Natural rights and consent

Today: The founders held, with the English philosopher John Locke and others, that people are born with rights no government gives them, that governments are made to secure those rights, and that just government rests on the consent of the governed; the Declaration of Independence put those ideas at the base of the new nation in 1776.

See it in teaching mode

About 40 minutes to teach

Teach the idea

Read this together:A Committee of Five

331 words

On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia rose in the Continental Congress in Philadelphia and moved that the united colonies are, and ought to be, free and independent states. Congress put off the vote for three weeks, but it did not waste the time. On June 11 it named five men to write a declaration explaining the break to the world: John Adams of Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Robert Livingston of New York, and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia.

The committee gave the writing to Jefferson. He was 33 years old. He worked in two rooms he had rented on the second floor of a new brick house at the corner of Seventh and Market Streets. Adams and Franklin read his draft and made changes, and the committee brought it to Congress on June 28.

On July 2 Congress voted for independence. Then for the next two days it went over Jefferson's draft line by line, cutting and changing it. It struck out a long passage in which Jefferson blamed the king for the slave trade. On July 4 Congress approved the final text.

The second paragraph of that text set out a theory of government in a few lines. People are created equal. They have rights from their Creator that no one may rightly take. Governments exist to secure those rights, and they get their just powers from the consent of the governed. When a government becomes destructive of those ends, the people may alter or abolish it.

Almost fifty years later, in a letter of 1825, Jefferson explained what he had tried to do. He wrote that he had not tried to invent new principles. He had tried to put the common sense of the subject before mankind, in plain and firm words, as an expression of the American mind. Those ideas, he wrote, could be found in many places, from ancient writers like Aristotle and Cicero to English ones like John Locke.

In "A Committee of Five", you heard how the Declaration of Independence was written in June 1776. This lesson asks where its second paragraph came from.
John Locke (1632 to 1704) was an English philosopher who published Two Treatises of Government in 1689. Locke asked what people would be like before any government at all, a condition Locke called the state of nature. There, Locke argued, all people are free and equal, and a law of nature forbids anyone to harm another in life, health, liberty, or possessions.
Why, then, would free people ever form a government? Locke's answer was that the state of nature lacks three things: a settled law everyone knows, a fair judge to settle disputes, and the power to enforce a right judgment. So people agree with one another to form a community and a government, chiefly to protect what Locke called their property, a word Locke used for their lives, liberties, and estates. A government that breaks that trust and invades the people's rights, Locke argued, may be resisted and replaced.
The Declaration says nearly the same thing in fewer words. All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Governments are instituted to secure those rights, and they derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Unalienable means the rights cannot be sold, given away, or rightly taken. In this view government does not grant rights; it exists to secure rights people already have. A privilege a ruler grants, a ruler can take back.
Locke was not the founders' only teacher. Jefferson wrote in 1825 that the Declaration was meant to express the common American mind of the time, drawn from writers such as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, and Algernon Sidney. Many historians count Locke as one important source among several, along with English law, the Bible and the preaching of colonial ministers, and the colonists' own experience of governing themselves. Gavin will read Locke's own words in the activity.

Gavin reads:John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, chapter 8, section 95, and chapter 9, section 124, first published in 1689

221 words

John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, chapter 8, section 95, and chapter 9, section 124, first published in 1689, written in English.

MEN being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent. The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any, that are not of it. … When any number of men have so consented to make one community or government, they are thereby presently incorporated, and make one body politic, wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude the rest. … The great and chief end, therefore, of men’s uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property. To which in the state of nature there are many things wanting. First, There wants an established, settled, known law, received and allowed by common consent to be the standard of right and wrong, and the common measure to decide all controversies between them

Do it together

1. Go back to the paragraph in "A Committee of Five" about the second paragraph of the Declaration. Ask Gavin to say its theory of government in one sentence, without looking, and then check it against the four ideas the paragraph lists: equal, rights from the Creator, governments to secure them, powers from consent.
2. Ask Gavin to picture a group of families living somewhere with no government at all. What would happen the first time two of them argued over a field or a fence? Let Gavin reason it out, then name Locke's three missing things: a settled law, a fair judge, and the power to enforce a judgment.
3. Talk through the word unalienable. Ask Gavin for the difference between a right and a privilege, with an example of each from ordinary life, and why it might matter to the colonists which one they thought they had.
4. Remind Gavin that Jefferson named Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, and Sidney, and that historians add English law, the Bible, and colonial self-government. On paper, have Gavin list the sources the lesson names in two columns, writers and experiences. When the list is done, move on to the activity, where Gavin reads Locke aloud to you.

Activity

Together: Gavin reads the source aloud to you. Here estate means condition; divests means strips off; civil society is a people living under laws and a government; a body politic is a people joined as one under a government; to conclude the rest is to bind the others; controversies are disputes. Then talk through three questions. First: according to Locke, how does a person come under a government's power? Listen for: only by consenting, by agreeing with others to join a community. Second: what does Locke say people most lack in the state of nature, and why does it matter? Listen for: a settled, known law that everyone has agreed is the standard of right and wrong, so disputes can be judged by a rule instead of by force. Third: the Declaration says governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Which sentence of Locke says nearly the same thing? Listen for: no one can be put under the political power of another without consenting. Last, Gavin makes two columns headed Locke and the Declaration and writes three ideas the two share. On your own this unit: Gavin reads, free online, about two hours in all: the Declaration of Independence (the National Archives transcript at archives.gov), chapters 8 and 9 of John Locke's Second Treatise of Government (Project Gutenberg), and The Federalist number 10 (Project Gutenberg, The Federalist Papers). Then Gavin writes an essay of two to three pages answering: the founders said that people have rights by nature and that government exists to secure them. Using the unit's sources, explain where that idea came from, how the founders tried to build a government strong enough to protect rights without becoming a danger to them, and how later Americans such as Frederick Douglass used the same founding ideas to argue for people the founding left out. Look for a clear claim in the first paragraph, quotations from at least three of the unit's sources (Locke, the Declaration, Federalist 10, and Douglass are good choices), an honest account of what the founding did not yet do, and a fair answer to the strongest point on the other side.

Tip If Locke's long sentences slow Gavin down, take the reading one clause at a time and say each in plain words before going on. If Gavin moves quickly, ask where Locke's idea of consent leaves people who were never asked, and keep that question for the unit's essay.

On paper

Worksheet

Natural Rights and Consent

6 problems

The worksheet, as it prints

U.S. Government · Worksheet