Revolutionary Politics and Locke's Two Treatises of Government

By Richard Ashcraft

Richard Ashcraft offers a new interpretation of the political thought of John Locke by viewing his ideas, especially those in the Two Treatises of Government, in the context of his political activity. Linking the implications of Locke's political theory with his practical politics, Professor Ashcraft focuses on Locke's involvement with the radical Whigs, who challenged the established order in England from the 1670s to the 1690s. An equally important aim of the author is to provide a case study of a revolutionary movement that includes a discussion of its organization, ideology, socio-economic composition, and political activities.

Based upon a detailed examination of manuscripts, diaries, correspondence, and newspapers, Professor Ashcraft presents a wealth of new historical evidence on the political life of Restoration England. This study represents an example of an approach to political theory that stresses the importance of authorial intentions and of the political, social, and economic influences that structure a particular political debate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Release date: Jul 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781400823420

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

THE Secretary of State listened with intense interest as the man across from him confessed his involvement in a plot to assassinate the king and spoke of the activities of many others who planned to raise a general insurrection in England. Within hours of this confession, John Locke hastily departed from London, taking with him the unfinished manuscript of the Two Treatises of Government. Ahead lay six years of hiding and life as a political exile in Holland for the author of one of the classic works of Western political literature. In this book, I propose to say something about how these events are interrelated and what significance that relationship has for our understanding of Locke's political theory, and of the Two Treatises of Government, in particular.

The reader will decide whether this endeavor is successfully carried out in the succeeding pages, but it may be wondered why the connection of the Two Treatises with the revolutionary activities of a comparatively small number of individuals in the 1680s should be made. And even assuming such a connection can be made, aside from imparting such information as might satisfy one's historical curiosity, what could possibly be learned about Locke's political theory from the historical uncovering of its genesis? Based upon the education and training I received in political theory, and my subsequent reading of the secondary literature in the field, these questions are likely to be asked, and it is to these interrogatories that this Introduction is addressed.

For many years, political theory has been conceived as a subcategory of philosophy. And as a subsidiary, it has been subject to the governing rules of its parent discipline. As a consequence, the epistemological and methodological practices of philosophy have assumed a dominant importance in the interpretive literature on political theory. Hence, interpreters are inclined to search for systematic logical relationships among the concepts contained in a work of political theory, or to extract from the latter universally valid or timeless principles, analogous to the axioms of geometry or the laws of physics, or to employ certain propositions advanced by the theorist as empirically verifiable or falsifiable hypotheses, or to take the text as a kind of private language, whose meaning is revealed by unraveling the internal connections between certain statements by the author. In other words, a particular work of political theory is assumed to make sense insofar as it can be explained or reconstructed using one or more of these philosophical approaches, although interpreters differ among themselves as to which approach best describes the enterprise of philosophy itself.¹

Whatever the specific philosophical premise adopted by the interpreter, hundreds of monographs, articles, and textbooks on political theory have been written within the parameters of a general framework that allows the author to assume that political theory is a body of philosophical and scientific knowledge . . . regardless of when and where it was originally written . . . On this assumption, a whole range of writers from Plato to Mill will be studied without attention to the particular conditions which surrounded them at the time they wrote.² Even when this operative assumption is not so starkly stated, the fact is that the practice of political theory, including the way in which courses on political theory are taught within universities, embodies and reinforces this conception of what political theory is and how it is to be understood. It is true, the merits of possessing a knowledge of the social and political conditions under which political theories were formulated are sometimes admitted, for example by John Plamenatz in his major study of political theory, although it is not the axis from which he approaches the subject.³ In other words, the point about the practice of political theory is important because, while certain intellectual concessions are made to a historically grounded approach to political theory by most contemporary political theorists, these concessions do not reflect the dominant beliefs or practices of those theorists. Or, to put it another way, from their standpoint, there may be a contingent but there is no essential relationship between the meaning of a political theory and its historical genesis. Thus, historical investigation can play no significant role in shaping or reshaping one's conception of political theory or in the interpretation of a specific text within the pantheon of the great works of political theory.

I have undertaken this study on the basis of a different set of assumptions. In my view, a political theory is a set of structured meanings that are understandable only in reference to a specified context, wherein the concepts, terminology, and even the internal structure of the theory itself are viewed in relation to a comprehensive ordering of the elements of social life. The purposive vagueness of this reference to social life derives not only from the fact that the primary axis of meaning of a political theory may be associated with the contextual world either of the theorist or of the interpreter, but also from the fact that political ideas can be related to the social life-world in two different, though not wholly separable, ways. A political theory is both a form of social consciousness that, as Hegel put it, allows individuals to feel at home in the world they have created, and at the same time, it supplies the criteria according to which the social actions appropriate for changing that world are rendered meaningful.

In the first instance, political ideas, along with ideas drawn from religion, philosophy, economics, literature, and so on, are constitutive elements of the social consciousness of individuals within a particular culture. Some political ideas are thus incorporated into this cultural consciousness in such a manner as to act as constraints upon the kinds of beliefs and practices that a member of that society can engage in or define as political actions. In this respect, political theories represent a particular configuration of beliefs and actions that appear meaningful to members of a specific society because they can be related to a set of socially constituted practices shared by an audience to whom the theorist has addressed himself. As a form of communicative action, political theory is not simply the product of an individual mind, however great that political theorist might be. As Karl Mannheim observed,

Strictly speaking it is incorrect to say that the single individual thinks. Rather it is more correct to insist that he participates in thinking further what other men have thought before him. He finds himself in an inherited situation with patterns of thought which are appropriate to this situation and attempts to elaborate further the inherited modes of response or to substitute others for them in order to deal more adequately with the new challenges which have arisen out of the shifts and changes in his situation.⁴

From this standpoint, it is always relevant to raise questions concerning the meaning of a particular political theory that are referrable to the actor's social life-world, the nature of the intended audience, and the purposes for which the political theory was formulated. Political theory in this sense takes on a comprehensive character, extending into seemingly remote areas of intellectual life, as part of the effort to refashion the cultural dimensions of meaning from the standpoint of the political actors. If we accept that the meanings that make up our world are a continuously developing structure, then the emergence of a political theory represents an attempt to articulate one of the possible patterns of thought within the range of structured meanings that comprise the social consciousness of members of a particular society. In viewing Locke's political theory as a particular expression of social consciousness for individuals living in seventeenth-century England, therefore, I have tried to show how patterns of thought developed that drew together certain philosophical, religious, economic, and sociological assumptions held by seventeenth-century Englishmen in order to provide a supporting structure for a set of concretely stated political objectives associated with Locke's political theory and with the actions of the audience to whom it was addressed.

