American Enterprise Institute

Natural Rights, the Common Good, and the American Revolution

How the Declaration Disagrees with John Locke Notes

  1. “Speech on American Taxation,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, ed. Paul Langford, vol. 2, Party, Parliament, and the American Crisis, 1766–1774, ed. William B. Todd (Clarendon Press, 1981), 406–63; “Speech on Conciliation with America, 11 March 1775,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, ed. Paul Langford, vol. 3, Party, Parliament, and the American War, 1774–1780, ed. Warren M. Elofson and John A. Woods (Clarendon Press, 1996), 102–69; “Second Speech on Conciliation, 17 Nov 1775,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 3:183–220; “Speech on Cavendish’s Motion on America, 6 Nov 1776,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 3:253; “Address to the King [Jan 1777],” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 3:264, 269; “Address to the Colonists [Jan 1777],” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 3:279, 283–84; and “Speech on the Use of Indians, 6 Feb 1778,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 3:364.
  2. “Speech on American Taxation,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 2:458; “Speech on Conciliation with America,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 3:138–39, 146; “Second Speech on Conciliation,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 3:196; and “Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, 3 April 1777,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 3:318–19.
  3. “Amendment to Address, 31 Oct 1776,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 3:251; “Petition for Bristol [Jan 1777],” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 3:257; and “Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 3:329.
  4. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790; Stanford University Press, 2002), 387–88.
  5. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 155–231.
  6. “A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law,” in The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by His Grandson Charles Francis Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams, vol. 3 (Little, Brown, 1851), 461, 456–57.
  7. John Adams to Richard Price, 19 April 1790, in The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, 9:563.
  8. John Adams to Richard Price, 19 April 1790, in The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, 9:563–64.
  9. John Adams to Richard Price, 19 April 1790, in The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, 9:564.
  10. John Adams to Samuel Adams, 12 September 1790, in The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, 6:411–12.
  11. Adams assumes erroneously that Locke had a free hand in the drafting of the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina. “A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, Against the Attack of M. Turgot, in His Letter to Dr. Price, Dated the Twenty-Second Day of March, 1778, vol. 1,” in The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, 4:463.
  12. “A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, Against the Attack of M. Turgot, in His Letter to Dr. Price, Dated the Twenty-Second Day of March, 1778, vol. 1,” in The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, 4:284, 289–91, 296–98.
  13. Discourses on Davila, in The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, 6:252, 273–74, 284, 299–300, 323, 340–41, 365, 399.
  14. Discourses on Davila, in The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States 6:274n, 299n, 300n, 312n, 393n, 394nn.
  15. Thomas Jefferson to Diodati, August 3, 1789, in Thomas Jefferson, Writings: Autobiography, Notes on the State of Virginia, Public and Private Papers, Addresses, Letters, ed. Merrill Peterson (Library of America, 1984), 958.
  16. Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, September 6, 1789, in Thomas Jefferson: Writings, 959–64. The Lockean statement is “that whatever Engagements or Promises any one has made for himself, he is under the Obligation of them, but cannot by any Compact whatsoever, bind his Children or Posterity.” John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1689; Cambridge University, 1970), 2.116.
  17. Jefferson calls Louis XVI an “honest,” “unambitious” king, selflessly devoted to his people’s welfare in Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, May 9, 1789, in Thomas Jefferson: Writings, 952–53.
  18. Jefferson to William Short, January 3, 1793, in Thomas Jefferson: Writings, 1004.
  19. “To the President of the United States (George Washington),” May 8, 1791, in Thomas Jefferson: Writings, 977–78.
  20. Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine, June 19, 1792, in Thomas Jefferson: Writings, 992.
  21. Thomas Jefferson to John Breckinridge, January 29, 1800, in Thomas Jefferson: Writings, 1074. For Locke’s statement of this “Law of Nature and Reason,” see John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.95–99.
  22. Daniel E. Burns, “An Arab Spring Autopsy,” The American Interest, July–August 2018, 43–47, https://www.the-american-interest.com/2018/04/05/arab-spring-autopsy/.
  23. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.132, 2.143.
  24. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.150–53. See also the definitions of “executive” in Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.88, 2.147.
