Two Treatises of Government

Two works published anonymously after the Glorious Revolution, though much of the text was probably written around 1679–1683, during the crisis over a Catholic succession. The First Treatise refutes Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, which derived the absolute power of kings from the authority God gave Adam. The Second Treatise builds Locke's own account. In the state of nature people are free and equal under a law of nature that forbids harming others in life, health, liberty or possessions. Property arises when a person mixes their labour with what is held in common, within limits that forbid waste. Because everyone judging their own case is unsafe, people consent to form a political society that protects their rights and acts by majority rule. Government holds power in trust, the legislative is supreme, and when rulers act against the people's trust the people may resist and set up a new government. Critics have attacked the theory of property, including its use to justify taking Indigenous land.

Its ideas of natural rights, government by consent and a right of resistance passed into the American Declaration of Independence and remain the core vocabulary of liberal politics.