One of the corollaries attached to an approach that views political theory as an admixture of concepts and metaphors drawn from various disciplinary areas of thought is that the meaning of these political ideas is expressed through several levels of thinking. Political theory, that is, is no more confined to a few great books than it is the conceptual property of a few extraordinary individuals. Rather, a more descriptively diverse characterization of political theory is needed precisely in order to appreciate its breadth and scope as a cultural phenomenon. The sociological dimensions of political consciousness cannot be captured by the definition of political theory prevalent in the secondary literature on political theory. Although I believe these general methodological propositions are applicable to any attempt to arrive at an understanding of the cultural consciousness of one or more groups within a particular society at any time, certainly they take on an increased practical importance during periods of intense social conflict. For, in seeking to mobilize individuals from different races, classes, age groups, and geographical areas, political parties or movements express themselves not only through the highly formalized medium of books, but also through newspapers, pamphlets, sermons, broadsides, and various literary forms (plays, novels, poetry). Political theory as a social language flows through all these media.⁵

These sources have generally been ignored as part of the interpretive framework for a discussion of political theory, because whatever political comments they may contain are regarded as being too pedestrian to merit consideration in the literature on political theory. This neglect simply reinforces the propensity to identify political theory with philosophy—or, rather, with a few works written by philosophers—through the exclusion of other documentary evidence that might have a bearing on the social meaning of a particular political theory. The intellectual rationale for this myopic conceptualization is usually stated in terms of a dichotomy between philosophy and ideology, with all levels of thought—save the highest—being relegated to the latter category of consciousness. I have discussed elsewhere some of the difficulties of maintaining such a distinction.⁶ Suffice it to say here that, viewed from the sociological standpoint that considers political theory in relation to a socially defined audience whose members seek to obtain certain practical advantages through social action, ideology is not by definition a low level of philosophy; on the contrary, a philosophical argument is merely one form of ideological response to those obstacles within the social life-world which inhibit the realization of these objectives. The point, therefore, is not to replace lower levels of thought with the higher level of philosophy, but to demonstrate the interrelationships that obtain among all the levels of the political consciousness of the group or collectivity.

A second corollary that follows from this approach to political theory is that it democratizes the notion of political theory. It is implicit in the remarks above that political theory is produced by thousands of individuals, and not merely by a few philosophers or academicians. Nor is it only an enlargement of the intelligentsia that I have in mind. As the army debates at Putney and the coffeehouse discussions in the seventeenth century demonstrate, rank-and-file soldiers and tradesmen were capable of expressing their political theories with an impressive cogency and intensity of feeling. This discovery would be far less surprising were it not for the emphasis we have heretofore placed upon the systematic logical properties of a political theory. If, on the other hand, the emphasis shifted toward the substantive core of a political theory, the way in which it is directed toward the resolution of a set of practical social problems and the means by which it assimilates the justificatory arguments necessary to resolve those problems, we might well be prepared to accept that such a political theory is available to a very extensive constituency, certainly one that reaches down to the lowest socioeconomic levels of society.⁷

This recognition leads to the second crucial dimension of political theory: the fact that it is focused upon a set of specific social actions that are designed to achieve practical benefits for the holders of a particular political perspective (though not necessarily benefits that are exclusive to them). Toleration for religious beliefs, extension of the franchise, civil rights, and equal treatment under the law are illustrations of what I have in mind. To achieve these objectives almost always involves a redistribution of political, economic, or social power. The willingness of the holders of power to accede to these demands for redistribution has a definite bearing upon the degree and type of mobilization undertaken by those making the demands.⁸ Hence, the most indeterminate aspect of political theory, in my view, is not the relatively stable patterns of thought in which it is rooted, despite the fact that these patterns are continuously being reformulated from time to time, nor is it the contingently defined practical issues that are perceived as problems to be resolved through political action; rather, it is the form of organization through which these ideas and practical demands find expression.

To some extent, the institutionalization of political parties has rendered the question of political organization less problematic, but even where such highly developed institutions predominate, large-scale spontaneous social movements have arisen outside these parameters (for example, in France in May 1968; the anti-Vietnam war movement in the United States). In the context of seventeenth-century political life, I have thought it appropriate to refer to the collection of Dissenters, Whigs, and radicals as a political movement. This terminology is compatible with that employed by contemporary social scientists, for whom a social movement represents an effort by a large number of people to solve collectively a problem that they feel they have in common.⁹ In this case, we can designate a core problem—religious toleration—around which other related problems developed.

The linkage between history and political theory in this study is therefore expressed through the concrete organizational form of a political movement. Locke's political theory, I shall argue, arose within the context of a political movement in which he was a participant, along with thousands of others. The Two Treatises of Government was, in effect, the political manifesto of this movement. Much of the meaning of Locke's political theory is thus rooted not only in a particular perception of social reality he shared with others in seventeenth-century England, but it is also tied in rather concrete terms to the specific political objectives around which large numbers of individuals organized themselves in the 1670s and 1680s under the leadership of the Earl of Shaftesbury.

