“In the beginning all the world was America...

“In the beginning all the world was America, and more so than it is now; for no such thing as money was anywhere known.”36 What is the effect of the contract? Men hand over to a legislative and executive power the authority to pass and to enforce laws which will protect their natural rights. In so doing, they both transfer that authority and set limits to it; for insofar as the civil authority does not protect natural rights, it ceases to be a legitimate authority.

The guarantee that it will protect such rights lies in the provision that the only valid laws are those passed by a majority vote. In this aspect of his thought Locke is the ancestor of liberal democracy. But with just this aspect of his thought a difficulty arises. The laws are designed for the protection of property. Who are the possessors of property?

Although Locke believed that a man could not alienate away from himself the right to liberty for his person (the legal expression of which includes such measures as habeas corpus), he does allow that property is alienable. A man’s initial right is only to such property as his labor has created; but with the wealth derived therefrom he may acquire the property of others and he may acquire servants. If he does, their labor creates property for him.

Therefore, gross inequality in property is consistent with Locke’s doctrine of a natural right to property. Not only this, but Locke seems to have been aware of the fact that more than half the population of England was effectively propertyless. How, then, is he able to reconcile his view of the right of the majority to rule with his view of the natural right to property? Is he not involved in the difficulty which has been alleged against the Levellers?

That if the kind of franchise which they advocated had been brought in, the majority of the voters would in fact have chosen to abolish even such civil and religious liberty as existed under the Parliament and under Cromwell, and would have voted to restore the monarchy. So, against Locke, might it not be argued that to give the rule to the majority will be to give the rule to the many whose interest lies in the abolition of the right of the few to the property which they have acquired?