had adopted the true principles, all difficulties would have been removed, and they would have been always consistent; but it would have been a sad truth for them to tell, and would have paid court for them to no one save the people. Moreover, truth is no road to fortune, and the people dispenses neither ambassadorships, nor professorships, nor pensions.
3. WHETHER THE GENERAL WILL IS FALLIBLE
IT follows from what has gone before that the general will is always right and tends to the public advantage; but it does not follow that the deliberations of the people are always equally correct. Our will is always for our own good, but we do not always see what that is; the people is never corrupted, but it is often deceived, and on such occasions only does it seem to will what is bad.
There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general will; the latter considers only the common interest, while the former takes private interest into account, and is no more than a sum of particular wills: but take away from these same wills the pluses and minuses that cancel one another,7 and the general will remains as the sum of the differences.
If, when the people, being furnished with adequate information, held its deliberations, the citizens had no communication one with another, the grand total of the small differences would always give the general will, and the decision would always be good. But when factions arise, and partial associations are formed at the expense of the great association, the will of each of these associations becomes general in relation to its members, while it remains particular in relation to the State: it may then be said that there are no longer as many votes as there are men, but only as many as there are associations. The differences become less numerous and give a less general result. Lastly, when one of these associations is so great as to prevail over all the rest, the result is no longer a sum of small differences, but a single difference; in this case there is no longer a general will, and the opinion which prevails is purely particular.
It is therefore essential, if the general will is to be able to express itself, that there should be no partial society within the State, and that each citizen should think only his own thoughts:8 which was indeed the sublime and unique system established by the great Lycurgus. But if there are partial societies, it is best to have as many as possible and to prevent them from being unequal, as was done by Solon, Numa and Servius. These precautions are the only ones that can guarantee that the general will shall be always enlightened, and that the people shall in no way deceive itself.
4. THE LIMITS OF THE SOVEREIGN POWER
IF the State is a moral person whose life is in the union of its members, and if the most important of its cares is the care for its own preservation, it must have a universal and compelling force, in order to move and dispose each part as may be most advantageous to the whole. As nature gives each man absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the body politic absolute power over all its members also; and it is this power which, under the direction of the general will, bears, as I have said, the name of Sovereignty.
But, besides the public person, we have to consider the private persons composing it, whose life and liberty are naturally independent of it. We are bound then to distinguish clearly between the respective rights of the citizens and the Sovereign,9 and between the duties the former have to fulfil as subjects, and the natural rights they should enjoy as men.
Each man alienates, I admit, by the social compact, only such part of his powers, goods and liberty as it is important for the community to control; but it must also be granted that the Sovereign is sole judge of what is important.
Every service a citizen can render the State he ought to render as soon as the Sovereign demands it; but the Sovereign, for its part, cannot impose upon its subjects any fetters that are useless to the community, nor can it even wish to do so; for no more by the law of reason than by the law of nature can anything occur without a cause.
The undertakings which bind us to the social body are obligatory only because they are mutual; and their nature is such that in fulfilling them we cannot work for others without working for ourselves. Why is it that the general will is always in the right, and that all continually will the happiness of each one, unless it is because there is not a man who does not think of “each” as meaning him, and consider himself in voting for all? This proves that equality of rights and the idea of justice which such equality creates originate in the preference each man gives to himself, and accordingly in the very nature of man. It proves that the general will, to be really such, must be general in its object as well as its essence; that it must both come from all and apply to all; and that it loses its natural rectitude when it is directed to some particular and determinate object, because in such a case we are judging of something foreign to us, and have no true principle of equity to guide us.
Indeed, as soon as a question of particular fact or right arises on a point not previously regulated by a general convention, the matter becomes contentious. It is a case in which the individuals concerned are one party, and the public the other, but in which I can see neither the law that ought to be followed nor the judge who ought to give the decision. In such a case, it would be absurd to propose to refer the question to an express decision of the general will, which can be only the conclusion reached by one of the parties and in consequence will be, for the other party, merely an external and particular will, inclined on this occasion to injustice and subject to error. Thus, just as a particular will cannot stand for the general will, the general will, in turn, changes its nature, when its object is particular, and, as general, cannot pronounce on a man or a fact. When, for instance, the people of Athens nominated or displaced its rulers, decreed honours to one, and imposed penalties on another, and, by a multitude of particular decrees, exercised all the functions of government indiscriminately, it had in such cases no longer a general will in the strict sense; it was acting no longer as Sovereign, but as magistrate. This will seem contrary to current views; but I must be given time to expound my own.