The problems of drawing out the connections between a political theory and its historical context do not all lie on the plane of determining what conceptual apparatus is best suited to carrying out this endeavor. There are, in addition, certain specific difficulties attached to the effort of supplying the historical dimensions of the context for John Locke's political theory. The 1680s in England was a decade marked by a pervasive fear of Catholicism, a widespread belief that a conspiracy existed to reestablish that religion in England, and the practice of severe repression directed against political and religious dissidents. The lies, suspicion, deceit, and treachery that infiltrated the political arena during this period present serious problems with respect to the integrity of the evidence upon which the historian generally relies. Historical investigation becomes a difficult undertaking when the boundaries of collective paranoia or official dissimulation cannot be easily determined, or when secrecy and deception have become socially widespread practices.¹⁰

The very thing that makes historical investigation difficult, however (namely, the secret and conspiratorial character of political life), is, as it happens, the most important point to be understood with respect to the political actions and arguments of Locke and those who were his political associates in the 1680s. For, much of the meaning of the latter's theoretical perspective is derived from their perception of social reality in these terms. Hence, for anyone who wishes to integrate political theorizing with the historical events of the 1670s and 1680s, there is no choice but to come to grips with the historical material, however problematic it may be, viewed against the normal evidential standards relied upon by historians. In making my way through manuscripts, newspapers, correspondence, and hundreds of tracts and sermons, I have attempted to reconstruct how this social reality was perceived, primarily by the members of a radical political movement, but sometimes, by their opponents as well.

To speak of the practical organization of interests and the importance of policy objectives to a social movement is to recite a banal and basic presupposition with which virtually all sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists begin their investigations. Nevertheless, interpreters of political theory have generally traveled through history unencumbered by this piece of intellectual baggage. But, apart from reemphasizing the importance of the practical dimensions of political theory, there is also a need to break down the rather firm dichotomy between interests and ideas that obtains among a sizable body of practical-minded social scientists. On the one hand, political slogans, symbols, and party manifestoes, precisely because they constitute part of the process of organizing and implementing the political thinking of large masses of people, are extremely important expressions of ideas. Indeed, these exclamatory ideas provide the basic organizational context for any systematic intellectual framework that has been elevated to a place of prominence in the history of political theory. The significance of attempting to take into account the organizing role of ideas is that it makes the practical objectives of a political theory a major axis for the interpretation of the meaning of the concepts employed by the theorist. At the same time, however, the meaning of a political theory cannot be simply deduced or derived from a catalog of empirically defined interests associated with a particular group of individuals. However concretely one conceives of the practical interests and motivations of a set of political actors, there are patterns of thought, socially established conventions, and constraints upon the practice of political communication that must be rendered meaningful through a reference to the self-understood forms of thought in the consciousness of the historical actors themselves. In this study, I have tried to identify the social composition of the audience for Locke's political theory both with respect to their socioeconomic interests and in terms of the social language they employed. These two factors were linked organizationally in the form of a political movement that sought to realize certain specific practical objectives through social action.

Thus, insofar as political theory draws its social significance from the meanings it incorporates from inherited patterns of thought, attention needs to be paid to the usage of a social language that has a particular salience for identifiable social groups, the appeal to respected cultural authorities and important historical events, and the manner in which presuppositions drawn from other, nonpolitical, areas of social life are deployed on behalf of the political theory. Insofar as political theory functions as part of a process of mass mobilization of individuals to engage in certain social actions, the interpreter requires a detailed knowledge of how different social groups perceive the political problems in their society, what practices they believe will lead to a solution of these problems, and what consequences follow from both the perceptions of the problems and the actions proposed or taken to resolve them with respect to the structure of social relationships in that society. According to the conception of political theory I have employed in this study, therefore, the conjunction of history and political theory is possible only on the presupposition that the latter is itself a sociological phenomenon to be investigated.

To end the discussion there would be misleading. It is not sufficient to emphasize the importance of sociologically defined factors to one's conception of political theory; it is also necessary to preserve the connection between the historical individual and the particular way in which political ideas are systematically organized in a specific work. As Alfred Schutz phrased the point,

If the social sciences aim indeed at explaining social reality, then . . . [they] must include a reference to the subjective meaning an action has for the actor.¹¹

Since I regard the writing of a work of political theory (the Two Treatises of Government) as a social action, this means that the actor's intentions, as well as the social conventions of meaning applicable to that type of social action, need to be taken into account if the political theory produced through this action and concretized in a discrete object (book, sermon, tract) is to have a meaning that preserves the existential identity of its author. Thus, in addition to delineating the larger dimensions of the political theory associated with the participants in the radical political movement of the 1680s, I have tried to provide a framework for understanding the subjectively intended meaning of Locke's action in writing the Two Treatises of Government. ¹²

It is easy to posit, on the general level of the methodological debate that has raged within the social sciences since the nineteenth century, that there is an incompatibility between the methods appropriate for understanding social structures, historically unique problems, and the subjectively intended meaning of individual action. Moreover, since I view political theory as ideology, and have therefore considered Locke as an ideologist of a political movement, it is also easy to become trapped under the weight of such polemically charged labels as bourgeois or liberal. As Mannheim noted, in an observation that I believe is relevant to both points,

Nothing is simpler than to maintain that a certain type of thinking is feudal, bourgeois or proletarian, liberal, socialistic, or conservative, as long as there is no analytical method for demonstrating it and no criteria have been adduced which will provide a control over the demonstration. Hence the chief task in the present state of research is to elaborate and concretize the hypotheses involved in such a way that they can be made the basis of inductive studies.¹³

In other words, while I recognize that, in sketching the basic outlines of my approach to political theory in this Introduction I have raised issues that are deeply enmeshed in the most important theoretical controversies within the social sciences, I have tried in this study to follow Mannheim's admonition to concretize those issues. That is, I have sought to interpret Locke's political theory from the standpoint of the importance of the subjectively intended meaning he wished to convey through the action of writing the Two Treatises of Government. At the same time, I have viewed this action as part of a larger network of social actions engaged in by Locke, and perforce by others. These actions represent a collective endeavor to restructure the relations of power in seventeenth-century England. They can, therefore, be studied using the methods one would employ in order to understand the phenomena of social movements, ideologies, and revolutions. If, in endeavoring to integrate these interpretive objectives, I have sublimated the discussion of the methodological problems they raise to the effort to provide a historical reconstruction of Lockean political theory, this is largely due to the fact that I can see no other means by which to effect a theoretical synthesis.

