ready against his coming there. Dr. Thomas, being called away, asked his friend, Mr. Locke, to procure them. He employed somebody who disappointed him, and had to call upon Lord Ashley to make apologies. Lord Ashley became fascinated by Locke's liberal and thoughtful conversation, and, in 1667, asked him to stay at his house in London. Shaftesbury urged upon Locke not to pursue medicine as a profession, beyond using his skill among his friends, but to devote the powers of his mind to study of the great questions in politics. Locke did so, and was often consulted by a patron who was but an erratic follower of principles which Locke developed and maintained throughout his life with calm consistency. As one of those included in the grant of Carolina, Lord Ashley employed Locke to draw up a Constitution for the new Colony; he did so, and showed in it a strong regard for civil and religious liberty. In 1668 Locke became one of the Fellows of the Royal Society. Soon afterwards he went abroad with the Earl and Countess of Northumberland; but the Earl died at Turin, in May, 1670. Locke returned to England, lived again with Lord Ashley, and was asked by him to undertake the education of his only son. About the same time he was present in Oxford at a lively discussion, where it seemed to him that the differences of opinion lay wholly in words. This thought first turned his mind in the direction of his " Essay concerning Human Understanding," a work that occupied him afterwards for many years.

In November, 1672, Lord Ashley, who had become Earl of Shaftesbury seven months before, became Lord

Chancellor, and he made John Locke Secretary of Presentations under him during his year of office. In June, 1673, Shaftesbury made Locke also Secretary to a Commission of the Board of Trade, which office, with a salary of £500 a year, Locke held until the Commission came to an end in December, 1674.

Locke had gone to Montpellier, where there was a great medical school, to unite study with the necessary residence in Southern Europe, where he was threatened seriously with advance of consumption, and he was at work there on his "Essay Concerning Human Understanding," when Shaftesbury called him back. He was by Shaftesbury's side in the next months of peril from the conflict with the king. After his escape from the scaffold in 1682 Shaftesbury went to Holland, and died there in 1683. Locke also found it necessary to leave England, and settled in Amsterdam, where he established a fast friendship with Philip van Limborch, pastor of the Church of the Remonstrants, who was within a year of his own age, and like himself was full of a religious spirit of liberty.

At Amsterdam Locke wrote, in Latin, his "Letter Concerning Toleration," as it was printed at Gouda in 1689. The translation of it which is given in this volume was made and published at London in the same year by William Popple.

In February of that year 1689 John Locke came back to England, where he refused to accept from his friends in office any more lucrative post than that of a Commissioner of Appeals, with £200 a year. His Letter on Toleration had to be at once defended from attack. Locke also wrote, within the first months of his return,

8

a "Treatise of Civil Government," which destroyed Sir Robert Filmer's theory of the Divine origin of absolute monarchy. As that theory has no supporters left in England, it is enough here to take Locke's refutation of it for granted. But the Essay destructive of a false theory of government was followed in the next year by a second essay, meant to be constructive of a true theory. This was, in fact, Locke's philosophical interpretation of the basis of the English Revolution, and was published in 1690. The book has "Letters Concerning been joined in this volume to Toleration," that so we may have a complete view of Locke's arguments for Civil and Religious Liberty.

Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding " was also first published complete in 1690, its aim being to induce men to confine their search for truth within the limits of the knowable, and save much waste of power upon reasonings that cannot come to a conclusion. He finished also in 1690, but did not publish till 1693, a little treatise upon Education. All the rest of his life he gave to study of Christianity by looking only to the Scriptures, and his latest writings were designed to show the Reasonableness of Christianity as delivered in the Scriptures. He died, aged seventy-three, on the 28th of October, 1704.

H. M.

OF CIVIL
CIVIL GOVERNMENT.

CHAPTER I.

IT having been shown in a foregoing discourse :

1. That Adam had not, either by natural right of fatherhood or by positive donation from God, any such authority over his children, or dominion over the world, as is pretended.

2. That if he had, his heirs yet had no right to it.

3. That if his heirs had, there being no law of nature nor positive law of God that determines which is the right heir in all cases that may arise, the right of succession, and consequently of bearing rule, could not have been certainly determined.

4. That if even that had been determined, yet the knowledge of which is the eldest line of Adam's posterity, being so long since utterly lost, that in the races of mankind and families of the world there remains not to one above another the least pretence to be the eldest house, and to have right of inheritance.

All these premises having, as I think, been clearly made out, it is impossible that the rulers now on earth should make any benefit, or derive any the least shadow of authority from that which is held to be the foundation of all power, Adam's private dominion and paternal jurisdiction; so that he that will not give just occasion to think that all government in the world is the product only of force and violence, and that men live together by no other rules but that of beasts, where the strongest carries it, and so lay a foundation for perpetual disorder and mischief, tumult, sedition, and rebellion (things that the followers of that hypothesis so loudly cry out against), must of necessity find out another rise of government, another original of political power, and another way of designing and knowing the persons that have it, than what Sir Robert Filmer hath taught us.

2. To this purpose, I think it may not be amiss to set down what I take to be political power; that the power of a magistrate over a subject may be distinguished from that of a father over his children, a master over his servant, a husband over his wife, and a lord over his slave. All which distinct powers happening sometime together in the same man, if he be considered under these different relations, it may help us to distinguish these powers one from another, and show the difference betwixt a ruler of a commonwealth, a father of a family, and a captain of a galley.

3. Political power, then, I take to be a right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the commonwealth from foreign injury, and all this only for the public good.

CHAPTER II.

OF THE STATE OF NATURE.

4. To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is a state. of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.

A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the Lord and Master of them all should by any manifest declaration of His will set one above another, and confer on him by an evident and clear appointment an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.