  25. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.131, 2.136, 2.150.
  26. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.134, 2.152.
  27. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.153–57, 2.132.
  28. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.136, 2.137.
  29. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.150.
  30. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651; Hackett, 1994), 110–18.
  31. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.149, 2.240.
  32. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.150.
  33. “To the Inhabitants of Great Britain,” in The Papers of James Iredell, ed. Don Higginbotham, vol. 1, 1767–1777 (North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 1976), 263–65.
  34. Thomas Hutchinson, “The Speeches of His Excellency Governor Hutchinson, to the General Assembly of the Massachusetts-Bay,” in The American Revolution: Writings from the Pamphlet Debate, ed. Gordon S. Wood, vol. 2, 1773–1776 (Library of America, 2015), 77.
  35. William Knox, “The Controversy Between Great Britain and Her Colonies Reviewed,” in The American Revolution: Writings from the Pamphlet Debate, ed. Gordon S. Wood, vol. 1, 1764–1772 (Library of America, 2015), 647.
  36. Thomas Paine, Common Sense; Addressed to the Inhabitants of America, in Wood, The American Revolution, 2:677–79.
  37. James Otis, “The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved,” in Wood, The American Revolution, 1:77; Town of Boston, “The Votes and Proceedings, in Town Meeting Assembled, According to Law,” in Wood, The American Revolution, 1:768; and Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.136.
  38. Otis, “The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved,” 75; and Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.134.
  39. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.6, 2.135, 2.183. For the assumption that “preservation” means “comfortable preservation,” see Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 1.86–87, 2.95.
  40. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.149.
  41. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.87–89.
  42. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.135.
  43. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.135, 2.142.
  44. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.131, 2.135.
  45. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.19, 2.7, 2.8.
  46. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.21.
  47. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.16–24; and Hobbes, Leviathan, 76.
  48. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.19.
  49. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.21.
  50. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.16–18.
  51. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.87.
  52. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.89–90.
  53. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.90–94, 2.137.
  54. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.89.
  55. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.132, 2.134, 2.150.
  56. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.124.
  57. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.230; and Hobbes, Leviathan, 219.
  58. George Washington, “Letter to the President of Congress,” in George Washington: Writings, ed. John H. Rhodehamel (Library of America, 1997), 654.
  59. Otis, “The Rights of the British Colonies,” 81, 87; Federalist, no. 16 (Hamilton); Federalist, no. 33 (Hamilton); Federalist, no. 39 (Madison); Federalist, no. 42 (Madison); and Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, March 15, 1789, in Thomas Jefferson: Writings, 943.
  60. John Dickinson, “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies,” in Wood, The American Revolution, 1:449–50.
  61. John Tucker, “An Election Sermon,” in American Political Writing During the Founding Era, 1760–1805, ed. Charles S. Hyneman and Donald S. Lutz (Liberty Fund, 1983), 1:162, 1:168–69.
  62. Town of Boston, “The Votes and Proceedings, in Town Meeting Assembled, According to Law,” 764.
  63. “Four Letters on Interesting Subjects,” in American Political Writing During the Founding Era, 1760–1805, ed. Charles S. Hyneman and Donald S. Lutz (Liberty Fund, 1983), 1:384–85.
  64. Charles Inglis, “The True Interest of America Impartially Stated, in Certain Strictures on a Pamphlet Intitled Common Sense,” in Wood, The American Revolution, 2:721.
  65. Town of Essex, “Essex Result,” in The Popular Sources of Political Authority: Documents on the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, ed. Oscar Handlin and Mary F. Handlin (Belknap Press, 1966), 325–26, 327–32.
  66. Paine, Common Sense, 679.
  67. See John Locke, “A Letter Concerning Toleration,” in Locke on Toleration, ed. Richard Vernon (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 30–37, especially 33. “An individual’s private judgment concerning a law made for the public good on a political matter does not . . . merit toleration.” The founders were misled about Locke’s views on this point by William Popple’s popular translation of Locke’s letter, which adds to Locke’s text the non-Lockean phrase “Liberty of Conscience is every mans natural Right.” See John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, trans. William Popple (Hackett, 1983), 51; Locke, “A Letter Concerning Toleration,” 37; and Town of Boston, “The Votes and Proceedings, in Town Meeting Assembled, According to Law,” 765. The latter erroneously cites Popple’s non-Lockean introduction as part of “Lock’s Letters on Toleration.”