Thus far, the discussion has focused upon the social consciousness of political actors and the manner in which political theory reflects and reshapes that social consciousness. Some mention must also be made, however, of those causal relationships which are not adequately accounted for by a theoretical perspective defined exclusively in terms of the phenomenological consciousness of historical subjects, but which are nevertheless important to the interpretation of the beliefs and actions of these subjects. Thus, class divisions, long-term economic tendencies, and other structural factors must be included as part of any explanation of the production of political theory as a distinctly sociological phenomenon.¹⁴ In relating these causal relationships to the structures of meaning prevalent in seventeenth-century England, the self-reflective dimensions of an interpretation assume a primary importance. By that I mean that assertions of causal relationships in the past are themselves meaningful within the framework of the social language of the present. Whatever one may say regarding the historical accuracy of specific statements in the works of Marx or Weber with respect to the origins of capitalism, the question of what relationship exists between causal forces and belief systems within the domain of social action is decidedly an issue the resolution of which is, for us, an essential determinant of the meaning of social science.¹⁵

Viewed from the perspective of the individual, numerous causal relationships external to his consciousness that nevertheless determine his actions can always be identified. From the standpoint of a social collectivity, a class or a social movement, however (especially when its social consciousness is seen in relation not only to internally generated ideas and arguments, but also in the context of what its opponents were saying), the number of causal relationships that are external to the social consciousness of the political actors, and that need to be incorporated into the interpreter's account of that social consciousness, are much fewer than many social scientists believe. On the other hand, it is fair to say that though they may be few in number, such relationships are invariably of great explanatory significance.

This, too, is a thorny and complicated methodological issue whose exploration would require much more space than I can devote to it here. But perhaps it will prove helpful to offer a concrete illustration of what I mean. The Whigs as a political party identified themselves as ideological opponents of monarchical absolutism, and as defenders of commercial expansion and the trading interests of England. What they did not see, and what was therefore not a part of their political consciousness, was the causal relationship that existed between the growth of commercial trade and the increasing absolutism of Charles II. The customs revenue that accrued to the king increased as England's trade prospered, and this growth in revenue tended to free the king from his dependency upon parliamentary grants of money. Yet, not until James II's precipitous grab of this source of income immediately after his brother's death did the connection between absolutism and customs revenue begin to enter into the political consciousness of the Whigs. From our standpoint, however, this causal relationship is both meaningful and important, not only as a historical fact to be added to our knowledge of Restoration England or the place of England in the international economy of the seventeenth century, but also because it serves as a kind of negative dimension of our understanding of certain ideological arguments advanced by the political actors of the period. Indeed, one might even say that causal factors often have an ironical relationship to the social consciousness of historical subjects, viewed from our standpoint.

In this case, the Whigs perceived a growing tendency on the part of Charles to dispense with Parliament, and they explained this tendency in terms of what they suspected were secret financial dealings with Louis XIV. In this they were not wrong; but as we now know, the amounts of money given to Charles II by the French king were wholly inadequate to free him from a dependency upon Parliament. If, therefore, one were determined to explain the basis of Charles' absolutism—and this, of course, is an essentially contestable proposition from the standpoint of an interpretation of the historical events of the period—the explanation offered by the Whigs, however necessary it might be to an understanding of their ideology and political actions, would not be adequate for our understanding of those beliefs and actions. Other instances (the effects of long-term economic tendencies that increased the size and the politically radical composition of the seventeenth-century electorate, for example) are discussed below.

And, from the other side, one could approach the interpretation of seventeenth-century political theory through the use of a model of capitalism in which certain causal relationships are postulated that are supposed by the interpreter to lie just outside the boundaries of the consciousness of seventeenth-century individuals.¹⁶ It is sometimes said that capitalism developed behind the backs of those who brought it into existence, and if one adopts a sufficiently long-term view of historical development, there is a recognizable kernel of truth in this remark. In the short-term, however, such assertions tend to sacrifice too much of what is essential for establishing the empirical dimensions of the context to the imputation to the historical actors of ideas and intentions that are derived from the interpreter's model in order to make them responsible for formulating their ideas or for acting in accordance with the prerequisites of that model.

Since I am not making a blanket condemnation either of the use of ideal types or of a reliance upon presuppositions that the interpreter must, willy-nilly, impose upon his treatment of the historical actors, we are obviously discussing matters of degree and judgment. Moreover, my purposes in this Introduction are limited to clarifying for the reader some of the methodological assumptions I have adopted, and in that regard, I will only say that I have not found general references to capitalism or to the rise of the bourgeoisie to be particularly useful in this study. And yet, it could be reasonably contended that the entire undertaking is shaped by my own convictions that such terms are relevant to an understanding of seventeenth-century England. In other words, capitalism has a tremendously important practical-theoretical significance, especially as perceived through the eyes of Marx, for my understanding of history, social relations, and political theory. Nevertheless, in emphasizing the importance of class divisions, or economic factors, even when they appear as part of causal explanations, I have tried to consider these phenomena, as in the example cited above, simply as particular instances lying outside the social consciousness of the actors. We may choose to see them as examples of false consciousness or as part of the historical development of capitalism; indeed, I would be prepared to argue that there are good reasons in support of the assertion that we should see them in this way. But that is no warrant, in my judgment, for attributing either the concepts or intentions defined in relation to those concepts to the historical subjects themselves.

