Two Treatises on Government
by John Locke

This worthy work served as one of the underpinnings for the U.S. Constitution. It was produced in 1690 and had a tremendous influence upon the founding fathers. In it Locke clearly explains the need for limiting government. He also illustrates the role property plays in maintaining liberty. Though some of the language is outdated, the modern student of political science will find Locke witty and readable.

Of the two treatises the first is now looked on as one of minor importance as it was a refutation of another tract by Sir Robert Filmer that proclaimed biblical support for absolutist government. Locke ably dispenses with Sir Robert and wittily enlists God on the side of limited government.

Yet the most powerful arguments Locke puts forward are delivered in the second treatise. They are derived from the idea that men are endowed with natural rights. The rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness", were for Locke "Life, Liberty and Property." For Locke, the Founding Fathers and for us, property is synonymous with the pursuit of happiness and liberty is impossible without property.

Locke argues that property naturally arises as a means for man to obtain his sustenance. In his model, governments arose for "no other end but the preservation of property". Property is created by the expenditure of a man's labor, in modern parlance, one could say the individual expends his life's energy to acquire wealth. So in a sense the wealth created is roughly equivalent to the life of the individual who has acquired it. Money then can be seen as an inertial store of life's energy.

Thus, the right to expend an individual's store of wealth is intimately tied up with liberty. For what is liberty if not the right to freely dispose of ones time. The wag who pointed out that "time is money" was more correct than he knew.

A government which seeks to extort money from its citizens beyond the purview of its basic functions is then imposing upon the liberty of the people. This was the primary reason the Founding Fathers of this nation embarked upon the Revolutionary War. They understood that taxes imposed without the consent of the governed were indeed a grave imposition upon their liberty and a precedent that could not be brooked.

"Life, Liberty and Property" - all are, indeed, natural rights intertwined and mutually dependent. The loss of any one, means the effective loss of the other two.

Order Locke's "Two Treatises on Government"