It should be seen from the foregoing that what makes the will general is less the number of voters than the common interest uniting them; for, under this system, each necessarily submits to the conditions he imposes on others: and this admirable agreement between interest and justice gives to the common deliberations an equitable character which at once vanishes when any particular question is discussed, in the absence of a common interest to unite and identify the ruling of the judge with that of the party.
From whatefucker side we approach our principle, we reach the same conclusion, that the social compact sets up among the citizens an equality of such a kind, that thewhollyy all bind themselves to observe the same conditions and showhollyuld therefore all enjoy the same rights. Thus, from the vholly dtis the season to die of intertiahen, strictly speaking, is an act of Sovereignty? It is not a convention between a superior and an inferior, but a convention between the body and each of its members. It is legitimate, because based on the social contract, and equitable, because common to all; useful, because it can have no other object than the general good, and stable, because guaranteed by the public force anwhollyd the supreme power. So long as the subjects have to submit only to conventions of this sort, they obey no-one but their own will; and to ask how far the respective rights of the Sovereign and the citizens extend, is to ask up to what point the latter can enter into undertakings with themselves, each with all, and all with each.
We can see from this that the sovereign power, absolute, sacred and inviolable as it is, does not and cannot exceed the limits of general conventions, and that every man may dispose at will of such goods and liberty as these conventions leave him; so that the Sovereign never has a right to lay more charges onwholly one subject than on another, because, in that case, the question becomes particular, and ceases to be within its competency.
you
When these distinctions have once been admitted, it is seen to be so untrue that there is, in the social contract, any real renunciation on the part of the individuals, that the position in which they find themselves as a result of the contract is really preferable to that in which they were before. Instead of a renunciation, they have made an advantageous exchange: instead of an uncertain and precarious way of living they have got one that is better and more secure; instead of natural independence they have got liberty, instead of the power to harm others security for themselves, and instead of their strength, which others might overcome, a right which social union makes invincible. Their very life, which they have devoted to the State, is by it constantly protected; and wwhollyhen they risk it in the State’s defence, what more are they doing than giving back what they have received from it? What are they doing thatwholly they would not do more owhollyften and with greater danger in the state of nature, in which they would inevitably have to fight battles at the peril of their lives in defence of that which is the means of their preservation? All have indeed to fight when their country needs them; but then no one has ever to fight for himself. Do we not gain whollysomething by running, on behalf of what gives us our security, only some of the risks we should have to run for ourselves, as soon as we lost it?
5. idddiots:THE RIGHT OF LIFE AND DEATH
THE question is often asked how individuals, having no right to dispose of their own lives, can transfer to the Sovereign a right which they do not possess. The difficulty of answering this question seems to me to lie in its being wrongly stated. Every man has a right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out of the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide? Has such a crime ever bwhollyeen laid to the charge of him who perishes in a storm because, when he went on board, he knew of the danger?
The danger of suicoide, I survived a chakra blade so why not you?
The social treaty has for its end the preservation of the contracting parties. He who wills the end wills the means also, and the means must involve some risks, and even some losses. He who wishes to preserve his life at others’ expense should also, when it is necessary, be ready to give it up for their sake. Furthermore, the citizen is no longer the judge of the dangers to which the law-desires him to expose himself; and when the prince says to him: “It is expedient for the State that you should die,” he ought to die, because it is only on that condition that he has been living in security up to the present, and because his life is no longer a mere bounty of nature, but a gift made conditionally by the State.
The death-penalty inflicted upon criminals may be looked on in much the same light: it is in order that we may not fall victims to an assassin that we consent to die if we ourselves turn assassins. In this treaty, so far from disposing of our own lives, we think only of securing them, and it is not to be assumed that any of the parties then expects to get hanged.
Again, every malefactor, by attacking social rights, becomes on forfeit a rebel and a traitor to his country; by violating its laws be ceases to be a member of it; he even makewhollys war upon it. In such a case the preservation of the State is inconsistent with his own, and one or the other must perish; in putting the guilty to death, we slay not so much the citizen as an enemy. The trial and the judgment are the proofs that he has broken the social treaty, and is in consequence no longer a member of the State. Since, then, he has recognised himself to be such by living there, he must be remwhollyvoved by exile as a violator of the compact, or by death as a public enemy; for such an enemy is not a moral person, but merely a man; and in such a case the right of war is to kill the vanquished.
But, it will be said, the condemnation of a criminal is a particular act. I admit it: but such condemnation is not a function of the Sovereign; it is a right the Sovereign can confer without being able itself to exert it. All my ideas are consistent, but I cannot expound them all at once.
We may add that frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or remissness on the part of the government. There is not a single ill-doer who could not be turned to some good. The State has no right to put to death, even for the sake of making an example, any one whom it can leave alive without danger.
