Two Treatises of Government by John Locke: Free EPUB, AZW3 & KEPUB Download
Two Treatises of Government
1689
~104,000 words
Approx. 5.8 hours
EPUB · AZW3 · KEPUB
740 KB · 813 KB · 645 KB
Public domain in the US
Online Library of Liberty · Standard Ebooks
Two Treatises of Government is a 1689 work of political philosophy by John Locke, published anonymously after the Glorious Revolution. The First Treatise dismantles Sir Robert Filmer’s case for the divine right of kings; the Second Treatise builds the alternative — a state of nature governed by natural law, government by consent, property earned through labour, and a right of revolution when rulers break the trust placed in them. It is the book that gave the language of natural rights to the eighteenth century. This Standard Ebooks edition is based on the Online Library of Liberty transcription and Internet Archive scans, and is in the public domain in the United States; the text is available via Standard Ebooks.
Two Treatises of Government by John Locke: Summary, Characters & Themes
Two Treatises of Government is John Locke’s 1689 defence of government by consent, published anonymously in the year of the Glorious Revolution. This summary and analysis takes the two treatises in order: the demolition of Sir Robert Filmer’s patriarchalism, then the construction of an alternative theory of natural rights, property and revolution.
The First Treatise is a book-length refutation of Patriarcha, Filmer’s argument that all political authority descends from Adam and therefore belongs to kings by divine right. Locke treats it as absurd rather than merely mistaken: even if Adam had received dominion, there is no way to identify his heirs, and no king can produce the chain of title. The argument’s real force is in the demolition of the premise that anyone is born with a right to rule over others.
The Second Treatise is the part that mattered to history. Locke begins in a state of nature in which people are free and equal under natural law, then explains why they would leave it: to secure property, and to settle disputes with an impartial judge. Government is created by consent for that purpose, and it holds power only in trust. When a ruler acts against the trust — taking property without consent, legislating arbitrarily, dismantling the legislature — the people may appeal to heaven, which is to say, they may resist.
Locke’s account of property is the most argued-over part of the book. Property begins as self-ownership, extends to whatever labour is mixed with, and is limited by the requirement that others are left with enough and as good. The invention of money, which does not spoil, allows accumulation beyond those limits — a passage that has been read ever since as either a justification of inequality or an admission of its costs.
Locke wrote widely across politics, philosophy and education. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) founded the empiricist account of knowledge; A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) argued for the separation of church and civil authority; and Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) set out the educational programme that shaped the eighteenth century. None of them is on this site yet, but each extends the argument begun here.
This edition is based on the Online Library of Liberty transcription and digital scans from the Internet Archive, and is available via Standard Ebooks. The text follows the 1689 first edition, retaining Locke’s paragraph numbering, which is still how the book is cited.
Historical Context
Locke wrote the treatises over a decade of political crisis. The Exclusion Crisis of the 1680s, the Rye House Plot and Locke’s own flight to the Netherlands are the book’s background, and it was published only after William of Orange took the throne. Its argument for resistance was therefore not abstract: it was written by a man who had been on the losing side, for a settlement that had just won.
Key Characters & Literary Archetypes
- John Locke (author): The narrator is a careful, repetitive lawyer-philosopher who builds his case by definition and distinction rather than by rhetoric.
- Sir Robert Filmer (opponent): The defender of divine right whose Patriarcha is taken apart in the First Treatise; he stands for the position that authority is inherited, not entrusted.
- The state of nature (device): Not a historical place but a thought experiment used to ask what government is for.
- The trust (concept): Government as a fiduciary arrangement — the idea that makes revolution a matter of contract rather than rebellion.
- The people (sovereign): The final judge of whether a government has broken its trust, the book’s most dangerous idea.
- “Appeal to heaven” (image): Locke’s phrase for resistance when no earthly judge can settle the dispute.
Core Literary Themes
- Natural rights: Life, liberty and property as claims that precede government and limit it.
- Consent: Political authority is legitimate only when it derives from the governed.
- Property and labour: Ownership grounded in work rather than in grant or conquest.
- Resistance: The right of revolution when power is used against the purpose it was given.
- Toleration: The boundary between civil and religious authority, argued in the same year as the treatises.
- Reason against tradition: Filmer’s genealogy of kings replaced by an argument from human equality.
Chapter summaries
Thirty chapters in two books: eleven in the First Treatise against Filmer, nineteen in the Second setting out Locke’s own account of civil government.
- Book I, Chapters 1–4: Locke states Filmer’s thesis — that all government is absolute monarchy by divine right inherited from Adam — and begins dismantling its scriptural foundation.
