John Locke, in his First Treatise on Civil
Government had argued against the necessity of Absolute Monarchy. The latter
doctrine had been supported by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan in which
he had argued that the basic selfishness and wantonness of human nature made a strong
ruler necessary in order to prevent absolute chaos. Instead, Locke argued for the
protection of every person's natural rights.
Locke
dismissed the idea of Absolutism in his First Treatise, and
proposed his theory of everyones "natural" right to life, liberty and property (the term
Locke used was "estate") in his Second Treatise on Civil Government.
Locke argued that since all people had the ability to reason, they had the
natural rights of which he spoke. Governments were created not to protect people from
each other, as Hobbes had argued; but to protect and guarantee their natural rights.
Locke's argument was written to justify the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in which James
II of England was removed and replaced by William and Mary who were required to agree to
the English Bill of Rights as a condition of their accepting the throne. Later, this
same argument was used by Thomas Jefferson in supporting America's claim to the right of
independence from Great Britain.
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