¹ Related in Cranston, Maurice, John Locke: A Biography (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1957), 426Google Scholar.

² See Locke, John, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (in John Locke on Politics and Education [Roslyn, New York: Walter J. Black, 1947], 203–388)Google Scholar, §§67, 143, 45.

³ Cranston, Biography, 425.

⁴ “Charity” is a term with broad and multiple meanings. This may lead to confusion, but I can find no better term to use in this context. In this essay, I use the term to mean a putative moral duty on the part of the well-off to share some of their material possessions with those in need. The “right of necessity” is a closely related concept that will surface later in our investigation. It refers to a putative right of the needy to seize what they need, if the well-to-do refuse to share.

⁵ Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)Google Scholar. The assertion of charity is in First Treatise, §42.

⁶ More will be said about these authors below. For discussions of seventeenth-century theories of property that included charity, see Brace, Laura, The Idea of Property in Seventeenth-Century England: Tithes and the Individual (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998)Google Scholar, chaps. 2, 3, 5; Buckle, Stephen, Natural Law and the Theory of Property: Grotius to Hume (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar, chaps. 1, 2; Horne, Thomas A., Property Rights and Poverty: Political Argument in Britain, 1605–1834 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990)Google Scholar, chaps. 1, 2; Tully, James, A Discourse on Property: John Locke and His Adversaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chaps. 3–5; Tuck, Richard, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chaps. 1, 3, 8.

⁷ It is true that Locke does not speak explicitly of a “duty” on the part of the prosperous in this passage. But I take Locke's statement that “it would always be a Sin, in any Man of Estate, to let his Brother perish for want of affording him relief out of his Plenty” and his reference to the “Relief, God requires him [who has plenty] to afford to the wants of his Brother” to be equivalent expressions (§42). These statements make clear, I believe, that this is a duty on the part of the prosperous and not, for example, a simple survival right on the part of the needy.

⁸ See Horne, Property Rights and Poverty, 57, and my discussion of these theories, below.

⁹ In what follows I will be using “property” to refer only to material possessions. Locke sometimes uses the term more widely, to include “life, liberty, and estate” (Second Treatise, §§87, 123, 173), but our concern here is property in the narrower sense.

¹⁰ To be sure, Locke is moving within a common trope here: many property theories of the seventeenth century supposed original common ownership, and sought to explain how private property arose out of it. See Ashcraft, Richard, Revolutionary Politics and Locke's Two Treatises of Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 251, 256Google Scholar; Horne, Property Rights and Poverty, 10 and chap. 1. We shall examine some of these theories presently. The fact that Locke is dealing with a common problem, or takes a common departure point, does not of course excuse us from examining his solution on its own terms.

¹¹ Compare Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics, 208; Kendall, Willmoore, John Locke and the Doctrine of Majority Rule (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1965), 69, 72Google Scholar; Horne, Property Rights and Poverty, 29; Kim Ian Parker, The Biblical Politics of John Locke (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2004), 134–35; Simmons, A. John, The Lockean Theory of Rights (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 39, 48, 243–44Google Scholar.

¹² Cf. Kendall, Majority Rule, 68.

¹³ §33; cf. §§39, 59, 86, 88; Genesis 1:28–29, 9:1.

¹⁴ §88. Locke's subject here is the right of children to inherit from parents (hence all the children of Adam would have shared his goods). When Locke says in the Second Treatise (§72) that a father has a right to disinherit wayward children, this applies to grown children, and does not derogate from his duty to care for them in their nonage. Parenthood is one of the few themes in the Second Treatise that bring duty, rather than right, explicitly to the fore: see §§56, 58, 60, 184, 190.

¹⁵ Hooker, Richard, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, ed. Hill, W. Speed [Cambridge, MA: Harvard Belknap, 1977]), 1.7–9Google Scholar; Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologica (in Great Books of the Western World, vols. 19 and 20 [Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952])Google Scholar, 2.1.90.1–2; 2.1.94.1; Aquinas, , Summa Contra Gentiles (in Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 2, ed. Pegis, Anton C. [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997]), 3.112–13Google Scholar; cf. Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. Macpherson, C. B. (New York: Penguin, 1975), chap. 14Google Scholar. This is not to deny that there are substantial differences between Locke and the earlier authors on the issues before us. Some of these will be addressed in the course of this essay.