Nearly ten years ago, I wrote:

What makes [Locke's] theory political is not the philosophical cogency of his definition of political power; nor is it the textual consistency of his use of terminology; nor, finally, is it the empirical accuracy of his account of the origins of political power or the institution of property. It is, simply, the relevance of Locke's argument about the exercise of political power to an existent political movement within his society. A theory is political, in other words, only in relation to the maintenance or furtherance of the social, political, and economic objectives of a specifically identifiable group within society.¹⁷

At the time I wrote these words, I did not have this study in any of its particular dimensions in mind; rather, I was simply attempting to make a point about the nature of political theory in the context of a debate over the methodological presuppositions subscribed to by contemporary political theorists. Yet, as I have suggested above, general arguments about these matters have a limited utility, and there comes a point when the discussion can be advanced, if it can be advanced at all, only through shifting the controversy onto a terrain where the empirically grounded propositions that structure that controversy can take on a concrete expression. From the standpoint of the safety of an enclosed theoretical position in which all possible outcomes of the debate with an opposing perspective are known in advance, the shift in terrain can sometimes be treacherous. It is always problematic, since the importance of contingent elements to the theoretical framework is necessarily given increased emphasis. Still, from another vantage point, the very ability to marshal contingent empirical phenomena in a comprehensive and systematic manner is what defines the intellectual quality of a theoretical framework, just as the ability to mobilize millions of separate individuals into an organized political collectivity describes an important feature of political life. Both qualities are essential to political theory as I have defined it. I have written this book with the intention of illustrating that point.

¹ Political theorists should be guided by the modern trend of general philosophical work, which is to give attention to meanings and careful definition of terms (J. Roland Pennock, Political Science and Political Philosophy, American Political Science Review 45 [December 1951]: 1082). See also, George Sabine, What Is a Political Theory? Journal of Politics 1 (February 1939): 1-16; Anthony Quinton, ed., Political Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967, pp. 1-3; Leo Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1959; H. J. McCloskey, The Nature of Political Philosophy, Ratio 6 (June 1964):50-62; John Plamenatz, Man and Society, 2 vols., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963; Dante Germino, Modern Western Political Thought, Chicago: Rand McNally, 1972; James A. Gould and Vincent V. Thursby, eds., Contemporary Political Thought, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969, pp. 2-3; D. D. Raphael, Problems of Political Philosophy, New York: Praeger, 1970. We read political theory for the universal ideas contained in the classic theories (William T. Bluhm, Theories of the Political System, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965, p. 13). Dante Germino, The Revival of Political Theory, Journal of Politics 25 (August 1963):441-444; David Thomson, ed., Political Ideas, New York: Basic Books, 1966, pp. 9ff.; Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, eds., History of Political Philosophy, Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963, preface; Dante Germino, Beyond Ideology: The Revival of Political Theory, New York: Harper and Row, 1967, p. 9.

² Andrew Hacker, Political Theory: Philosophy, Ideology, Science, New York: Macmillan, 1961, p. 12; Plamenatz, Man and Society, vol. 1, introduction; Germino, Western Political Thought, p. viii.

³ Thus, while a knowledge of the circumstances under which a political theory was written may contribute something to our understanding of that political theory, we can learn more about [political theorists'] arguments by weighing them over and over again than by extending our knowledge of the circumstances in which they wrote (Plamenatz, Man and Society, 1:ix-x).

⁴ Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1936, p, 3.

⁵ For reasons of space, I have not attempted to incorporate literary sources into my discussion of political theory in this study.

⁶ Richard Ashcraft, Political Theory and the Problem of Ideology, Journal of Politics 42 (August 1980): 687-705.

⁷ Underlying even the profound insights of the genius are the collective historical experiences of a group that shape the expectations, purposes, and activity of the theorist and his audience (Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, p. 269). Moreover, political theories have their roots basically in a group situation in which hundreds and thousands of persons, each in his own way, participate in the overthrow of the existing society or in its maintenance (p. 27).

⁸ Though I approach the problem from a different perspective, I have benefited from Erik Allardt's stimulating discussion of the culture-building features of a revolutionary movement and its revolutionary ideology which, however, does not necessarily alter the existing power relations between groups. The need to devise a methodology capable of giving due weight to both culture and structure (his terms) in relation to the changes brought about by revolutionary ideologies is especially important in those cases in which a political movement failed to achieve significant structural changes in the distribution of political power, but nevertheless did effect a lasting cultural change through the triumph of its political language. This, it seems to me, is the situation of the political radicals who are the focus of this study (Erik Allardt, Culture, Structure and Revolutionary Ideologies, International Journal of Comparative Sociology 12, no. 1 [March 1971] :24-40).

⁹ Hans Toch, The Social Psychology of Social Movements, New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965, p. 5.

¹⁰ As J. R. Jones remarks, the Restoration period is devoid of honesty and consistency, and is pervaded by cynicism (J. R. Jones, Country and Court: England, 1658-1714, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978, p. 8). The history of this period, according to Trevelyan, is essentially one of intrigue and what he calls the reigns of terror of the Stuarts (G. M. Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts, London: Methuen, 1965, pp. 324-325, 368).

¹¹ Alfred Schutz, Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences, in Dorothy Emmet and Alasdair MacIntyre, eds., Sociological Theory and Philosophical Analysis, London: Macmillan, 1970, p. 15.

¹² Since I believe, as an empirical generalization, that most human actions are referrable to a framework of multiple intentions, and that this is especially the case in the undertaking of a highly complicated action such as writing a work of political theory, I am not advancing the claim that this study has successfully recovered the subjectively intended meaning of Locke in writing the Two Treatises of Government. I have, however, emphasized throughout what I believe were Locke's political objectives in writing that work, and I am prepared to argue that, from his viewpoint, these were the most important, though not the only, elements that comprise the subjectively intended meaning of that action. For a useful discussion of the methodological issues relating to this point, see the following articles by Quentin Skinner: Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas, History and Theory 8, no. 1 (1969):3-53; Conventions and the Understanding of Speech Acts, Philosophical Quarterly 21, no. 79 (April 1970): 113-138; 'Social Meaning' and the Explanation of Social Action, in Philosophy, Politics and Society, 4th ser., ed. Peter Laslett and W. G. Runciman, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972, pp. 136-157; Some Problems in the Analysis of Political Thought and Action, Political Theory 2, no. 3 (August 1974):277-303. Also, see Charles Taylor, Interpretation and the Sciences of Man, Review of Metaphysics (September 1971), pp. 3-51; Alasdair MacIntyre, Ideology, Social Science, and Revolution, Comparative Politics 5, no. 3 (April 1973):321-342; J. G. A. Pocock, Politics, Language and Time, New York: Atheneum, 1971.

