Connecting the Enlightenment and the American Revolution
1. Excerpt from John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 1690
Locke was one of the greatest English political theorists of the seventeenth century. He published the Second Treatise of Government anonymously. Read the excerpt below and answer the question that follows.
[R]evolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in public affairs . . . but if a long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices . . . make the design visible to the people . . . it is not to be wondered at that they should . . . endeavor to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was at first erected . . . .
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2. Excerpt from Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, 1762
Rousseau was a Swiss philosopher of the eighteenth century. The Social Contract is his most famous work. Read the excerpt below and answer the question that follows.
[T]he dominant will of the prince is, or should be, nothing but the general will or the law; his force is only the public force concentrated in his hands, and, as soon as he tries to base any absolute and independent act on his own authority, the tie that binds the whole together begins to be loosened If finally the prince should come to have a particular will more active than the will of the sovereign, and should employ the public force in his hands in obedience to this particular will, there would be, so to speak, two sovereigns . . . and the body politic would be dissolved . . . .
Source: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses
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3. Excerpt from The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
Often credited solely to Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration was, in fact, a team effort. On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental approved the resolution. Read the excerpt below and answer the question that follows.
. . . Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.
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