A flurry of political activity occurred in 1680 when hints surfaced of a plot to murder Charles II and replace him on the throne by his brother, the future James II, a Roman Catholic. The plot was less important than the reaction to it; Shaftesbury proposed a law excluding Roman Catholics from the succession. Shaftesbury’s opponents immediately countered with arguments in favor of the so-called Divine Right of Kings, which would presumably include the right of the king to adopt any religion he chose. To shore up their side they republished an old book, Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, a vindication of the rights of kings to which no one had paid much attention for forty years. But now everyone was paying attention. Shaftesbury turned to Locke and asked him to help prepare a reply to Filmer. This Locke did, composing two treatises on government, the first a direct reply to and effective demolition of Filmer’s arguments, the second an essay upon civil government from a more general point of view.
The two treatises were completed, though not published, in 1680. But events soon conspired to give them an import and an influence far beyond, it appears, Locke’s original intention. Charles II died in 1685; James II succeeded him. Within a short time his Roman Catholicism was perceived as intolerable by the majority of Britons and active steps began to be taken to remove him from the throne. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was the result—glorious primarily because not a drop of blood was spilled, although there was much saber rattling. James abdicated, and William and Mary succeeded him. They were both good Protestants.
Though bloodless, nevertheless this was a real revolution, one of the most important in the history of political liberty, and it required justification. Locke had spent the years after 1680 in Holland, fearful of the king’s vengeance. Now, in the spring of 1689, he returned to England in the same vessel with Queen Mary, bearing his manuscripts. His two treatises were published together at the end of the year, and ever since it has been assumed that they were written to validate a revolution. They were published to do so, at least. “The Second Essay on Civil Government” is about three great ideas: property, government, and revolution. The question that most concerned Locke was: What is the connection between them?
If there is no property, no government is needed. If I possess nothing, what need have I of the machinery of the state: laws and judges, policemen and prisons?
But property exists, says Locke, and it is legitimate. At least it used to be; in the beginning one could easily see its fairness. Now, sometimes, he wonders, as we do today, why some persons should possess so much, others so little.
Government, too, is legitimate, or it can be so. It is so if the governors and the governed agree on the one great thing: that they are in it together. The governors govern for the good of the governed, not their own good only; and the governed are content that it should be thus, for they see justice all around them, and above them, too.
Is revolution ever legitimate? Yes, Locke thunders! When a ruler declares war upon his people and attempts by one means or another to reduce them to slavery, then they have a right to rise up in self-defense. God has given them this right, and no man can take it from them.
That glorious doctrine has been used to justify rebellions other than the one of 1688. Thomas Jefferson read the “Essay,” as did Robespierre, as did Marx, as did Lenin. Ideas, it has been said with some truth, are the rulers of the world.
The sixteenth century had been blasted by religious wars—in Germany, in France, in England, in the Low Countries. Some of these spilled over into the seventeenth century, especially at its dawning; sometimes, however, religion was cited as an excuse for war that was really about other matters. At any rate, it became a prime goal of the seventeenth century to try to deal with the question of religious difference and conflict among religions without war. Probably the most eloquent plea for religious toleration came at the very end of the century. John Locke wrote it first in Latin and published it in Holland during the 1680s, when he was living in that country to avoid the tumultuous events in England at the time—events that led to the revolution of 1688. “A Letter Concerning Toleration” was published by Locke in English during the year of his return to England, 1689. It immediately produced a storm of controversy.
Why? The text seems completely reasonable and completely in line with modern views on the subject. How could Locke have been attacked for writing it; on what grounds could the “Letter” itself have been opposed? Not to know how to answer these questions is to fail to understand two hundred years of European history.
Religion was serious business in the western world until the middle of the nineteenth century. Today there are still many religious people, and church attendance remains high among a number of sects, but religion has ceased to be, for almost all Christians at least, a matter of life and death. The jihad, or holy war, is also a thing of the past—in our part of the world. Such wars persist and continue in other regions of the globe.
As far as we are concerned, is that all to the good? Some religious people would deny this today. If you are not willing to die for your faith, they say, then you do not have much of a faith. Dying for one’s faith is one thing, killing for it is another. Men and women of the sixteenth century were very willing both to die and to kill for their faith. It happened all the time. It did not strike anyone as insane or even unreasonable; in fact, if it did not happen from time to time—if the tree of faith (to paraphrase a famous saying of Thomas Jefferson) was not watered with the blood of the faithful—then, in the opinion of many persons in the sixteenth century, this was cause for alarm. In that case, they would have thought, religion must be in danger of ceasing to be serious business.
Indeed, that is the crux of the matter. If you believe that you possess (or are) an immortal soul; if you believe that your stay on Earth is but a tiny part of time compared to the eternity your soul will endure after death; and if you believe that the character of your faith and the details of your religious observances will determine whether you spend that eternity in bliss or in torment—then religion becomes extremely serious business, more serious than anything else you do or think about. To die in your faith, if you believe that to do so is to gain eternal bliss, is obviously no loss whatsoever compared to living out of it, and losing heaven.
This, however, is to look at religion only from your point of view. There would seem to be two other points of view that should be considered. One is that of another person whose faith differs from your own. For hundreds of years before the time of Locke, but especially during the two centuries or so before he wrote the “Letter Concerning Toleration,” it was easy for men to believe that their faith required them to torment, to kill, to burn at the stake other men—and women—whose faith differed from theirs, by shades of difference that now seem hard to discern. But, we may ask, is any difference, no matter how great, cause enough for burning? A man of the sixteenth century would not even have understood the question. A man of the seventeenth century might have understood it, but he would still have been shocked to hear it asked. Such were the opponents who attacked Locke for his “Letter.”