¹³ Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, p. 50.

¹⁴ For a clear and helpful statement of these issues, see Brian Fay, Social Theory and Political Practice, London: Allen and Unwin, 1975.

¹⁵ I have discussed elsewhere this question as it relates to the social theories of Marx and Weber, and as it structures the contemporary debate within social science (Richard Ashcraft, Marx and Weber on Liberalism as Bourgeois Ideology, Comparative Studies in Society and History [March 1972]: 130-168; idem, Class and Class Conflict in Contemporary Capitalist Societies, Comparative Politics [January 1979]:225-245).

¹⁶ C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962.

¹⁷ Richard Ashcraft, On the Problem of Methodology and the Nature of Political Theory, Political Theory 3, no. 1 (February 1975):20.

1

THE FRAMEWORK OF POLITICAL DISCUSSION

IN 1670, on a bleak December day, a small group of men affixed their signatures to a document that launched England on a perilous course. They had concluded a treaty of alliance between England and France, and yet everything was not as it appeared. Beneath the façade of serious purpose, a courtly charade was being staged by Charles II. For most of the dignitaries present, this was the second treaty-signing ceremony they had attended in the last nine months. The first Treaty of Dover had been a highly secretive affair, and for good reason. That document contained clauses in which Charles II promised to declare his adherence to the Roman Catholic religion. Payment of £200,000 and assignment of 6,000 French troops by Louis XIV were to assist the English king in the execution of this grand conversion. Although Charles professed his confidence that his subjects would not fail in their due obedience to their sovereign, nevertheless, since there are always unquiet spirits who threaten the peace of the kingdom, the timing of this fateful pronouncement was to be left to the English king's judicious discretion.¹

Now, in this return engagement, two of the leading champions of the rights and relief of the Protestant Dissenters, Lord Ashley and the Duke of Buckingham, were among the ministerial signatories for England.² Despite the genuine affection Charles felt toward the latter, his boyhood friend, it could hardly be denied that Buckingham and Shaftesbury were two of the most unquiet spirits in the kingdom. Accordingly, in this version of the Treaty of Dover, no mention was made of Charles' espousal of Catholicism in return for French subsidies or troops. The drama had shifted from one of the mysteries of religious and political intrigue to a more prosaic portrayal of the commercial and military preparations necessary for a joint war against the Dutch. The Royal African and East India companies, as well as other segments of the mercantile class, which exercised considerable influence both at Court and in Parliament, had long pressed for a war against the Dutch as a means of undermining the latter's dominance in colonial trade. What we want, the Duke of Albemarle declared, is more of the trade the Dutch now have.³ Thus, despite popular misgivings about the French interest, this treaty could be viewed as a nationalistic reassertion of English mercantile interests. As one of the king's deceived subjects later reflected, we knew not what snake lay in the grass. We believed the Treaty of Dover was signed for the benefit of our trade and navigation.⁴ This is, in fact, the way in which it was presented to the nation by Charles II—as the instrument whereby Britain could extend her empire beyond the sea and once again become supreme as a commercial power.⁵

The double-sided character of the Treaty of Dover expresses the symbiotic relationship that existed throughout the last half of Charles II's reign between the development of English commercial superiority and the efforts of Charles and others to refashion the English monarchy according to the model of French absolutism. Charles was convinced that his cousin, Louis XIV, knew how to rule; the latter was the very image of a king who demanded, and received, absolute obedience from his subjects. Some part of his success in this endeavor certainly appeared to be due to the assistance he received from the doctrines and practices of Catholicism.⁶ From an early age, individuals were socialized by their teachers and priests into the habits of submission to the authority of an absolutist monarch. Yet, Charles was acutely aware of the fact that neither Catholicism nor an unquestioning acceptance of civil authority had taken firm root in England.

In addition to England's commitment to Protestantism, there was also the irritating problem of money, which constituted a check upon the king's authority. The constant need for the king to present himself as a supplicant before Parliament to request that they grant him sufficient revenue to finance his administrative obligations and personal indulgences did not accord well with the image of French absolutism, at least as it was perceived by some members of Charles II's court. Was there some means by which he could escape from these Lilliputian constraints upon the exercise of his kingly power?

If Charles II had attempted, by a straightforward declaration of belief to carry out the religious clauses of the secret Treaty of Dover, he would certainly have faced far more serious opposition from Parliament than that inspired by a cautious reluctance on their part either to grant the king too much revenue or to forgo their claim to supervise and inspect its expenditure. At the same time, however, the ostensible commercial and military objectives of the treaty actually provided the basis upon which Charles II was able to raise a structure of monarchic absolutism. From 1660 to 1700, there was a remarkable growth in the tonnage of shipping, reflecting the considerable expansion in England's trade during this period, and both of these were, in turn, accompanied by a dramatic increase in customs and excise revenue.⁷ Thus, insofar as the treaty (and its consequential outcome, the Third Dutch War) proved to be a catalyst in the expansion of the English shipbuilding industry and in the promotion of trade, the resulting increase of customs revenue, which accrued to the king, enabled Charles to draw closer to his objective of freeing himself from a dependency upon parliamentary grants of revenue.⁸

The political paradox attached to the pursuit of this policy of absolutism was pointed out by a contemporary who, writing in the 1680s, lamented that Charles II should fall to so abject a state as to become a French pensioner. This arrangement, he declared, was more than enough eternally to blast the memory of an English Monarch.⁹ It is true that, against this somewhat exaggerated assessment, the historical reputation of Charles II seems to have survived his concealed financial subservience to Louis XIV rather better than the author of The Secret History of Whitehall imagined. Nevertheless, the considerable risks posed by the Treaty of Dover to the political stability of the Restoration Settlement should not be underestimated.¹⁰ Whatever the specific dangers posed by Charles' endorsement of Catholicism, they were undoubtedly compounded by his decision to practice a deliberate deception upon some of his own ministers and upon his Protestant subjects in the form of this second spurious but public treaty.

