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TWO TREATISES OF GOVERNMENT
BY IOHN LOCKE
SALUS POPULI SUPREMA LEX ESTO
LONDON PRINTED MDCLXXXVIII
REPRINTED, THE SIXTH TIME, BY A. MILLAR, H. WOODFALL, 1. WHISTON AND
B. WHITE, 1. RIVINGTON, L. DAVIS AND C. REYMERS, R. BALDWIN, HAWES CLARKE
AND COLLINS; W. IOHNSTON, W. OWEN, 1. RICHARDSON, S. CROWDER, T. LONGMAN,
B. LAW, C. RIVINGTON, E. DILLY, R. WITHY, C. AND R. WARE, S. BAKER, T.
PAYNE, A. SHUCKBURGH, 1. HINXMAN
MDCCLXIII
TWO TREATISES OF GOVERNMENT. IN THE FORMER THE FALSE PRINCIPLES AND
FOUNDATION OF SIR ROBERT FILMER AND HIS FOLLOWERS ARE DETECTED AND
OVERTHROWN. THE LATTER IS AN ESSAY CONCERNING THE TRUE ORIGINAL EXTENT
AND END OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT.
1764 EDITOR'S NOTE The present Edition of this Book has not only
been collated with the first three Editions, which were published during
the Author's Life, but also has the Advantage of his last Corrections and
Improvements, from a Copy delivered by him to Mr. Peter Coste,
communicated to the Editor, and now lodged in Christ College, Cambridge.
PREFACE
Reader, thou hast here the beginning and end of a discourse concerning
government; what fate has otherwise disposed of the papers that should
have filled up the middle, and were more than all the rest, it is not
worth while to tell thee. These, which remain, I hope are sufficient to
establish the throne of our great restorer, our present King William; to
make good his title, in the consent of the people, which being the only
one of all lawful governments, he has more fully and clearly, than any
prince in Christendom; and to justify to the world the people of England,
whose love of their just and natural rights, with their resolution to
preserve them, saved the nation when it was on the very brink of slavery
and ruin. If these papers have that evidence, I flatter myself is to be
found in them, there will be no great miss of those which are lost, and
my reader may be satisfied without them: for I imagine, I shall have
neither the time, nor inclination to repeat my pains, and fill up the
wanting part of my answer, by tracing Sir Robert again, through all the
windings and obscurities, which are to be met with in the several
branches of his wonderful system. The king, and body of the nation, have
since so thoroughly confuted his Hypothesis, that I suppose no body
hereafter will have either the confidence to appear against our common
safety, and be again an advocate for slavery; or the weakness to be
deceived with contradictions dressed up in a popular stile, and
well-turned periods: for if any one will be at the pains, himself, in
those parts, which are here untouched, to strip Sir Robert's discourses
of the flourish of doubtful expressions, and endeavour to reduce his
words to direct, positive, intelligible propositions, and then compare
them one with another, he will quickly be satisfied, there was never so
much glib nonsense put together in well-sounding English. If he think it
not worth while to examine his works all thro', let him make an
experiment in that part, where he treats of usurpation; and let him try,
whether he can, with all his skill, make Sir Robert intelligible, and
consistent with himself, or common sense. I should not speak so plainly
of a gentleman, long since past answering, had not the pulpit, of late
years, publicly owned his doctrine, and made it the current divinity of
the times. It is necessary those men, who taking on them to be teachers,
have so dangerously misled others, should be openly shewed of what
authority this their Patriarch is, whom they have so blindly followed,
that so they may either retract what upon so ill grounds they have
vented, and cannot be maintained; or else justify those principles which
they preached up for gospel; though they had no better an author than an
English courtier: for I should not have writ against Sir Robert, or taken
the pains to shew his mistakes, inconsistencies, and want of (what he so
much boasts of, and pretends wholly to build on) scripture-proofs, were
there not men amongst us, who, by crying up his books, and espousing his
doctrine, save me from the reproach of writing against a dead adversary.
They have been so zealous in this point, that, if I have done him any
wrong, I cannot hope they should spare me. I wish, where they have done
the truth and the public wrong, they would be as ready to redress it, and
allow its just weight to this reflection, viz. that there cannot be done
a greater mischief to prince and people, than the propagating wrong
notions concerning government; that so at last all times might not have
reason to complain of the Drum Ecclesiastic. If any one, concerned
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