Locke Publishes the Two Treatises of Government
Government exists to protect life, liberty, and property, and rules only by the consent of the governed
Quick facts
- Author
- John Locke
- Work
- Two Treatises of Government
- Published
- 1689
- Key idea
- Natural rights, government by consent, right to resist tyranny
What happened
John Locke published Two Treatises of Government in 1689, shortly after England's Glorious Revolution replaced James II with William and Mary. The First Treatise refuted the theory of the divine right of kings. The Second Treatise argued instead that people in a state of nature already possess natural rights to life, liberty, and property, and that they form governments by consent specifically to protect those rights. If a government violates that trust, Locke argued, the people retain a right to resist and replace it. He also grounded property in labor: mixing one's work with unowned land or resources, he argued, makes them rightfully one's own.
Why it matters
Locke's consent-based theory of government, with its built-in justification for resisting a government that breaks the trust, became the direct philosophical source for the American Declaration of Independence's language of unalienable rights and government deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed.
How we know
The Two Treatises survive in Locke's original text; the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entries on Locke and on his political philosophy summarize the work's arguments and 1689 publication from that text.
Sources
- John Locke (Project Gutenberg). Two Treatises of Government · Primary source (author-declared)gutenberg.org · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Locke's Political Philosophy · Reputable sourceplato.stanford.edu · The domain "plato.stanford.edu" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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