Writing to his sister, Henrietta, who carried the terms of the secret treaty to Dover, and who acted as an agent on behalf of France and Louis XIV, Charles cautioned, "I must again conjure you that the whole matter must be an absolute secret, otherwise we shall never compass the end we aim at. Later, when Buckingham began to grow suspicious, Charles advised his sister that it will be good that you write sometimes to [Buckingham] in general terms that he may not expect that there is [sic] further negotiations than what he knows . . . he may suspect that there is something of [the Catholic] interest in the case, which is a matter he must not be acquainted with, therefore you must have a care not to say the least thing that may make him suspect anything of it."¹¹

Nevertheless, almost from its signing, suspicions as to the treaty's content and purposes began to seep into the political arena. Rumors of a secret treaty with France involving subsidies to Charles that freed him from a dependency upon Parliament, and even allegations concerning the Catholicity of the treaty were widespread in the 1670s. In an influential tract published in 1673, the author wrote that the English have tried to persuade themselves that the French alliance and the Dutch War were merely instruments for the advancement of trade, but the suspicions that something more sinister lay behind this foreign policy are too great. He challenged the king's advisers to "tell us plainly whether they are paid for making the French King the Universal Monarch; and whether . . . England must at least be made tributary to the French."¹² This challenge was echoed when the treaty was presented to Parliament. If these are the public articles, one member asked, what are the secret articles of this treaty?¹³ The extent to which the Treaty of Dover fostered suspicions of Charles' intentions and undermined public confidence in his political leadership can hardly be overestimated. As more than one historian has noted, secrecy, popery, and despotism became the watchwords of the decade. Gradually, the happy Restoration receded into the distance of memory, and, increasingly, the remainder of Charles II's reign after 1670 was marked by fears and jealousies, and the growth of anxieties aroused by real and imagined plots and conspiracies to disturb the public order. The language of political discourse developed, by degrees, a tone of bitterness and despair. From the signing of the Treaty of Dover, it was only a matter of time—a few years for some, a decade for many others—until Charles II was accused of conspiring to subvert the constituted religious and political order.

Andrew Marvell was one of the first to fire a warning shot across the bow of Charles II's administration, declaring that there has now for divers years a design been carried on to change the lawful government of England into an absolute tyranny, and to convert the established Protestant religion into downright popery. Both aims, Marvell argued, would destroy the constitutional structure of English politics.¹⁴ The precise historical origins of this design might be supposed by some to extend back into the previous century, but for Marvell, the dangers of this drift toward tyranny could be more easily perceived in the policies and actions pursued by Charles II and his advisers. The Treaty of Dover, which Marvell called a work of darkness, proved to be a Pandora's box; and by 1677, when his An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government appeared, the spirits of controversy, conspiracy, and chaos had already been loosed upon the land.¹⁵

The debate among historians as to Charles II's intentions in negotiating a secret treaty with France still rages inconclusively with respect to the degree of relative importance one ought to attribute to the economic or the religious objectives of Charles' policies in order to account for his actions, but in a significant sense, this debate misses the crucial point to be made about the treaty—namely, that once its existence and some of its details became part of the political consciousness of those in opposition to the Court in the 1670s and 1680s, the treaty provided a bedrock of evidential support for the suspicions of a conspiracy on the part of the king and his advisers to subvert the Constitution.¹⁶ For, it was this conviction, that they were opposing a conspiracy and defending the ancient constitution against its secret enemies at home and abroad, which supplied much of the justification for the political policies and practices of the radicals in the decade prior to the Glorious Revolution. The context of revolutionary politics was thus shaped by the belief that the King as well as the Duke [of York] were in the conspiracy to alter the Constitution and overturn our religion.¹⁷ From this standpoint, the pervasive atmosphere of suspicion, distrust, and conspiracy that prevailed in England in the 1670s and 1680s constitutes an extremely important element of the contextual meaning of the political arguments and political theories formulated during this period.

More immediately discernible than Charles II's disguised intentions was the campaign of political repression of the Dissenters supporters of the Anglican church launched in 1669-1670. Despite Charles II's promise at Breda to grant a liberty to tender consciences as part of the Restoration Settlement, the reestablished Anglican church had, from the outset, opposed such a move. Instead, church leaders sought to enforce a strict religious conformity. The early 1660s witnessed the ejection of thousands of ministers from their livings, the discouragement of many others—including Locke—who chose not to pursue a career in the Church, and the harrassment and imprisonment of Dissenters according to several parliamentary measures that together comprised the Clarendon Code.¹⁸ If these repressive efforts were temporarily abated by the Lord Chancellor's impeachment and fall from power and by the dislocations caused by outbursts of plague and the Great Fire of London in 1666-1667, the embers of persecution were certainly fanned by the vitriolic and defamatory language of Samuel Parker's Discourse of Ecclesiastical Polity, published in 1669.¹⁹ Parker, at this time one of Archbishop Sheldon's chaplains, but later elevated to the Bishopric of Oxford, conceded the vehemence and severity of his style of writing. He defended that approach, however, on the grounds that Dissenters were like the savage Americans, and one could not expect to argue rude and boistrous zealots out of their folly merely by the strength of calm and sober reason.²⁰ Rather, against such misguided zeal what was needed was an even greater zeal on the part of the established church.²¹ Parker's purpose in writing the Discourse, he admitted, was not to persuade Dissenters to the virtues of Anglican beliefs; rather, his real aim was to awaken authority, both civil and spiritual, to the threat posed by the existence of Dissenters, who were the worst and most dangerous enemies of all forms of authority. Parker's work was therefore quite explicitly intended to encourage the strict enforcement of the penal laws against Nonconformists, a wild and fanatic rabble, as he viewed them.²² The Discourse on Ecclesiastical Polity was, to put it simply, a declaration of war upon all religious dissidents. As might be imagined, Parker's Discourse provoked numerous replies and responses, some of them from the best minds of the Restoration period. The particular issues and the general structure of that debate, in which the parameters of the ideological conflict of the 1680s were laid out, will be discussed in Chapter 2. My concern here is simply to draw attention to the political consequences that attended those policies which were, or which came to be perceived as, expressing the government's position.