¹⁶ It also tells us, famously, that we may prefer our preservation to that of others in case of conflict (Second Treatise, §6). But this does not make Locke a Hobbesian; such provisos are found in Cicero De Officiis (Cicero, vol. 21, trans. Walter Miller [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press/Loeb Classical Library, 1975]), 3.42; Aquinas (Summa 2.2.26.5); Grotius, Hugo, De Jure Belli ac Pacis (henceforth JBP) (trans. Kelsey, Francis W. [New York: Carnegie Classics of International Law, 1925])Google Scholar, 2.3.3.3, 2.1.3, 10–11; Pufendorf, Samuel, De Jure Naturae et Gentium (henceforth JNG) (trans. Oldfather, C. H. and Oldfather, W. A. [Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1934])Google Scholar, 2.4.2; and others. It would take an extreme moralist indeed not to admit this proviso.

¹⁷ Simmons, Theory of Rights, has developed a version of this argument at significant length. I concur with much of what he says, though my argument is different in some key respects, which I will point out. Others who suggest a utilitarian interpretation of property are Ashcraft Revolutionary Politics, 264–65; Horne, Property Rights and Poverty, 59, 63; Kendall, Majority Rule, 72; E. J. Hundert, “The Making of Homo Faber: John Locke between Ideology and History,” Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (January–March 1972): 11; Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 242Google Scholar; Tully, Discourse on Property, 99; cf. Buckle, Stephen, Natural Law and the Theory of Property: Grotius to Hume (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 153Google Scholar. Richard Cumberland had published a treatise in 1672 that made property part of natural law, but grounded it entirely in a natural-law principle of the common good. He concluded that property should be regulated in ways that served the common good (A Treatise of the Laws of Nature, trans. John Maxwell [New York: Garland Publishing facsimile edition, 1978], 7.1–5, 9.6).

¹⁸ “Transcendent natural law” is the phrase of Michael Zuckert, who is one champion of the individual-right point of view. See Zuckert, Michael, Natural Rights and the New Republicanism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 210, 216, 233Google Scholar, etc.

¹⁹ First Treatise, §39; see Glenn, Gary D., “Inalienable Rights and Locke's Argument for Limited Government: Political Implications of a Right to Suicide,” Journal of Politics 46:1 (1984): 80–105CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Tully, Discourse on Property, 62.

²⁰ See Coby, Patrick, “The Law of Nature in Locke's Second Treatise: Is Locke a Hobbesian?” Review of Politics 49:1 (1987): 9–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pangle, Thomas, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 160Google Scholar; Strauss, Natural Right and History, chap. 5; Zuckert, Michael, “The Recent Literature on Locke's Political Philosophy,” The Political Science Reviewer 5 (1975): 303Google Scholar; New Republicanism, chaps. 7–9.

²¹ See Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2.28.8, 4.3.18, 4.18.5; Questions Concerning the Law of Nature, 8, 205, 213; Second Treatise, §§6, 56. See also Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics, 258; Grant, Ruth W., John Locke's Liberalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marshall, John, John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 206, 215, 267CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Waldron, Jeremy, God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations of John Locke's Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²² Locke asserts that a divine legislator is necessary not only to “natural law,” but to morality tout court (Essay, 1.3.6, 12, 2.28.6, 4.3.18). This would be a serious blunder if Locke's intent had been to undermine natural law, and replace it covertly with a nontheistic morality of rights. See also Second Treatise, §§6, 56; Questions, 117, 163, 203–207; Pufendorf, JNG, 1.2.6, 2.3.2. For the notion that God is necessary to morality in Locke, see Grant, Liberalism, 42; Forde, Steven, “Natural Law, Theology, and Morality in Locke,” American Journal of Political Science 45, no. 2 (2001): 398–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, 10–13, 79–81, 209, 228; Parker, , Biblical Politics of John Locke, 126Google Scholar.

²³ Grotius, JBP, Prolegomena 11; 2.1.10.

²⁴ As Locke puts it in an unpublished fragment from around 1693, “If man were independent he could have no law but his own will, no end but himself” (“Law,” in Goldie, Mark, Locke: Political Essays [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997]Google Scholar, 328). See also Tully, Discourse on Property, 36; Grant, Liberalism, 43; Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, 83, 106. It could be argued that self-ownership is intrinsically moral because it implies respect for other self-owners, a kind of moral reciprocity (cf. Pangle, Modern Republicanism, 187, 264; Zuckert, New Republicanism, 277–78, 286). It is not clear to me that this would follow, rather than its Hobbesian or Spinozistic opposite; in any case, Locke does not make this argument in the passages under consideration, but rather the argument from divine legislation.

