When Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of
Independence, he did not develop a new concept of liberty in a war against
tyranny, but he simply articulated in writing the predominant thoughts of
Englishmen toward their county and king. Jefferson penned the “expression of
the American mind…harmonizing sentiment of the day, whether expressed in
conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public
right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.”[1] Locke
was indeed a great influence on Jefferson’s writings considering his statement
that “Bacon, Locke and Newtwon…I consider them as the three greatest men that
have ever lived.”[2]
Locke’s philosophy and argument was that the power rested
in the people. With sovereignty placed within the people’s own hands, the
people were equal and had natural rights. Jefferson shared in this philosophical
thought process and witnessed England’s actions as hostile to arbitrary power. The
similar train of thought can be seen when elements of the two documents are
compared. Locke wrote on the subject:
[b]ut if a long train of abuses,
prevarications and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible
to the people, and they cannot but feel what they be under, and see wither they
are going; it is not to be wondered, that they should then rouze themselves,
and endeavor to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends
for which government was first erected.[3]
Jefferson would later write:
[b]ut when a long train of abuses and
usurpations, begun at a distinguished period and pursuing invariably the same
object, evinces a design to reduce the [people] under absolute despotism, it is
their right, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new
guards for their future security.[4]
Jefferson, the great statesman, was well read and
educated in various fields. When it came time to write the Declaration of
Independence, he looked to men like Locke to help formulate his words to
justify the people’s natural rights to the revolution. Thus it is no surprise
that Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government and the Declaration of
Independence would have some similarities.
Bibliography
Borgmann, Albert. Crossing the Postmodern Divide. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1992.
Maxifield,
Richard M. The Real Thomas Jefferson.
Washington D.C.: National Center for Constitutional Studies, 1983.
Uviller,
H. Richard and Merkel, William G. The
Militia and the Right to Arms, Or, How the Second Amendment Fell Silent.
Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.
[1]
Richard M. Maxifield, The Real Thomas
Jefferson, (Washington D.C.: National Center for Constitutional Studies,
1983), 71.
[2]
Albert Borgmann, Crossing the Postmodern
Divide, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 25.
[3]
H. Richard Uviller and William G. Merkel, The
Militia and the Right to Arms, Or, How the Second Amendment Fell Silent, (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2002), 173.
[4]
Ibid.
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