John Locke, Territory, and Transmigration

Brian Smith

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367345587
• eBook ISBN: 9781000328363
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines John Locke as a theorist of migration, immigration, and the movement of peoples. It outlines the contours of the public discourse surrounding migration in the seventeenth century and situates Locke's in-depth involvement in these debates. The volume presents a variety of undercurrents in Locke's writing — his ideas on populationism, naturalization, colonization and the right to withdrawal, the plight of refugees, and territorial rights — which have great import in present-day debates about migration. Departing from the popular extant literature that sees Locke advocating for a strong right to exclude foreigners, the author proposes a Lockean theory of immigration that recognizes the fundamental right to emigrate, thus catering to an age wrought with terrorism, xenophobia and economic inequality.

A unique and compelling contribution, the volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of political theory, political philosophy, history of international politics, international relations, international political economy, public policy, seventeenth century English history, migration and citizenship studies, and moral philosophy.

1
Introduction

Introduction

In a journal entry from April 1679, John Locke writes the following under the heading Amor Patriae [love of country]:

Whilst we are abroad we look on ourselves as strangers there, and are always thinking of departing; we set not up our rest, but often see or think of the end of our being there; and the mind is not easily satisfied with anything it can reach to the end of. But when we are returned to our country, where we think of a lasting abode, wherein to set up our rest, an everlasting abode, for we seldom think of anything beyond it, we do not propose to ourselves another country whither we think to remove and establish ourselves afterwards. This is that I imagine, that sets mankind so constantly upon desires of returning to their country, because they think no more of leaving again.¹

The touch of homesickness in this passage quite reasonably stems from the fact that Locke had been living in exile in France from November 1675 to May 1679. This entry was made right around the time he was planning his return to England. Living abroad for so long, while invigorating in certain respects, had led Locke to reflect on the importance of his own national origin and affiliation in light of his status as a stranger.

This passage also provides unique insight into Locke’s political psychology. It is well known that for Locke humans are sociable creatures.² We desire camaraderie and friendship, but what is more, we also desire a “lasting abode,” a place that forecloses on any impulse to “remove and establish ourselves” elsewhere. Some of this sentiment is captured in the First Treatise, where Locke explains how the early biblical communities built cities “for themselves as free-men, not as slaves for their lord and master.”³ But more importantly, these cities were necessary so “that we be not scattered abroad; having a city once built, and fixed habitations to settle our abodes and families.”⁴ What this suggests is that in Locke’s estimation, man is not meant to aimlessly wander the earth or to remain indefinitely unaffiliated. There is something about the human condition that leads us to desire a permanent residence, a home, which also entails becoming a formal member of a political community.

Even though the allure of our patriae or country of birth is strong, Locke was also acutely aware that to remain in or return to one’s home may not always be possible. Given the conditions of Locke’s departure from England, it was not entirely clear when he would be able to return. Where we eventually settle may not always be entirely up to us. In the Second Treatise, Locke laments that “conquerors’ swords often cut up governments by the roots, and mangle societies to pieces, separating the subdued or scattered multitude from the protection of, and dependence on, that society which ought to have preserved them from violence.”⁵ The tragic reality of global politics is that external forces make political homelessness an all too regular occurrence. Notice that Locke says that swords often cut up governments by the roots. Usurpers from within “will serve only to divide and scatter” the people,⁶ and conquerors from without will invariably lead to “scattered multitudes” being cast out into the international community, desperately looking to find the comfort and security of a new political home. By the late 1670s, Locke had, in a small way, become one of those scattered multitudes.

As the above quote about love of country suggests, it is unclear if Locke had intended to be gone for three-plus years. He had evidently started to wonder – in a somewhat morose and existential way, as he was prone to do – if he would die in France. The circumstances around his trip, after all, have been shrouded in some mystery and intrigue. In 1675 the House of Lords publicly condemned the controversial pamphlet A Letter from a Person of Quality, to his Friend in the Country, which was widely believed to have been authored by someone in Shaftesbury’s circle, perhaps even Locke. Richard Ashcroft defends Locke’s involvement in the writing of this pamphlet:

Desmaizeaux [an eighteenth-century journalist who compiled a collection of Locke’s work] described the various pieces or manuscripts that had come into his possession, and he provided some information concerning their composition. Of the Letter he wrote that it was Shaftesbury’s decision to publish an account of the parliamentary debates on the Test Bill, but ‘he desired Mr. Locke to draw up this relation; which he did under his lordship’s inspection, and only committed to writing what my Lord Shaftesbury did in a manner dictate to him.’⁷

However, much like the composition of the Fundamental Constitutions, Locke’s relationship to the document appears to be indirect.⁸ John Milton suspects that Locke’s singular authorship of the text is doubtful; he writes that

Locke never laid claim to it, and while he was alive no one appears to have attributed it to him. So far as is known, the first person to have done so was Pierre Des Maizeaux … who in 1720 included it in A Collection of Several Pieces of Mr. John Locke, Never before printed, or not extant in his Works.⁹