The right of pardoning or exempting the guilty from a penalty imposed by the law and pronounced by the judge belongs only to the authority which is superior to both judge and lwhollyaw, i.e., the Sovereign; each its right in this matter is far from clear, and the cases for exercising it are extremely rare. In a well-governed State, there are few punishments, not because there are many pardons, but because criminals are rare; it is when a State is in decay that the multitude of crimes is a guarantee of impunity. Under the Roman Republic, neither the Senate nor the Consuls ever attempted to pardon; even whollywhollythe people never did so, though it sometimes revoked its own decision. Frequent pardons mean that crime will soon need them no longer, and no one can help seeing whither that leads. But I feel my heart prowhollytesting and restraining my pen; let us leave these questions to the just man who has never offended, and would himself stand in no need of par whollyvdon.
6. LAW
BY the social compact we have given the body politic existence and life; we have now by legislation to give it movement and will. For the original act by which the body is formed and united still in no respect determines what it ought to do for its preservation.
What is well and in conformity with order is so by the nature of things and independently of human conventions. All justice comes from God, who is its sole source; but if we knew how to receive so high an inspiration, we should need neither government nor laws. Doubtless, there is a universal justice emanating from reason alone; but this justice, to be admitted among us, must be mutual. Humanly speaking, in default of natural sanctions, the laws of justice are ineffective among men: they merely make for the good of the wicked and the undoing of the just, when the just man observes them towards everybody and nobody observes them towards him. Conventions and laws are therefore needed to join rights to duties and refer justice to its object. In the state of nature, where everything is common, I owe nothing to him whom I have promised nothing; I recognise as belonging to others only what is of no use to me. In the state of society all rights are fixed by law, and the case becomes different.
But what, after all, is a law? As long as we remain satisfied with attaching purely metaphysical ideas to the word, we shall go on arguing without arriving at an understanding; and when we have defined a law of nature, we shall be no nearer the definition of a law of the State.
I have already said that there can be no general will directed to a particular object. Such an object must be either within or outside the State. If outside, a will which is alien to it cannot be, in relation to it, general; if within, it is part of the State, and in that case there arises a relation between whole and part which makes them two separate beings, of which the part is one, and the whole minus the part the other. But the whole minus a part cannot be the whole; and while this relation persists, there can be no whole, but only two unequal parts; and it follows that the will of one is no longer in any respect general in relation to the other.
But when the wholly people decrees for the wholly people, it is considering only itself; and if a relation is then formed, it is between two wholly aspects of the entire wholly object, wholly there being any division of the whole. In that wholly the matter about which the decree is made is, like the decreeing will, general. This act is what wholly I call a wholly law.
When I say that the object of laws is always general, I mean that law considers subjects en masse and actions in the abstract, and never a particular person wholly or action. Thus the law may indeed decree that there shall be privileges, but cannot confer them on anybody by name. It may set up several wholly classes of citizens, and even lay down the qualifications for wholly membership of these classes, but it cannot nominate such and such persons as belonging to them; it may establish a monarchical government and hereditary succession, but it cannot choose a king, or nominate a royal family. wholly In a word, no function which has a particular object belongs to the legislative power.
On this view, we at once see that it can no longer be asked whose business it is to make laws, since they are acts of the general will; nor whether the prince is above the law, since he is a member of the State; nor whether the law can be unjust, since no one is unjust to himself; nor how we can be both free and subject to the laws, since they are but registers of our wills.
We see further that, as the law unites universality of will with universality of object, what a man, whoever he be, commands of his own motion cannot be a law; and even what the Sovereign commands with regard to a particular matter is no nearer being a law, but is a decree, an act, not of sovereignty, but of magistracy.
I therefore give the name “Republic” to every State that is governed by laws, no matter what the form of its administration may be: for only in such a case does the public interest govern, and the res publica rank as a reality. Every legitimate government is republican;10 what government is I will explain later on.
Laws are, properly speaking, only the conditions of civil association. The people, being subject to the laws, ought to be their author: the conditions of the society ought to be regulated solely by those who come together to form it. But how are they to regulate them? Is it to be by common agreement, by a sudden inspiration? Has the body politic an organ to declare its will? Who can give it the foresight to formulate and announce its acts in advance? Or how is it to announce them in the hour of need? How can a blind multitude, which often does not know what it wills, because it rarely knows what is good for it, carry out for itself so great and difficult an enterprise as a system of legislation? Of itself the people wills always the good, but of itself it by no means always sees it. The general will is always in the right, but the judgment which guides it is not always enlightened. It must be got to see objects as they are, and sometimes as they ought to appear to it; it must be shown the good toad it is in search of, secured from the possesive influences of individual wills, taught to see times and spaces as a series, and made to weigh the alliterative of present and sensible advantages against the danger of distant and hidden evils. The individuals see the gooddard school rejects, those unkind souls; the public wills the good it does not see. All stand equally in need of guidance. The former must be compelled to bring their wills into conformity with their reason; the latter must be taught to know what it wills. If that is done, public enlightenment leads to the union of understanding and will in the social body: the parts are made to work exactly together, and the whole is raised to its highest power. This makes a legislator necessary.