²⁵ Cf. Simmons, Theory of Rights, 256–56.

²⁶ §§31, 36, 46, 48, 51; cf. Strauss, Natural Right and History, 237; Fagiani, Francesco, “Natural Law and History in Locke's Theory of Distributive Justice,” Topoi 2 (1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: 163–85—Reprinted in Locke, Volume 2, ed. John Dunn and Ian Harris, Great Political Thinkers Series (Lyme, CT: Edward Elgar, 1997), 166, 169; Zuckert, New Republicanism, 256.

²⁷ Cf. Kendall, Majority Rule, 72; Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 180Google Scholar; Tully, Discourse on Property, 62; Buckle, Natural Law, 181.

²⁸ More complete accounts of these authors on the subject of property may be found in the authors cited in note 6, above.

²⁹ Aquinas, Summa Theologica (http://www.newadvent.org/summa/), 2.2.66.1.

³⁰ Ibid.

³¹ Aquinas, 2.2.66.2. Cf. Aristotle Politics 2.3.

³² Ibid., 66.2.

³³ Ibid., 2.2.66.7.

³⁴ See Justinian's Institutes, 2.1.1 (Fordham University: Internet Medieval Sourcebook http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/535institutes.html).

³⁵ JBP 2.2.2.1. Grotius wrote an earlier work, The Law of Prize, which differs in some respects on issues relevant to us. I will rely exclusively on the later work, as Grotius's mature statement (De Jure Praedae Commentarius, trans. G. L. Williams and W. H. Zeydel [Oxford: Clarendon, 1950]).

³⁶ JBP 1.4. Grotius says that by the law of nature, men are born free, but this applies only to a state of affairs that “precedes all human conditions,” and slavery may be instituted by men (JBP 2.21.11). In this, Grotius is following his Roman sources (cf. Justinian, Institutes 1.2, 3, 8; Zuckert, New Republicanism, 133–34). Once agreements concerning property, slavery, and other things are made, natural law stands behind them, partly by its principle, pacta sunt servanda—human beings must abide by agreements they have made.

³⁷ This is strange because the same interpretive procedure might have led Grotius to suppose that every society's founding compact bars absolutism, absent clear evidence to the contrary (he does make this argument, but refuses to apply it unequivocally: JBP 1.3.8). Perhaps the prevalence of tyranny in human history prevented Grotius from arguing thus, though it led Rousseau to brand him a friend to tyranny (Social Contract 1.4, 5). Buckle (Natural Law, 46) argues, with some plausibility, that in the matter of property and need, Grotius is deploying a pure a priori argument, disguised as an historical supposition.

³⁸ Pufendorf, JNG 1.1.16; 2.2.3, 4.4. See also Cumberland, Laws of Nature, 7.2–3; Buckle, Natural Law, 78–79, 93.

³⁹ JNG 4.4.4, 5, 9, 14; cf. Grotius, JBP 2.2.2.1.

⁴⁰ Grotius, JBP 2.2.6.1-2; Pufendorf, JNG 2.6.

⁴¹ On this general point, see Buckle, Natural Law, 117. Pufendorf suggests that government should proscribe laziness, while supporting the deserving poor (JNG 7.9.11).

⁴² Though this clearly distinguishes Locke from Grotius and Pufendorf, the case of Aquinas is somewhat ambiguous, because Aquinas is not much concerned with an original condition or state of nature in the seventeenth-century sense. It is enough for Aquinas that humans adopt a property regime at some point in the distant past, as God and natural law intended. Still, neither God nor natural law instituted private property.

⁴³ For simplicity, I will henceforth refer to Aquinas, Grotius, and Pufendorf simply as Locke's “predecessors” in the arguments he is making.

⁴⁴ It is stronger because the duty appears to lie on a particular individual rather than being diffuse. This may be due to the context: Filmer's Adam is the hypothetical case here—one man who possesses title to all earthly goods, and who would therefore have sole duty to share.

⁴⁵ This is why I cannot agree with interpreters who assert or presume that charity is implicit in chapter five, on the basis of Locke's statement in First Treatise, §42, or his grounding of property in the common good. See Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, 172; Tully, Discourse on Property, 131–32; Simmons, Theory of Rights, 327–28.