  68. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689; Clarendon Press, 1970), 2.21.43, 2.21.47, 2.21.50–52, 2.21.59, 2.21.61.
  69. See John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2.21.55–56, 1.3.3, 1.3.13, 1.3.6: “Men in this world prefer different things, and pursue happiness by contrary courses”; the innate “desire of Happiness” operates in everyone and would “carry Men to the over-turning of all Morality” if unrestrained; and “the great variety of Opinions, concerning Moral Rules, which are to be found amongst Men, [are] according to the different sorts of Happiness, they have a Prospect of, or propose to themselves.”
  70. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2.21.45, 2.28.9.
  71. See “A Defence of the Constitutions of the Government of the United States of America, Against the Attack of M. Turgot, in His Letter to Dr. Price, Dated the Twenty-Second Day of March, 1778, vol. 1,” in The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, 4:466. “Americans in this age are too enlightened to be bubbled out of their liberties, even by such mighty names as Locke, Milton, Turgot, or Hume . . . they know, though Locke and Milton did not, that when popular elections are given up, liberty and free government must be given up.”
  72. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 1.59.
  73. Northwest Ordinance of 1787, art. III.
  74. See Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.12: The “Laws of Countries . . . are only so far right, as they are founded on the Law of Nature, by which they are to be regulated and interpreted.” (Emphasis added.)
  75. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.124, 2.136–37.
  76. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, preface, 2.99.
  77. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.152, 1.168.
  78. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.95.
  79. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.107, 2.57.
  80. See a similar idea from two years earlier in Thomas Jefferson, “A Summary View of the Rights of British America [1774],” in Wood, The American Revolution, 2:103.   “When [representatives] have assumed to themselves powers which the people never put into their hands.”
  81. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 2.135; and Hobbes, Leviathan, 118–20.
  82. Federalist, no. 16 (Hamilton); “John Adams to Richard Price, 19 April 1790,” in The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, 4:564.
  83. Federalist, no. 14 (Madison).
  84. Hobbes, Leviathan, 210; and John Locke, “A Letter Concerning Toleration,” in Locke on Toleration, 38.
  85. Federalist, no. 69 (Hamilton); and Federalist, no. 73 (Hamilton).
  86. Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 335–95.
  87. “Address to the King [Jan 1777],” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 3:271; and Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, 217–21.
  88. For extensive evidence of this, see Eric Nelson, The Royalist Revolution (Harvard University Press, 2014).
  89. “Second Speech on Conciliation,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 3:195; and “Speech on Repeal of Declaratory Act,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 3:373–74.
  90. “Speech on American Taxation,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 2:458; and “Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 3:313.
  91. See, for instance, Otis, “The Rights of the British Colonies,” 86, 111, 111–12n; “On the Tenure of the Manor of East Greenwich,” in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 13, January 1, 1766 Through December 31, 1776, ed. Leonard W. Labaree (Yale University Press, 1969), 22; John Dickinson, “Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies,” in Wood, The American Revolution, 1:460; Edward Bancroft, “Remarks on the Review of the Controversy Between Great Britain and Her Colonies,” in Wood, The American Revolution, 1:735–41; “To the Inhabitants of Great Britain,” in The Papers of James Iredell, 1:263–65; James Wilson, Considerations on the Nature and the Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament, in Wood, The American Revolution, 2:145; Jefferson, “A Summary View of the Rights of British America [1774],” 2:107; and “Novanglus; or, a History of the Dispute with America, from Its Origin, in 1754, to the Present Time,” in The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, 4:107–8, 114. See even the loyalist Inglis, “True Interest of America Impartially Stated, in Certain Strictures on a Pamphlet Intitled Common Sense,” 761–62.
  92. “Second Speech on Conciliation,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 3:193–95; and “Speech on Conway’s Motion, 22 May 1776,” in The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, 3:235–36.