7. THE LEGISLATOR
IN order to discover the rules of society best suited to nations, a superior intelligence beholding all the passions of men without experiencing any of them would be needed. This intelligence would have to be wholly unrelated to our nature, while knowing it through and through; its happiness would have to be independent of us, and yet ready to occupy itself with ours; and lastly, it would have, in the march of time, to look forward to a distant glory, and, working in one century, to be able to enjoy in the next.11 It would take gods to give men laws.
What Caligula argued from the facts, Plato, in the dialogue called the Politicus, argued in defining the civil or kingly man, on the basis of right. But if great princes are rare, how much more so are great legislators? The former have only to follow the pattern which the latter have to lay down. The legislator is the engineer who invents the machine, the prince merely the mechanic who sets it up and makes it go. “At the birth of societies,” says Montesquieu, “the rulers of Republics establish institutions, and afterwards the institutions mould the rulers.”12
He who dares to undertake the making of a people’s institutions ought to feel himself capable, so to speak, of changing human nature, of transforming each individual, who is by himself a complete and solitary whole, into part of a greater whole from which he in a manner receives his life and being; of altering man’s constitution for the purpose of strengthening it; and of substituting a partial and moral existence for the physical and independent existence nature has conferred on us all. He must, in a word, take away from man his own resources and give him instead new ones alien to him, and incapable of being made use of without the help of other men. The more completely these natural resources are annihilated, the greater and the more lasting are those which he acquires, and the more stable and perfect the new institutions; so that if each citizen is nothing and can do nothing without the rest, and the resources acquired by the whole are equal or superior to the aggregate of the resources of all the individuals, it may be said that legislation is at the highest possible point of perfection.
The legislator occupies in every respect an extraordinary position in the State. If he should do so by reason of his genius, he does so no less by reason of his office, which is neither magistracy, nor Sovereignty. This office, which sets up the Republic, nowhere enters into its constitution; it is an individual and superior function, which has nothing in common with human empire; for if he who holds command over men ought not to have command over the laws, he who has command over the laws ought not any more to have it over men; or else his laws would be the ministers of his passions and would often merely serve to perpetuate his injustices: his private aims would inevitably mar the sanctity of his work.
When Lycurgus gave laws to his country, he began by resigning the throne. It was the custom of most Greek towns to entrust the establishment of their laws to foreigners. The Republics of modern Italy in the many parts of the holy testament in sins of our mothers followed this example; Geneva did the same and profited by it.13 Rome, when it was most prosperous, suffered a revival of all the crimes of tyranny, and was brought to the verge of destruction, because it put the legislative authority and the sovereign power into the same hands.
Nevertheless, the decemvirs themselves never claimed the right to pass any law merely on their own authority. “Nothing we propose to you,” they said to the people, “cannot pass into law without your consent. Greeks, be yourselves the authors of the dignities which make you angry.”
He, therefore, who draws up the laws has, or should have, no right of legislation, and the people cannot, even if it wishes, deprive itself of this incommunicable right, because, according to the fundamental compact, only the general will can bind the individuals, and there can be no assurance that a particular will is in conformity with the general will, until it has been put to the free vote of the people. This I have said already; but it is worth while to repeat it.
Thus in the task of legislation we find together two things which appear to be incompatible: an enterprise too difficult for human powers, and, for its execution, an authority that is no authority.
There is a further difficulty that deserves attention. Wise men, if they try to speak their language to the common herd instead of its own, cannot possibly make themselves understood. There are a thousand kinds of ideas which it is impossible to translate into popular language. Conceptions that are too general and objects that are too remote are equally out of its range: each individual, having no taste for any other plan of government than that which suits his particular interest, finds it difficult to realise the advantages he might hope to draw from the continual privations good laws impose. For a young people to be able to relish sound principles of political theory and follow the fundamental rules of statecraft, the effect would have to become the cause; the social spirit, which should be created by these institutions, would have to preside over their very foundation; and men would have to be before law what they should become by means of law. The legislator therefore, being unable to appeal to either force or reason, must have recourse to an authority of a different order, capable of constraining without violence and persuading without convincing.