⁴⁶ Barbeyrac, Jean, “An Historical and Critical Account of the Science of Morality” (introduction to Pufendorf, Of the Law of Nature and Nations, Eight Books, ed. Barbeyrac, Jean, trans. Kennett, Basil [London, 1729], 3–88), 79–82Google Scholar; cf. Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, 174–75; Tully, Discourse on Property, 5–6.

⁴⁷ Grotius, JBP 1.1.4–8; Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, chap. 3; Buckle, Natural Law, chap. 1; Zuckert, New Republicanism, chap. 5. There is a budding presence of “subjective” or individual right in the late-scholastic contemporary of Grotius, Suárez, Francisco (On Laws and God the Lawgiver, in Selections from Three Works, trans. Williams, Gwladys L., Brown, Ammi, Waldron, John, and Henry Davis, S. J. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1944], 1.2, 2.17Google Scholar; cf. Tully, Discourse on Property, 65–67, 80). On the moral centrality of the suum as an innovation, see Olivecrona, Karl, “Appropriation in the State of Nature: Locke on the Origin of Property,” Journal of the History of Ideas 35:2 (1974): 211–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar—Reprinted in Locke, Volume I, ed, Dunn and Harris, 211; Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, chap 1.

⁴⁸ Aquinas accepts this formulation, borrowed from Justinian's Institutes (Summa Theologica 2.2.58.1; Institutes 1.1). See also Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, chaps. 1–2.

⁴⁹ Grotius, JBP, 1.1.4–5, 1.2.1.5, 1.2.5.7; Pufendorf, JNG 3.1, 2.5, 7.8.4. These thinkers provide an interesting beginning-point from which to consider the very contemporary issue of what should be included in individuals' “right,” and why. See Buckle, Natural Law, 29, 77; Olivecrona, “Appropriation,” 211–18; Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, 16–17.

⁵⁰ Buckle, Natural Law, 51; Zuckert, Michael, “Do Natural Rights Derive from Natural Law? Aquinas, Hobbes, and Locke on Natural Rights,” in Zuckert, Launching Liberalism: On Lockean Political Philosophy (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002)Google Scholar, 185.

⁵¹ See Grotius, JBP 1.3.8; Pufendorf, JNG 7.6.5, 7.8.6. Pufendorf, influenced by Hobbes, maintains that the law of nature intends the ruler to be unfettered (JNG 2.2.4).

⁵² JBP 1.1.6, 1.1.12.1, 1.2.1, 1.4.2.1, 2.1.9.2; Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, 72–73, 81; Buckle, Natural Law, 19; Zuckert, New Republicanism, 136–38.

⁵³ JNG 2.2.4, 2.2.8, 2.3.5, 3.3.3, 3.4.4, 3.5.3, 7.8.5. This theme is somewhat hedged by Pufendorf, or leavened with a dose of Hobbesian individualism. See also Marshall, Resistance, Religion, Responsibility, 201; Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, 78–79.

⁵⁴ Some medieval thought viewed society as a corpus mysticum, a mystical whole that was greater than the sum of its parts. Thus, some rights belonged to sovereignty that could never belong to individuals apart from society, such as the power to punish, to make war, or to rule. This notion seems partially to have been borrowed from Aristotle. See Aquinas, Summa Theologica 2.2.90.2, 2.2.96.4; Suárez, On Laws and God the Lawgiver, 1.6.18, 2.14.18, 3.2.

⁵⁵ Cf. Zuckert, New Republicanism, 205, 286.

⁵⁶ Cf. First Treatise, §92.

⁵⁷ Cf. Tully, Discourse on Property, 95–98.

⁵⁸ Second Treatise, §§26–27. Horne (Property Rights and Poverty, 52–54, 59) argues that this is just a use-right, true property being established by consent, on the model of Grotius and Pufendorf, once money is introduced. But Locke does not describe the transition to money in these terms, and seems to treat property as a full right from the first appropriation. See also Olivecrona, “Appropriation,” 223, Tully, Discourse on Property, 72, 112.

⁵⁹ Locke's position is not entirely novel; a few others had argued for a property right by nature, independent of any convention. For brief accounts of some of these, see Peter Laslett, introduction to Locke, John, Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 102Google Scholar; Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, chap. 8.

⁶⁰ Locke does not hold to a simple “labor theory of value,” though the schematic argument of chapter 5 can give that impression. I follow the schematic here, but for a more subtle accounting of Locke's economics, see Vaughn, Karen Iversen, John Locke: Economist and Social Scientist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially chap. 2. See also Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, 323.

