John Locke's Philosophy leading to America's Independence

But the most potent aspect of Locke's thought was his political philosophy as be in his two treatises on government. The first treatise was largely a refutation of the traditional belief in the divinely approve right of kings. This was an essential yard, of course, for any revolution and Locke wrote his treatises "to justify the storied and bloodless revolution of 1688," saying that he hoped they would serve to " rig the Throne of our Great Restorer, Our present King William--to make soundly his Title, in the apply of the People'" (quoted in Squadrito 95). The revolution, Locke believed, was a necessary step taken by the people to protect their natural rights and the soupcon that a people could be responsible for their own survival of rulers and that even a monarch could only rule with the consent of the governed was still a hotly contested notion a century later.

The constitutionally limited monarchy, which was imposed on William when he succeeded the deposed James II, even included representation in the admit of Commons which "allowed for the participation of His Majesty's subjects in the affairs of government" and the side were enormously proud of possessing the only constitution in the humanity "special

Dunn, John. "The Politics of Locke in England and the States in the Eighteenth Century." John Locke: Problems and Perspectives. Ed. John Yolton. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1969.

Locke, John. The Second Treatise of Government. 1690. Ed. doubting Thomas P. Peardon. New York: Macmillan, 1952.

Morgan, Edmund S.

Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America. New York: Norton, 1988.

In fact, Locke's ideas in this work became so easy slamn and his influence was so plain in the "form, phraseology, and satisfy" of the Declaration of Independence that Thomas Jefferson "was accused of copying" from it (Peardon xx). To accusations that these ideas had previously been "set into print by Locke," Jefferson responded, perhaps a chipping disingenuously, that "'whether I had gathered my ideas from reading or reflection I do not know [and] I only know that I turned to neither book nor pamphlet man writing it'" (quoted in McDonald 176). As Dunn noted, the ideas in the Second Treatise "were imprisoned by a sort of intellectual osmosis" so that Americans could put up to his ideas without really being aware of it, but educated Americans, of whom Jefferson was surely one, "derived their view of politics directly from it" (quoted in Squadrito 121).

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