# Two Treatises of Government: No More Massaniellos! **URL:** **By** John Locke **Published:** January 1, 1689 --- Locke cautions that the problem with Filmer's absolutism is that it allows wild-eyed, levelling revolutionaries an in-road to reform. > **Editor’s Note** — Anthony Comegna > > For those of you who—like me—are not exactly _convinced_ by Biblical arguments, the content of Locke’s _First Treatise_ are now about to heat up. Now, we have reached the point where Robert Filmer is running low on additional arguments to throw at our author, and Locke is rounding on him, ready to deliver final strikes and erect his own system on the ruins of Sir Robert’s proud absolutism. To start this brief section, Locke grants Filmer’s claim that Adam was indeed appointed by God to be “lord and sole proprietor of the whole earth” _and _“absolute ruler over his children with an unlimited supremacy.” Well, what _then_? That is, what about after Adam _died_? Surely his two types of “dominion,” (natural and private) either passed on to his direct heir or dissipated with his earthly life. Surely, Adam could have only passed on _one_ form of dominion, that of his private property; but _natural_ dominion was something a father could only obtain either directly from God or by the _explicit act_ of _begetting_ children. On down the line of generations, it is impossible for brothers to rule over one another because they cannot possess the rights of natural dominion over each other—they did not _beget one another!_ Yes, the eldest might inherit the father’s private estate, his private rights of dominion over private property, but this in no way implied natural dominion over relatives extending beyond one’s own immediate children (and even then, as our last section showed, fathers cannot be said to have absolute rights over their children, either). > > But _here_ is the real key to this duo of chapters: Locke worries that Filmer’s shaky grounds for admitting a king’s legitimacy opens the way to _far too many governors without talent or virtue_. Because essentially any strongman capable of amassing and wielding great power is justified in doing so under Filmer’s system, _Oliver Cromwells and Massaniellos _would surely abound. There was nothing really keeping them from claiming some sort of inheritance of power directly from Adam, evidenced by their abilities to overthrow kings and aristocrats, install their own bodies, raise their own armies and taxes, and exercise the very absolute dominion Filmer is so eager to grant away. [Cromwell](https://www.libertarianism.org/podcasts/liberty-chronicles/ep-11-the-dissenters-revolution), of course, at least claimed to believe that everything he did was moved by the hand of God himself, so who is Robert Filmer to tell him otherwise? Especially if he throws the New Model Army in Filmer's face? And [Massaniello](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaniello) (a revolutionary fisherman in seventeenth-century Naples who led a proletarian, levelling rebellion against the city’s Spanish Habsburg rulers in 1647) was universally feared by thinkers from Filmer all the way to Locke. _All aristocrats and their partners in the upper classes feared Massaniello and his example._ The uprising took place nearly coincident with England’s own [Putney Debates](https://www.libertarianism.org/essays/putney-debates-day-one) and helped inform the public debate over how to structure the Parliamentary government. All the way across the ocean, in Virginia, [Bacon’s Rebellion](https://www.libertarianism.org/podcasts/liberty-chronicles/ep-12-bacons-rebellion-the-invention-of-race) (1676) included dozens and hundreds of potential Massaniellos in its Indian wars and its contest for control of the colony against Governor Berkeley. Berkeley worried that, once unleashed, the working classes’ revolutionary energies would be exceptionally difficult to contain again. So, in comes John Locke—with very serious personal interests in the colonial project—to justify _proper government_ and protect people like himself _and_ Filmer from possible tyrants of all sorts, whether knightly, noble, or fishmongering. The catch here, of course, is that _someone has to rule the government_, and so long as you buy into Locke’s reasoning you can rest easy that _the state is legitimate_. Well, Mr. Locke, we shall see. By John Locke Thomas Hollis Edition. (London: A. Millar et. al.) 1764. ## Two Treatises of Civil Government ### Book I: Of Government #### Chapter 7: Of Fatherhood and Property considered together as Fountains of Sovereignty \[I\] shall come now to consider, how these two originals of government, _Adam’s natural and private dominion,_ will consist, and serve to make out and establish the titles of succeeding monarchs, who, as our author obliges them, must all derive their power from these _fountains._ Let us then suppose _Adam_ made, _by God’s donation,_ lord and sole proprietor of the whole earth, in as large and ample a manner as Sir _Robert_ could wish; let us suppose him also, _by right of fatherhood,_ absolute ruler over his children with an unlimited supremacy; I ask then, upon _Adam_’s death what becomes of both his _natural_ and _private dominion_? and I doubt not it will be answered, that they descended to his next heir, as our author tells us in several places. But this way, it is plain, cannot possibly convey both his _natural_ and _private dominion_ to the same person: for should we allow, that all the property, all the estate of the father, ought to descend to the eldest son, (which will need some proof to establish it) and so he has by that title all the _private dominion_ of the father, yet the father’s _natural dominion,_ the paternal power cannot descend to him by inheritance: for it being a right that accrues to a man only by begetting, no man can have this natural dominion over any one he does not _beget;_ unless it can be supposed, that a man can have a right to any thing, without doing that upon which that right is solely founded: for if a father by _begetting,_ and no other title, has _natural dominion_ over his children, he that does not beget them cannot have this _natural dominion _over them; and therefore be it true or false, that our author says, That _every man that is born, by his very birth becomes a subject to him that begets him,_ this necessarily follows, _viz._ That a man by his birth cannot become a subject to his brother, who did not beget him; unless it can be supposed that a man by the very same title can come to be under the _natural and absolute dominion_ of two different men at once; or it be sense to say, that a man by birth is under the _natural dominion_ of his father, only because he begat him, and a man by birth also is under the _natural dominion_ of his eldest brother, though he did not beget him. If then the _private dominion of Adam,_ i.e. his property in the creatures, descended at his death all entirely to his eldest son, his heir; (for, if it did not, there is presently an end of all Sir _Robert_’s monarchy) and his _natural dominion,_ the dominion a father has over his children by begetting them, belonged immediately, upon _Adam_’s decease, equally to all his sons who had children, by the same title their father had it, the sovereignty founded upon _property,_ and the sovereignty founded upon _fatherhood,_ come to be divided; since _Cain,_ as heir, had that of _property _alone; _Seth,_ and the other sons, that of _fatherhood _equally with him. This is the best can be made of our author’s doctrine, and of the two titles of sovereignty he sets up in _Adam:_ one of them will either signify nothing; or, if they both must stand, they can serve only to confound the rights of princes, and disorder government in his posterity: for by building upon two titles to dominion, which cannot descend together, and which he allows may be separated, (for he yields that _Adam’s children had their distinct territories by right of private dominion,_ he makes it perpetually a doubt upon his principles where the sovereignty is, or to whom we owe our obedience, since _fatherhood_ and _property_ are distinct titles, and began presently upon _Adam_’s death to be in distinct persons. And which then was to give way to the other?... The same inconvenience he runs into about _the three sons of Noah,_ who, as he says, _had the whole world divided amongst them by their father._ I ask then, in which of the three shall we find _the establishment of regal power_ after _Noah_’s death? If in all three, as our author there seems to say; then it will follow, that regal power is founded in property of land, and follows _private dominion, _and not in _paternal power,_ or _natural dominion; _and so there is an end of paternal power as the fountain of regal authority, and the so-much-magnified _fatherhood_ quite vanishes. If the regal power descended to _Shem_ as eldest, and heir to his father, then _Noah’s division of the world by lot to his sons, or his ten years sailing about the Mediterranean to appoint each son his part, _which our author tells of was labour lost; his division of the world to them, was to ill, or to no purpose…This is his own arguing against two distinct independent powers…and when he has answered what he himself has urged here against two distinct powers, we shall be better able to see how, with any tolerable sense, he can derive all regal authority _from the natural and private dominion of_ Adam, from _fatherhood_ and _property _together, which are distinct titles, that do not always meet in the same person; and it is plain, by his own confession, presently separated as soon both as _Adam_’s and _Noah_’s death made way for succession: though our author frequently in his writings jumbles them together, and omits not to make use of either, where he thinks it will sound best to his purpose. But the absurdities of this will more fully appear in the next chapter, where we shall examine the ways of conveyance of the sovereignty