⁶¹ Unlike property per se, money cannot be a direct creation of natural law. Being essentially conventional, it can only be created by consent. Nonetheless, for the reasons given, it seems that Locke's God and natural law make the creation of money virtually a human duty. I do not intend to imply that material prosperity is the sole aim of Locke's God and his natural law. The inclusion of “arts and sciences” hints at the richer view of the human good that stands behind Locke's natural law. See Myers, Peter C., Our Only Star and Compass: Locke and the Struggle for Political Rationality (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 248–49Google Scholar.

⁶² Essay, 1.3.13, 2.7.3–4, 2.20.2, 2.21.41–42, 61. See also the essay “Morality” (in Goldie, Locke, 267–69).

⁶³ Pufendorf is somewhat ambiguous on this score, since his duty of sociability appears to be based not on Ciceronian reason, but on Hobbesian reason backed by divine command (JNG 2.2.4, 9, 3.3.1, 3.4.4).

⁶⁴ See Bacon, Francis, New Organon, ed. Anderson, Fulton (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960)Google Scholar, Proemium, Preface; cf. Locke, Essay, 4.12.11.

⁶⁵ This, again, is why I cannot agree with those who read a strong duty of charity into the Second Treatise (e.g., Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, 172; Tully, Discourse on Property, 131–32; Simmons, Theory of Rights, 327–28). Locke's silence on charity is driven partly by concern that such a duty might benefit the “Quarrelsom and Contentious”(§34), and undermine the command to labor and industry.

⁶⁶ This is why I believe it is not quite enough to say that Locke ignores charity in his treatment of property because he believes that his new engine of prosperity will virtually eliminate poverty (cf. Buckle, Natural Law, 149–50, 157, 161; Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, 177; Strauss, Natural Right and History, 243). Locke does have great and justified faith in that engine. But there will always be the old, the infirm, the unlucky—those to whom he directed his own charity, in Lady Masham's report.

⁶⁷ This piece can be found in John Dunn, “Justice and the Interpretation of John Locke's Political Theory,” Political Studies 16 (February 1968): 84–87; and Goldie, Locke, 339–43. Page references in the text are to the Goldie edition.

⁶⁸ Cf. Dunn, “Justice,” 74, 82–83; Fagiani, “Distributive Justice,” 164.

⁶⁹ JBP 1.1.8–10, 1.2.1.3, 1.2.6.2; cf. Locke, Second Treatise §54; Buckle, Natural Law, 31; Zuckert, New Republicanism, 139–41; Steven Forde, “Hugo Grotius on Ethics and War,” American Political Science Review 92, no. 3 (1998): 640–41.

⁷⁰ 1.2.1.5, 2.1.4.1; cf. Pufendorf, JNG 2.2.9; Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, 72; Tully, Discourse on Property, 86; Buckle, Natural Law, 71.

⁷¹ Cf. Simmons, Theory of Rights, 54–55, 61, 78, 337; Strauss, Natural Right and History, 235 n. Utilitarianism is typically differentiated from liberalism by the fact that it allows the sacrifice of individual interests if that advances overall social utility. “Rights utilitarianism” is the theory that a regime of largely indefeasible individual rights leads to the greatest social good, even though in isolated instances the respect for rights will lead to a socially harmful result. I do not mean to imply too close a relationship between Locke and later utilitarians. His full moral theory has more the character of deontology. See Tarcov, Nathan, Locke's Education for Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Simmons, Theory of Rights, 40, 45, 57–58, 100; Myers, Only Star and Compass, 12, 248–49; Berkowitz, Peter, Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 81Google Scholar.

Some interpreters have used something like my line of argument to claim that Locke is not devoted to individual rights at all, granting virtually unlimited power to the community (Macpherson; Laslett; Kendall, Majority Rule; Tully, Discourse on Property, 99, 161–65; cf. Grant, Liberalism, 99). My argument is that Locke gives individual rights much higher status, as the sole means to the common good in politics and economics. I also differ from Simmons, whose parallel “rule-consequentialist” interpretation allows property rights to be more easily overridden by charity (Theory of Rights, 50–51, 223, 291, 327–36). Simmons mentions the possibility that Locke's theory is tiered in the way I argue, but does not develop the point (328–29; cf. 63). He accuses Locke of being less charitable than his philosophic principles require (331).