This is an issue for which it is difficult to find the precise terminology, partly because the government was not then—nor is it now—a monolithic organization with a single purpose guiding its actions, and partly because the perception of purposes underlying particular policies by citizens neither is necessarily accurate in relation to the intentions of the actors exercising power, nor does such a viewpoint generally emerge all at once among the members of some specific social group directly affected by such policies—in this case, the Dissenters. Nevertheless, when these allowances have been made, the fact remains that in 1669-1670 there was a sharp and perceptible turn toward the political repression of religious dissent that helped to crystallize and intensify an active opposition to Church and Court.²³

There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of the belief held by religious leaders such as Archbishop Sheldon, or his successor, William Sancroft, that Anglican doctrines needed to be defended against the errors represented by nonconformity, but one is struck by the systematic, comprehensive, and businesslike tone of the instructions sent out by Sheldon to all his bishops, deans, and chancellors as part of this renewed counteroffensive by the established church. In his letter, Sheldon orders his bishops to make speedy inquiry within their dioceses as to what and how many conventicles, or unlawful assemblies or church meetings are held in the various parishes, how many people usually attend them, and of what condition or sort of people they consist, who are their ministers . . . what authority they pretend for their meetings, and from whom, and upon what hopes they look for impunity. This request for information was to be passed downward to the lower levels of administrative authority within the church, along with an admonition to such officials requiring them to make their inquiries diligently and with all speed. Writing to the Bishops of London and Norwich, Sheldon made a special point of emphasizing that the impression that the king favors the conventicles of the Nonconformists was a mistaken one, and he recounts the substance of a conversation he had with the king in which the latter promised his support for any bishops who undertook to supress such meetings.²⁴ Indeed, in his letter to William Fuller, Bishop of Lincoln, Sheldon reminded Fuller that he was present when the king disavowed his support for Dissenters. In that conversation, Charles had placed some of the blame for such unlawful meetings upon the laxity of the church hierarchy in maintaining religious discipline, and he promised the bishops the wholehearted assistance of civil magistrates in the suppression of the Dissenters. Those magistrates who failed to enforce the law and its penalties were to be reported by the bishops directly to the king, who would deal with them.²⁵

In July 1669, Charles II issued a proclamation against the Dissenters, threatening them with a stricter enforcement of the legal penalties for nonconformity.²⁶ A few months later, the Privy Council, acting on a complaint from Archbishop Sheldon, ordered the removal of two dissenting ministers from the East India Company.²⁷ There was, in other words, some degree of coordination and effective support within the executive branch of the government for the policy Sheldon had enunciated in his letter to the bishops.

However, for reasons to be discussed below, the king's policy toward religious suppression was far more complicated than the one of unequivocal support that he had apparently conveyed to Archbishop Sheldon. One month after issuing his declaration against the Dissenters, Charles not only pardoned the fines levied against three men arrested for refusing to attend church, he also issued orders that the remunerative penalties attached to the statute under which the men had been prosecuted would henceforth not be enforced.²⁸ Nevertheless, putting aside for the moment the king's ambivalent attitude toward the Dissenters, there was in 1669 a regrouping of conservatives, mostly comprising officials within the church, but also including some individuals who were, or would soon become, government ministers or influential propagandists. These men—Sheldon, William Sancroft, Leoline Jenkins, John Nalson, Samuel Parker, Roger L'Estrange, Edmund Bohun, Laurence Hyde, and several others—fashioned something like a party policy designed to oppose any alteration in what they took to be the basic principles of Church and State. They maintained an informal, but discernible, defensive alliance, exercising a custodial concern for the highflying Cavalier beliefs.²⁹ Later, in the 1680s, these beliefs and the actions of these individuals were to supply the core of what emerged as the Tory party.³⁰

Sheldon followed up his earlier requests for information with additional letters in 1670 to his bishops reiterating the importance of suppressing conventicles, and reminding them to address themselves to the civil magistrates for assistance in this campaign of repression. For, with the assistance of the civil power, these seditious people will be brought back into the unity of the Church and uniformity in God.³¹ Early in 1670, Parliament came to the aid of the church, enacting a Second Conventicle Bill, which was designed to stiffen the penalties against Non-conformists and to encourage their enforcement. In its original draft form, the bill would simply have equated any conventicle with the definition of a riot, thus merging completely the notion of religious dissent with political sedition and disorder—precisely the identification Parker had insisted upon at length in his Discourse. As finally passed, however, the law did not go this far. It empowered a single justice of the peace (in place of the two justices mandated by the original Conventicle Act of 1664) to take punitive action against Dissenters. The mere recording of the offense of nonconformity by the justice of the peace would be taken and adjudged a full and perfect conviction of the accused. Moreover, by providing that those who gave information leading to the conviction of Dissenters were entitled to receive one-third of the fines levied, the act supplied a public legitimization of the practice of the professional informer.³² In addition to strengthening the penalties against religious dissent, therefore, the Conventicle Act of 1670 further heightened an atmosphere already charged with suspicion, conspiracy, and hostility. As one member of Parliament commented on the bill, here is a general distrust of the whole nation, in effect.³³

The Conventicle Bill was attacked for the arbitrary and absolute power it placed in the hands of a single magistrate, against whose judgment the defendant could claim no judicial remedy. Such a grant of power, it was argued, which exceeded that of all other judges and juries in the kingdom in its allowance for the confiscation of an individual's property by the magistrate, was directly against our fundamental laws. Indeed, some critics ventured so far as to issue a warning that the bill might place individuals in a situation where they would feel themselves obliged to disobey the law in order to uphold the principles established by the Magna Charta. In Marvell's view, this act quite simply expressed the quintessence of arbitrary malice.³⁴ Despite these attacks, the law went into effect a week before Charles' signing of the secret Treaty of Dover.

Charles II's administration in 1670 was thus embarked on two courses, which were sometimes reinforcing, sometimes contradictory in

Reviews for Revolutionary Politics and Locke's Two Treatises of Government

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Brilliant. Ashcraft has re-created the world of John Locke.