'The artillery of Mr. Locke': The use of Locke's 'Second Treatise' in pre-Revolutionary America, 1764-1776

John Locke is a central figure in the recent historical controversy over the ideological background of the American Revolution. However, no one has ever examined precisely in what way and to what degree Locke was used by political writers in Revolutionary America. This dissertation is an attempt to contribute to the elucidation of the ideological background of the Revolution by excavating hard evidences of the use of Locke's political thought, as set forth in the Second Treatise, in the political pamphlets and newspaper essays in the period between the Sugar Act and the Declaration of Independence. Three major areas can be discerned in the use of Locke in this period. First, many writers used the Lockean articulation of the idea of government by consent expressed in the natural right theory of government. On this basis, they focused their attention on Locke's theory of the extent of the legislative power (chapter 11), especially his third principle and the property statement that explained the interrelation of taxation and consent (sections 138-140). Secondly, Locke's idea of the natural right of emigration (chapter 8) provided the colonists with the basis of one or two types of "distinct-states" theory in which the colonies were considered as independent bodies politic distinct from the parent state. This theory constituted the premise of the confederation theory of empire--the empire of distinct states connected only by the authority of the imperial king. Thirdly, the Lockean language of the dissolution of government (chapter 19) was consistently used after 1765, first to deny Parliament's power to tax and then to legislate for the colonies, and finally to eliminate the king's authority in the colonies. When the question of taxation of Parliament ceased to be the pivot of debate, the Lockean principle of taxation became less relevant to colonial writers in the early 1770s, and resistance writers began to use the "dissolution of government" on the theory-based "distinct states" idea. When they came to regard the king as being responsible for the "British oppression," the logical consequence of the fusion of these two ideas was total independence. The Declaration can only be fully understood in the context of this ideological development.