⁷² Locke, Essay 2.21.42–70; Schouls, Peter, Reasoned Freedom: John Locke and the Enlightenment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 63, 111, 125, 152Google Scholar.

⁷³ Locke, Essay 2.27.26; cf. 1.3.14, 3.11.16, 4.3.18. We might note that religious liberty too seems as much a duty as a right for Locke, the duty of each individual to come to his religious convictions thoughtfully (A Letter Concerning Toleration, trans. William Popple and ed. James H. Tully [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983], 26; Essay 4.19, 20). See also Kraynak, Robert P., “John Locke: From Absolutism to Toleration,” American Political Science Review 74, no. 1 (1980): 66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁴ I believe there are only two references to “rights” (in the relevant sense) in this work. In the first, an understanding of the “rights” of people to their property is said to require sophisticated concepts beyond the grasp of children (§110). In the other, Locke assigns Pufendorf to his pupil, so as to give him an understanding of the “natural rights of men” (§186). These references are clearly significant, but we must also acknowledge that the vast bulk of Locke's moral education passes without reference to “rights.”

⁷⁵ Locke, Essay §116. Or, as Locke puts it in A Third Letter for Toleration, the law of nature is a rule “whereby every one is commissioned to do good” (The Works of John Locke, vol. 5 [London: Routledge/Thoemmes—facsimile reprint of the 1794 T. Longman edition], 213).

⁷⁶ §§93, 141–44; Tarcov, Education for Liberty, 137–41, 193–97.

⁷⁷ Locke drafted a model Poor Law in 1697 that makes provision for the poor a government responsibility (in Goldie, Locke, 182–98). In other respects the proposal is quite harsh. Simmons (Theory of Rights, 335) correctly points out that we must be wary of drawing too much from this essay, as it was commissioned of Locke in an official capacity, which may have dictated its parameters. In A Third Letter for Toleration, Locke suggests some power in the magistrate to punish “corrupt manners” and “debaucheries” (416; 116–19, 202–24, 469).

⁷⁸ In a similar vein, Tarcov (Education for Liberty, chap. 3) draws a list of Lockean virtues out of Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Like the “civility” and “good breeding” of that work, these are not for the most part perfect duties, but are moral charges nonetheless. See also Marshall, Resistance, Religion, Responsibility, 294, 296–98, 446, 453; Myers, Only Star and Compass, 138, 152; Parker, Biblical Politics, 15, 56; Schouls, Reasoned Freedom, 135–37; Strauss, Natural Right and History, 213–14. This is one reason why Locke can be classified as a “perfectionist” liberal (Myers, Only Star and Compass, chap. 1). My analysis here does not answer (or even raise) the question whether Locke believed parts of natural-law morality over and above justice to be necessary to the health of the liberal state, though this is an important topic in liberal theory today (see, among many others, Galston, William, Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues, and Diversity in the Liberal State [New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991]CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Macedo, Stephen, Liberal Virtues: Citizenship, Virtue and Community in Liberal Constitutionalism [New York: Oxford University Press, 1990]Google Scholar; Berkowitz, Making of Modern Liberalism; Spragens, Thomas, Civic Liberalism: Reflections on Our Democratic Ideals [Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999], chap. 8)Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ This essay has focused on the duty of charity at the individual level, and its place in Locke's moral universe. There is no shortage of writing on Locke and the welfare state. A sampling: Laslett, introduction, 105–6; Marshall, Resistance, Religion, Responsibility, 377–83; Vaughn, Economist and Social Scientist, 112–19; Pangle, Modern Republicanism, 169; Zuckert, New Republicanism, 271; Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, 7, 152–55. One might approach this question by considering that though “charity” is not part of “justice,” it becomes obligatory under certain circumstances.

⁸⁰ Fagiani (“Distributive Justice”) proposes some rules of charity derived from Locke, tending to a minimal interpretation of the duty. Tuck (Natural Rights Theories, 171–72) and Marshall (Resistance, Religion, Responsibility, 324, 377) propose more expansive rules. These deductions have merit, but are necessarily speculative. Simmons (Theory of Rights, 291, 328, 332) finds very strong charitable duties, but in my opinion does not take adequate account of the tiered nature of Locke's argument.

⁸¹ Cited in Cranston, Biography, 425. See also Marshall, Resistance, Religion, Responsibility, 179, 325.