- Book I, Chapters 5–8: Even granting Adam’s dominion, “honour thy father” confers no political power, and paternal authority is temporary, limited and shared with mothers.
- Book I, Chapters 9–11: No one can identify Adam’s heir, so a title derived from him cannot be traced; monarchy by divine right rests on a claim nobody can produce.
- Book II, Chapters 1–2: Political power is defined, and the state of nature is described as liberty under natural law — not licence, and not a war of all against all.
- Book II, Chapters 3–4: The state of war arises from force without right; slavery is the extension of such a war and is legitimate only as forfeiture.
- Book II, Chapter 5: Property begins in self-ownership and in labour mixed with the world, limited by the proviso that others are left enough and as good; money allows accumulation beyond that limit.
- Book II, Chapters 6–7: Paternal power is distinguished from political power, and the family from civil society, which is formed only by consent.
- Book II, Chapters 8–10: Political societies begin by consent and proceed by majority; government exists to preserve property, and its forms depend on where legislative power sits.
- Book II, Chapters 11–13: The legislative power is limited by natural law and by the trust placed in it; legislative, executive and federative powers are separated and subordinated.
- Book II, Chapters 14–16: Prerogative is the executive’s discretion for the public good; paternal, political and despotic power are compared; conquest confers no right of government.
- Book II, Chapters 17–19: Usurpation and tyranny are defined, and Locke asks who judges when power is abused: the people do, by an appeal to heaven.
Why Download Our Custom E-Reader Edition of Two Treatises of Government?
Two Treatises of Government is usually read in excerpts, and the excerpts are usually from the Second Treatise alone. That is a loss: the First Treatise is where Locke shows what he is arguing against, and the Second Treatise’s claims about property and consent only make sense against it.
The book is also a reference work. Locke numbers his paragraphs, and three centuries of scholarship cites him that way (II.27, II.135), so a digital edition that drops the numbering or flattens the two treatises into one continuous text is hard to use for anything except reading straight through.
This edition starts from the Standard Ebooks text, which is re-proofread against the Online Library of Liberty transcription and Internet Archive scans, and adds AZW3 and KEPUB builds for Kindle and Kobo. Paragraph numbering, the two books, and the endnotes stay where they belong.
- Based on the Standard Ebooks Edition, via the Online Library of Liberty: re-proofread text with the 1689 first edition’s structure and paragraph numbers.
- Granular Architectural NCX/Nav Structural Navigation: Book I and Book II, all nineteen chapters of the Second Treatise, and the endnotes all reachable from the e-reader’s table of contents.
- Calibrated Typographical Layout for Philosophical Prose: Locke’s paragraph numbers and marginal notes kept distinct from the body text.
- Verified Public Domain Sources: text from the Online Library of Liberty, edition from Standard Ebooks, both public domain in the United States.
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Book I, Chapter I
Slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man, and so directly opposite to the generous temper and courage of our nation, that it is hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman, much less a gentleman, should plead for it. And truly, I should have taken Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, as any other treatise, which would persuade all men that they are slaves, and ought to be so, for such another exercise of wit as was his who writ the encomium of Nero; rather than for a serious discourse, meant in earnest: had not the gravity of the title and epistle, the picture in the front of the book, and the applause that followed it, required me to believe that the author and publisher were both in earnest. I therefore took it into my hands with all the expectation, and read it through with all the attention due to a treatise that made such a noise at its coming abroad: and cannot but confess myself mightily surprised, that in a book, which was to provide chains for all mankind, I should find nothing but a rope of sand; useful perhaps to such, whose skill and business it is to raise a dust, and would blind the people, the better to mislead them; but in truth not of any force to draw those into bondage who have their eyes open, and so much sense about them, as to consider, that chains are but an ill wearing, how much care soever hath been taken to file and polish them.
If anyone think I take too much liberty in speaking so freely of a man, who is the great champion of absolute power, and the idol of those who worship it; I beseech him to make this small allowance for once, to one, who, even after the reading of Sir Robert’s book, cannot but think himself, as the laws allow him, a freeman: and I know no fault it is to do so, unless anyone, better skilled in the fate of it than I, should have it revealed to him, that this treatise, which has lain dormant so long, was, when it appeared in the world, to carry, by strength of its arguments, all liberty out of it; and that, from thenceforth, our author’s short model was to be the pattern in the mount, and the perfect standard of politics for the future. His system lies in a little compass, it is no more but this,
“That all government is absolute monarchy.”
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