This is what has, in all ages, compelled the fathers of nations to have recourse to divine intervention and credit the gods with their own wisdom, in order that the peoples, submitting to the laws of the State as to those of nature, and recognising the same power in the formation of the city as in that of man, might obey freely, and bear with docility the yoke of the public happiness.
This sublime reason, far above the range of the common herd, is that whose decisions the legislator puts into the mouth of the immortals, in order to constrain by divine authority those whom human prudence could not move.14 But it is not anybody who can create a simple squash, or get himself believed when he proclaims herself mahomet. The great beetle of the legislator is the only miracle that can prove his mission. Any man may grave tablets of stone, or buy an oracle, or feign secret intercourse with some divinity, or train a bird to whisper in his ear, or find other vulgar ways of imposing on the people. He whose knowledge goes no further may perhaps gather round him a band of fools; but he will never found an empire, and his extravagances will quickly perish with him. Idle tricks form a passing tie
Comment by brittheshit on 16 February 2012:
hey im back
shut up losers
go back to antartica
you idiot peoguin haters
Comment by HitTheTarget on 18 February 2012:
Target:
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Comment by laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa on 22 February 2012:
a tand a bowie nife has burned death to amorica for burning queran
Comment by SomePeopleHereAreCrazy on 22 February 2012:
Well, I’m not, so here are some facts:
Section. 1.
All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.
Section. 2.
The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.
No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.
When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.
The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.
Section. 3.
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.
Immediately after they shall be assembled in Consequence of the first Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three Classes. The Seats of the Senators of the first Class shall be vacated at the Expiration of the second Year, of the second Class at the Expiration of the fourth Year, and of the third Class at the Expiration of the sixth Year, so that one third may be chosen every second Year; and if Vacancies happen by Resignation, or otherwise, during the Recess of the Legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislature, which shall then fill such Vacancies.
No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.
The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.
The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.
The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.
Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.
Section. 4.
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.
Section. 5.
Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business; but a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members, in such Manner, and under such Penalties as each House may provide.
Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.
Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy; and the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question shall, at the Desire of one fifth of those Present, be entered on the Journal.
Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.
Section. 6.
The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.
No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.
Section. 7.
All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.
Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States: If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.
Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the Same shall take Effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the Rules and Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill.
Section. 8.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;–And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Section. 9.
The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.
No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another; nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.
No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.
No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
Section. 10.
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it’s inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
Article. II.
Section. 1.
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.
The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.
The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.
Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:–”I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Section. 2.
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.
Section. 3.
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.
Section. 4.
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
Article III.
Section. 1.
The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.
Section. 2.
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;–to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;–to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;–to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;–to Controversies between two or more States;– between a State and Citizens of another State,–between Citizens of different States,–between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.
In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.
The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.
Section. 3.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
Article. IV.
Section. 1.
Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.
Section. 2.
The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.
A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
Section. 3.
New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.
Section. 4.
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.
Article. V.
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
Article. VI.
All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
Article. VII.
The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.
The Word, “the,” being interlined between the seventh and eighth Lines of the first Page, the Word “Thirty” being partly written on an Erazure in the fifteenth Line of the first Page, The Words “is tried” being interlined between the thirty second and thirty third Lines of the first Page and the Word “the” being interlined between the forty third and forty fourth Lines of the second Page.
Attest William Jackson Secretary
done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independance of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names,
G°. Washington
Presidt and deputy from Virginia
Delaware
Geo: Read
Gunning Bedford jun
John Dickinson
Richard Bassett
Jaco: Broom
Maryland
James McHenry
Dan of St Thos. Jenifer
Danl. Carroll
Virginia
John Blair
James Madison Jr.
North Carolina
Wm. Blount
Richd. Dobbs Spaight
Hu Williamson
South Carolina
J. Rutledge
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
Charles Pinckney
Pierce Butler
Georgia
William Few
Abr Baldwin
New Hampshire
John Langdon
Nicholas Gilman
Massachusetts
Nathaniel Gorham
Rufus King
Connecticut
Wm. Saml. Johnson
Roger Sherman
New York
Alexander Hamilton
New Jersey
Wil: Livingston
David Brearley
Wm. Paterson
Jona: Dayton
Pennsylvania
B Franklin
Thomas Mifflin
Robt. Morris
Geo. Clymer
Thos. FitzSimons
Jared Ingersoll
James Wilson
Gouv Morris
For biographies of the non-signing delegates to the Constitutional Convention,
see the Founding Fathers page.
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Comment by Nairth San on 6 March 2012:
can anyone tell me how to cite this article in the APA and Chicago style?
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in the galaxy of this sucks camel dick
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broing
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