That it was attributed to Locke so late, more than a decade after his death, strikes Milton as questionable. In any case, whether Locke was the author or not, there is good reason to believe that he was sympathetic to its contents.¹⁰

Setting the questions of authorship aside, Locke was clearly caught up in the swirl of controversy around the document. Quite conspicuously, as Roger Woolhouse chronicles, “four days after the Lords ordered the Letter to be burnt, Locke left for France.”¹¹ Even though the trip to France had been planned well in advance, and Locke’s asthma seemed to be a legitimate premise to warrant such an excursion, many have speculated that Locke left for France under duress. Lord Shaftesbury’s grandson, whom Locke tutored for some time, assumed this as well.¹² Ashcraft also insinuates that Locke left England due to the difficult circumstances: “On November 10, the Letter was publicly burned at two different locations in London. That was enough for Locke. On that day, or the one following, he hastily packed his bags and left London.”¹³ Even if it isn’t exactly true that Locke intentionally left as a political refugee, he seems to have become one for that period. In any case, it was clear that Locke was able to benefit from the distance and time which had allowed the political climate to cool and tempers to subside. In a “Biographical Sketch” of Locke from 1845, an anonymous author explains that

Locke had been for some time afflicted with asthma, for which a residence in the south of France was recommended. For this purpose he left England in December 1675, and as he did not return for more than three years, he escaped being implicated in those greatest blots on his patron’s character.¹⁴

As the biographer notes, Locke’s self-imposed exile created distance and offered enough protective cover to mitigate some of the more extreme political consequences of his affiliation with the radicals in Shaftesbury’s circle.

Not too long after returning to England from France, Locke again found himself in the midst of political turmoil. In September of 1683 he would go into exile once more, this time to Holland and the United Provinces. In letters to friends, this trip was again cast as in reference to his poor health. In a 1684 letter to Pembroke, Locke writes,

It has been asked too, why I chose Holland, and not France for change of aire ... The reasons in short were, I had tried France and it would not prove a cure, it only kept my cough at a pretty tolerable abatement, but silenced it not quite. And this country I had not tried, which I now find more effectuall, and I have reason to hope in time for a prefecture cure.¹⁵

The question lingering behind Locke’s somewhat defensive (yet plausible) explanation is striking in its implication. He was being accused of seeking refuge in a place known as a haven for radicals.¹⁶ Holland, after all, had become a well-known point of exile for the religious heterodox and political dissidents.¹⁷ In contemporary writing on this subject, virtually no one is convinced by Locke’s stated reasons for leaving England. In fact, it is widely assumed that Locke’s exile was an implicit admission of guilt (at least by association) in the Rye House Plot, a failed assassination attempt on King Charles II and his brother, James, the Duke of York.¹⁸ However, as Philip Milton writes,

Pembroke clearly accepted [Locke’s stated reasons for leaving], and nine months later he wrote to assure Locke that he had ‘so satisfied the King [James II] that he has assured me he will never believe any ill reports of you.’¹⁹

And yet, despite these attempts to assuage the king, in the spring of 1685, James II sent his envoy to The Hague “to demand of the States Fourscore and four Persans, and amongst them Mr. Locke.”²⁰

While his exact level of involvement with the Rye House Plot in particular and Shaftesbury’s radicalism in general is still up for debate, Locke would spend the next five years in Holland (until 1689, just after the Glorious Revolution of 1688). James Walker claims that Shaftesbury and Locke were even granted burgher status in Amsterdam as a protection from English extradition laws.²¹ That Locke had also received burgher status is questionable. No existing evidence suggests he did. In fact, Locke had not reunited with Shaftesbury in Amsterdam. From July 1681 to February 1682, Shaftesbury had been imprisoned in the Tower of London for treason. And upon release, Shaftesbury fled to Amsterdam, where, due to poor health, he would survive only a few months, dying before Locke’s arrival.

Prior to his self-imposed exile, there is good reason to believe that Shaftesbury had, in fact, been involved in the Monmouth Rebellion, which had culminated in the Rye House Plot. Circumstantially, at least, Locke was implicated in these insurrectionist conspiracies due to the company he had kept. After Shaftesbury’s death, and when several men who were well known to Locke – specifically, Algernon Sidney, William Russell, and Robert West – had been arrested in June of 1683, it seemed only a matter of time before he too would be imprisoned. Out of an abundance of caution, indeed a real sense of vulnerability, Locke fled. Even if he wasn’t directly involved in the conspiracy, Locke was concerned his political writings would be seen as conspiratorial or, at worst, insurrectionist. As Peter Laslett convincingly argues, Locke referred to his potentially suspect manuscripts in code, specifically his early drafts of the Second Treatise. H...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Population discourses in the seventeenth century
• 3 Locke and the proliferation of “hands”
• 4 The right of withdrawal and the colonial context
• 5 Locke on naturalization
• 6 Territorial rights, exclusion, and the great art of government
• Index