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Locke and the Liberal Order

The bedrock, the chain built on it, and the inference that will not hold.

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Locke’s politics is a chain of inferences rather than a set of opinions, which is why it persuades and why arguing with it in the middle accomplishes nothing. The bedrock is theological — a claim the divine-right tradition also holds, which is what makes the collision worth studying. Part One builds the chain link by link, in Locke’s own words. Part Two follows it to where it strains under its own weight. Part Three goes back to the foundation and shows where the second stone was laid crooked.

Part One · The Foundation and the Chain

God’s ownership of man is the foundation of Lockean liberty — a premise that is not secular and cannot be answered with a secular argument. Note the conclusion Locke draws in the same breath, since Part Three asks how far it reaches: sharing one community of nature, “there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us” that would let us use one another the way we use beasts.

1. 1

   Men are the workmanship and property of God

   Sent into the world by God’s order and about his business (§6). A man may not even destroy himself, because he is not his own (§§6, 23).

2. 2

   Therefore no man was made for another’s use

   All men are the property of one master and share one community of nature; no man holds another the way a man holds a beast (§6).

3. 3

   Therefore no man has natural jurisdiction over another

   “All the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another” (§4); men are “by nature all free, equal and independent” (§95) — equality of jurisdiction specifically, since Locke allows age, virtue, and merit to give precedency (§54).

4. 4

   Therefore liberty is freedom from another’s arbitrary will

   Not freedom from law. Free within the bounds of the law of nature (§4); “not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man” (§22). Tyranny is “the exercise of power beyond right” (§199).

5. 5

   Therefore the natural condition of mankind is the state of nature

   Entailed by link 3, not a historical claim: “men living together according to reason, without a common superior on earth, with authority to judge between them” (§19).

6. 6

   That condition is governed by law; rights are the shadow of duties

   “The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it” (§6), standing “as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others” — conforming, ultimately, “to the will of God” (§135).

7. 7

   Therefore every man executes that law himself

   If no man has jurisdiction over me, no man but me can execute the law against my wrongdoer — judge, interpreter, and executioner in his own case (§§7, 13, 136).

8. 8

   Therefore the natural condition is defective — in administration, not standard

   Three wants: an established, settled, known law (§124); a known and indifferent judge (§125); power to back the sentence (§126).

9. 9

   Therefore authority cannot be inherited or paternal; it must be produced

   The whole burden of the First Treatise against Filmer. The earliest governments were in fact fatherly, Locke grants, but by consent of the grown children, not by paternal right (§74).

10. 10

    Therefore the only material for making authority is consent

    No one may be “subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent” (§95). Authority is assembled from below, out of what each man already owns.

11. 11

    Therefore the body so formed acts by the majority

    It moves “whither the greater force carries it, which is the consent of the majority” (§96) — mechanics, not a moral standard.

12. 12

    Therefore government exists for one end and holds power on trust

    “The great and chief end… of men’s uniting into commonwealths… is the preservation of their property” (§124) — lives, liberties, estates (§123). A fiduciary power, removable when it acts against its trust (§149).

13. 13

    Therefore someone must determine when the trust has been broken

    Between legislative and people “there can be no judge on earth” (§168). Who shall judge? “The people shall be judge” (§240) — and further, every man is judge for himself (§241).

14. 14

    Therefore the final enforcement of the limit is war

    The state of war is the condition “wherein there is no appeal but to heaven” (§21). A chain that began with God’s ownership of men ends with the sword — and Locke says it ends there validly.

Part Two · Where the Chain Strains

Grant the foundation, and the trouble still appears at links 10, 13, and 14.

I · The Standard: the law has no text, and no one is authorized to state it

Link 12 makes the law of nature the boundary of legislative power; link 13 asks who reads it. But a prior question arrives first: who states its content? Locke concedes the difficulty — the law of nature is “unwritten, and so no where to be found but in the minds of men” (§136). He meant to repair this: the Essay claims “morality is capable of demonstration, as well as mathematics.” He never produced the demonstration, and in The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) he conceded the point outright — that “unassisted reason” had failed to make out an entire body of the law of nature, and that his remedy was revelation, a public source he does not use when building the political argument. The limit at link 12 is therefore unpublished; each party cites a law whose text he supplies himself.