of _Adam,_ to princes that were to reign after him. #### Chapter 8: Of the Conveyance of Adam’s sovereign Monarchical Power SIR _Robert,_ having not been very happy in any proof he brings for the sovereignty of _Adam,_ is not much more fortunate in conveying it to future princes, who, if his politics be true, must all derive their titles from that first monarch. The ways he has assigned, as they lie scattered up and down in his writings, I will set down in his own words: in his preface he tells us, That _Adam being monarch of the whole world, none of his posterity had any right to possess any thing, but by his grant or permission, or by succession from him._ Here he makes two ways of conveyance of any thing _Adam _stood possessed of; and those are _grants_ or _succession._ Again he says, _All kings either are, or are to_ _be reputed, the next heirs to those first progenitors, who were at first the natural parents of the whole people. There cannot be any multitude of men whatsoever, but that in it, considered by itself, there is one man amongst them, that in nature hath a right to be the king of all the rest, as being the next heir to_ Adam. Here in these places _inheritance_ is the only way he allows of conveying monarchical power to princes. In other places he tells us, _All power on earth is either derived or usurped from the fatherly power_. _All kings that now are, or ever were, are or were either fathers of their people, or heirs of such fathers, or usurpers of the right of such fathers_. And here he makes _inheritance_ or _usurpation_ the only ways whereby kings come by this original _power:_ but yet he tells us, _This fatherly empire, as it was of itself hereditary, so it was alienable by patent, and seizable by an usurper_. So then here inheritance, grant, or usurpation, will convey it. And last of all, which is most admirable, he tells us, _It skills not which way kings come by their power, whether by election, donation, succession, or by any other means; for it is still the manner of the government by supreme power, that makes them properly kings, and not the means of obtaining their crowns. _Which I think is a full answer to all his whole _hypothesis_ and discourse about _Adam_’s royal authority, as the fountain from which all princes were to derive theirs: and he might have spared the trouble of speaking so much as he does, up and down, of heirs and inheritance, if to make any one _properly a king,_ needs no more but _governing by supreme power, and it matters not by what means he came by it._ By this notable way, our author may make _Oliver _as _properly king,_ as any one else he could think of: and had he had the happiness to live under _Massanello_’s government, he could not by this his own rule have forborn to have done homage to him, with _O king live for ever,_ since the manner of his government by supreme power, made him _properly_ king, who was but the day before _properly_ a fisherman. And if _Don Quixote_ had taught his squire to govern with supreme authority, our author no doubt could have made a most loyal subject in _Sancho Pancha_’s _island;_ and he must needs have deserved some preferment in such governments, since I think he is the first politician, who, pretending to settle government upon its true basis, and to establish the thrones of lawful princes, ever told the world, That he was _properly a king, whose manner of government was by supreme power, by what means soever he obtained it;_ which in plain _English_ is to say, that regal and supreme power is properly and truly his, who can by any means seize upon it; and if this be to be _properly a king,_ I wonder how he came to think of, or where he will find, an _usurper._ This is so strange a doctrine, that the surprise of it hath made me pass by, without their due reflection, the contradictions he runs into, by making sometimes _inheritance_ alone, sometimes only _grant_ or _inheritance,_ sometimes only _inheritance_ or _usurpation,_ sometimes all these three, and at last _election,_ or _any other means, _added to them, the ways whereby _Adam_’s royal _authority,_ that is, his right to supreme rule, could be conveyed down to future kings and governors, so as to give them a title to the obedience and subjection of the people. But these contradictions lie so open, that the very reading of our author’s own words will discover them to any ordinary understanding; and though what I have quoted out of him (with abundance more of the same strain and coherence, which might be found in him) might well excuse me from any farther trouble in this argument, yet having proposed to myself, to examine the main parts of his doctrine, I shall a little more particularly consider how _inheritance, grant, usurpation_ or _election,_ can any way make out government in the world upon his principles; or derive to any one a right of empire, from this regal authority of _Adam,_ had it been never so well proved, that he had been absolute monarch, and lord of the whole world.