Toleration and how men ought to lead their lives are two central themes to Locke’s entire political philosophy, yet it is remarkable, if one approaches his works from the Two Treatises, how politically conservative and accepting he was at Oxford both of the Restoration and Charles’s later Act of Uniformity. Anthony Ashley Cooper (1621-83) was a wealthy and politically powerful patron to work for, and Ashley worked for whomever was in power – Royalists, Parliamentarians, the Protectorate, and the Restoration monarchy. In 1662 Charles II’s government passed a new Act of Uniformity, which Locke supported in his Tracts as being within the monarch’s rights. It opposes the organic Aristotelian conception of the state that perceives the state as the natural result of social growth – a development Locke agrees with but rejects the non-consensual characteristic of the Aristotelian state. There were various uprisings in Scotland in 1666, 1679, and 1685, which had led to thousands of martyrs burning at the stake and being hanged for their opposition. The Essays were unpublished but circulated and had an influence on writers such as James Tyrell (1642-1718). Locke’s arguments lifted from his texts present an uncompromising and modern vision of empiricism and scientific enquiry; however, his language is immersed in Old Testament anecdotes and references that when we peruse his writings, we must remember that John Locke was of Seventeenth Century Puritan and Scholastic background, and at Oxford he studied amidst the general University contract of religious uniformity until his departure on a freer, if relatively unsure foot, in employment with the politically ambitious courtier Lord Ashley. “For ’tis not every Compact that puts an end to the State of Nature between men.” (§14). With such a convoluted theory, surely God would have given us indications as to his meaning, after all, Locke adds, Scripture tells us whom we can and cannot marry. Locke begins with how disruptive the religious “scribblings” of the age have been to his country, pens causing “as much guilt as their swords.” While acknowledging his respect for both authority and liberty, Locke prefers to steer a middle path observing that liberty may “turn loose to the tyranny of a religious rage,” unless its outward form is subjected to the state’s jurisdiction – that is, religious dissent should be subservient to the need to secure the peace, and thus the people ought to accept the religious policy of the presiding regimes. A man has perfect liberty over his conscience (the “liberty of judgement”). His argument begins with an acceptance of God’s existence (“there will be no one to deny the existence of God” – and certainly not at Oxford, when subscribing to the Christian faith and the eventual taking of Holy Orders for tutors was a necessary condition of being admitted). Firstly, Filmer says evidence of patriarchy is that the ruler possessed the power of death over people – to which Locke replies, anyone may have that power. The introduction of money also permits a man to hold his profit in the form of coin, which does not waste, and thereby enables him (justly) to increase his wealth. Oxford had enjoyed an influx of scientific inquiry and humanism – Roger Bacon (1220-92), John Wycliffe (1330-84), Desiderius Erasmus (1469-1536) and Sir Thomas More (1477-1535), all had their influence on the colleges. Locke repeats the purpose of government of securing the peace and tranquillity of the commonwealth and stresses the separation of the Church and State in what can be seen as the glimmerings of his minimal state theory. At some point, a man’s reason could be said to bifurcate, with one branch producing rationalisations – excuses for initiating violence – and the other branch reflecting the laws of nature that man is free and must logically accept his neighbour’s right to be free and to live without interference. He objected strongly to the claims made by René Descartes that there are a priori principles from which knowledge can be derived. He was baptised the same day, as both of his parents were Puritans. During this time, Locke served as Secretary of the Board of Trade and Plantations and Secretary to the Lords Proprietors of Carolina, which helped to shape his ideas on international trade and economics. John Locke (1632-1704), an English philosopher, was opposed to subjecting knowledge to revelation and claimed that faith could not have the power of authority in the face of clear and distinct experimental data. Locke defines knowledge as the connection and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy, of the ideas humans form. Oxford and Locke prudently rejoiced in the Restoration in a commissioned book of poetry: “Our prayers are heard,” penned Locke – but so had he and his Oxford colleagues praised Cromwell’s rule, “You, mighty Prince!” (V) Initially, Locke was unwilling to add to the political controversies of the era, until he penned his first two Tracts on Government. Debate had heated up following the Act of Uniformity (1662), and in Scotland, the Covenanters, who opposed any form of episcopalianism (hierarchical rule of bishops and archbishops) and uniformity, suffered brutally. For elsewhere, Locke observes that the fair price (a term that has wended down through the ages from Aristotle) is that which is generated in a market on a particular occasion, tempered by notions of Christian charity to avoid gaining excess profits (leaving enough for others, as Locke advises for the enclosure of land). Locke’s comment on the reign of good princes shows good perception – if the state appears to work efficiently, then it is more disposed to expanding its goodly services and thereby weakening or even destroying the very reason for its formation. As a medium of exchange, he states that "money is capable by exchange to procure us the necessaries or conveniences of life," and for loanable funds, "it comes to be of the same nature with land by yielding a certain yearly income…or interest.". What power it should wield is limited to the powers that man possessed in the state of nature which should also be limited to serving the public good. On the whole, Locke’s anarchic state of nature is a benevolent condition of anarchic individualism, rather than Hobbesian brutality and mutual suspicion, in which conscience guides actions and reason (reflecting the law of nature) highlights the wrongness and counter-productivity of aggressing against one’s neighbour. He did not quite see the Act of Union of 1707, though the thrones of England and Scotland were held in personal union throughout his lifetime. Just as we have seen in his other writings, Locke’s moral absolutism and even Old Testament ethic resurface – murderers (§12) and thieves (§18) deserve death, for a man has a right to destroy that which threatens his life. Filmer claims sovereignty to pass through Adam’s lineage – but who is not of that lineage, Locke asks. If he lets his grass rot, or his fruit perish, then his enclosure reverts back to wasteland – i.e., common ownership, and hence to be available for another to cultivate. Locke fled to the Netherlands in 1683, under strong suspicion of involvement in the Rye House Plot, although there is little evidence to suggest that he was directly involved in the scheme. In discussing paternal power, Locke proclaims that children are under their parents’ rule until maturity, but, in comparison with Filmer, who claimed that no men can be free because of the subjection to their parents, Locke asserts that the development of a man’s reason frees him from their protection. Filmer claims that Adam’s power did not end in him but was passed onto succeeding generations and that secondly, present princes and rulers are direct descendants of that power. The reason? He also prepares estimates of the cash requirements for different economic groups (landholders, labourers, and brokers). What form a government takes depends on where the supreme (legislative) power is located. “For then Mankind will be in a far worse condition, than in the State of Nature, if they shall have armed one or a few Men with the joynt power of a Multitude. John Locke was a 17th-century British philosopher who contributed both to modern political discourse and the foundations of empiricism. Locke accompanied Mary II back to England in 1688. If a man’s conscience is to be free from interference, then so too must his freedom to express himself on his own land, say.

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