II · The Arbiter: private judgment, expelled at the founding, returns at the top

Inside civil society Locke solves adjudication well — “the community comes to be umpire, by settled standing rules, indifferent, and the same to all parties” (§87). That machinery does not reach the case links 13 and 14 arrive at: no judge on earth, the people judging, each man judging for himself, the appeal to heaven as the remainder. Appeal to heaven equals war — a limit enforceable only by war is no limit on ordinary government, and the defect that justified the institution is reinstalled above it.

Why men need government	What links 13–14 ask the same men to do
Self-love makes men partial to themselves and their friends (§13)	Judge the largest case of all, in which they are a party (§240)
They are ignorant of the law for want of study (§124)	State its content against the legislature’s own reading
Through passion or interest they miscite and misapply it (§136)	Determine whether the legislature has miscited it
They lack power to back a sentence when right (§126)	Enforce the verdict by an appeal to heaven (§§21, 242)

This is not an oversight. It follows from link 10: once authority is generated by the consent of equals, no office can stand above the consenting parties, because any such office would itself require their consent to exist. Locke cannot supply an arbiter without abandoning what makes his account distinctive.

III · The Consent Nobody Gave

Every man now living was born into a standing government, under laws made before he existed, and none of them was asked. Locke’s repair is tacit consent — a man gives it by enjoying any part of a government’s dominions, “whether this his possession be of land… or a lodging only for a week; or… barely travelling freely on the highway” (§119). Walking down a road is consent. If that counts, consent does no work, since nothing short of emigration would fail to count; if it doesn’t count, the authority governing him rests on an act he never performed.

IV · What Was Removed: he kept Hooker’s citations and discarded Hooker’s institutions

Hooker’s law of nature operates inside a Christian commonwealth with a teaching church, a body of divine positive law in Scripture, and magistrates who judge under God. Locke half-admits the dependence: the Letter Concerning Toleration excludes atheists because oaths have no hold on them without God — conceding his order presupposes a common religion it can neither establish nor enforce.

Function	Older Christian order	Locke
Legislates the law	God	God — agreed
Publishes it	Creation and Scripture together	Reason alone, as the ordinary public source
States its content	Teaching office of the church, Christian magistrate	No one; nowhere but in the minds of men (§136)
Adjudicates disputes	Ecclesiastical and civil courts, each under God	No judge on earth (§168); the people (§240); each man for himself (§241)
Final remedy against a tyrant	Correction and deposition by inferior magistrates under law	Appeal to heaven, which is war (§§21, 242)

Part Three · The Joint That Fails

Not the foundation, which is sound, but the step from link 1 to link 3. Link 1 is not the place to fight — that men are God’s workmanship is true, and Filmer holds it as firmly as Locke. The fight is over what God’s ownership distributed.

Read the conclusion of the workmanship argument exactly as it stands. What cannot be supposed is “any such subordination… as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our’s” (§6). What is proved: men are not made for one another’s use, therefore none may destroy or own another. What Locke needs from it, three links later: no man may hold office over another. Nothing bridges them. Scripture holds both halves — equality of nature and inequality of office — together without strain (Gen. 1:27 with 3:16; Acts 17:26 with Rom. 13:1), which is the clearest proof the inference is not necessary.

Part Four · What Followed

An office nobody occupies does not stay empty. Because someone must decide what the law of nature requires, the deciding passed to whoever could make a decision stick, and the content moved with each occupant. The form holds across three centuries; the content inverts.

Moment	What the law of nature was said to require	Who arbitrated
Locke, 1689	Property, toleration, government on trust	The people, ultimately by arms
1776	Unalienable rights, government by consent	Assemblies, then war
Paine and 1789	Universal rights of man against all inherited authority	The assembly, then the committee
Bentham and Mill	Nothing — natural rights dismissed, utility substituted	The legislature
American courts, 20c	Substantive liberty read out of due process	The Supreme Court
Casey, 1992	“The right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe”	The Supreme Court

A law that once bound the individual to duties he did not choose becomes a right that liberates him from them, and nothing arrests the drift, because no office has standing to say the reading is wrong. A system that began by saying men are God’s property ends by saying each man defines existence for himself.

SOURCES · John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (1689), §§4, 6, 7, 13, 19, 21–23, 25, 54, 74, 87, 95–96, 119, 123–126, 135–136, 138, 149, 168, 199, 240–242 (Laslett numbering) · First Treatise · Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) · Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) · Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) · Robert Filmer, Patriarcha (1680) · Richard Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity · Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992)