Possessive Individualism and Locke's Doctrine On Taxation

Possessive Individualism and Locke's Doctrine on Taxation
Author(s): Edward Andrew

Source: The Good Society, Vol. 21, No. 1 (2012), pp. 151-168
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/goodsociety.21.1.0151
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Possessive Individualism and Locke’s
Doctrine on Taxation
e dwa rd a n drew
Introduction
Crawford Brough Macpherson’s The Political Theory of Possessive Individu-

alism: Hobbes to Locke has been republished just before the fiftieth anniver-
sary of its first publication,1 which might constitute an approximation to
a scholar’s dream of immortality. Possessive Individualism was widely hailed
as a path-breaking interpretation of seventeenth-century English political
thought but, by the 1980s, was commonly judged to have been surpassed by
subsequent critiques of its central claims. John Dunn wrote in 1980 that, “the
analysis which Macpherson advances is at least as inadequate as his purely
historical account of the development of liberal thought is inept.”2 I shall try
to argue that the all-too-common dismissal of Possessive Individualism is
ill-considered3 and that many of Macpherson’s insights, particularly about
Locke, retain substantial validity.
Macpherson’s central theses are that seventeenth-century English
thought was conditioned by an emerging market society and that the pri-
mary task of thinkers was to justify private property and facilitate capital
accumulation through the exchange of goods and labor services. These
theses engendered spirited opposition from its first publication.4 I do not
propose to take on the critics of the applicability of “possessive individu-
alism” to Thomas Hobbes, the Levelers, and James Harrington,5 but wish
to limit my remarks to critics of Macpherson’s interpretation of Locke.
I shall do so by means of an examination of Locke’s doctrine of taxation
the good society , vol. 21, no. 1, 2012

Copyright © 2012 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA
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152 | the good society | vol. 21, no. 1
and representation. Macpherson dealt with Locke’s views on taxation and

representation in passing; he argued that Locke could identify individual
consent to taxation with the consent of a majority of elected representa-
tives only because the class interests of the propertied overrode individual
differences of interest amongst the landed interest (aristocrats and gentry),
the moneyed men (bankers, goldsmiths and investors in government debt)
and merchants.6 Locke, Macpherson wrote, restricted the franchise to those
with taxable estate.7
Justice and Charity
The fundamental criticism of Macpherson’s Locke is that he was not

primarily a capitalist apologist, devoted to a profit-maximizing ethos.
Macpherson asserted that, for Locke, “the individual
Locke’s right of appropriation overrides any moral claims of
Considerations the society. The traditional view that property and
labour were social functions, and that the ownership
and Further
of property involved social obligations, is thereby
Considerations undermined.”8 This view, while supported by Leo
advocate laissez-faire Strauss and his followers,9 has been vigorously chal-
for the propertied lenged by Locke scholars, such as James Tully, John
and police for the C. Winfrey, John Dunn, and A. John Simmons.10
property-less. Macpherson’s opponents cite Locke’s First Treatise,
where in the course of an argument against absolute
monarchy and the eminent domain of the crown with respect to property,
Locke wrote: “As Justice gives every Man a Title to the product of his hon-
est Industry; so Charity gives every Man a Title to so much out of another’s
Plenty, as will keep him from extream want . . . .”11 Locke’s “Venditio”, where
Locke stipulated that a grain merchant may charge whatever the market
may bear but may not allow citizens to starve by sailing away from a famine
stricken city is also cited to support the view that Locke’s view of prop-
erty right retained traditional Christian views of property with those of an
emerging market ethos.12
By wrenching Locke’s statement about the right to charity out of the con-
text of his denial of eminent domain to the crown over a subject’s property,
Tully and others propose that Locke advocated a generalized right to char-
ity. However, Gopal Sreenivasan rightly stated, “Locke decidedly does not
mean that everyone has a right to meat, drink, and what not, even if he
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andrew | Possessive Individualism | 1 5 3
does not work: indeed his proposed reforms could hardly have had a more
contrary objective.” Locke’s Report to the Board of Trade indicates that if the
needy are not forced to work, they will unjustly live off the labor of others.13
Locke wrote to William Molyneux and Cornelius Lyde (urging his reluctant
agent [Lyde] to evict a widow from Locke’s property) that those who do not
work do not deserve to eat.14
James Tully and John Simmons thought Locke’s concept of a right to
charity mandated egalitarian redistribution to the level before a monetary
economy fostered vast inequalities of estates.15 However, Simmons distin-
guished between what Locke wrote and what he should have written to be
consistent with certain of Locke’s principles; with respect to Tully’s view
that property redistribution is mandated because of the inequities arising
from the introduction of money, Simmons noted, “Unfortunately for Tully’s
reading, Locke actually says none of this (although we have seen that he
should have said it).”16 Simmons correctly recognized that Lockean charity
is limited to those men, women and children incapable of work but asserted
that “the Lockean theory of rights (the best Lockean position) must include
a stronger right to charity than the one literally described by Locke.”17
Even though Macpherson made clear that his model of possessive indi-
vidualism is applicable to Locke’s mercantilism [where the state functions to
organize economic resources to make England more powerful than Holland
and France] as well as later doctrines of laissez-faire capitalism [where the
state is ideally limited to policing property and contracts],18 Tully overstated
his opposition to Macpherson in claiming, “that Locke’s account is opposite
to laissez-faire theories.”19 Locke’s Some Considerations of the Consequences
of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money (1691) and Further
Considerations Concerning raising the Value of Money (1695) make three
basic (and erroneous) claims: first, that the rate of interest cannot be regu-
lated by governments; second, that money must circulate at its bullion value
or that the government mint cannot place a value on coin independent of
its value as silver bullion; third, that all taxes are ultimately born by land-
lords. Locke asserted that interest rates could not be legislated, despite his
recognition of the fact that Jan de Witt had lowered the rate of interest in
Holland but he attributed the efficacy of de Witt’s legislation to a surplus of
money in Holland.20 The government compromised between the proposal
before Parliament to lower the rate of interest to 4 percent and Locke’s view
that interest rates could not be lowered by settling on a legislated rate of
5 percent in 1692.21 Locke’s claim that interest rates were independent of
government intervention was ideological, not empirical, as was his false
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claim that coins could not circulate at less than their bullion value and must
be re-coined with milled edges to prevent clipping. Joyce Appleby argued
that Locke’s faulty economics arose from his desire to limit government
authority on behalf of the propertied (the landlords and creditors) at the
expense of the landless and the debtors, “The recoinage could be seen as
an ingenious tax on the propertyless” to relieve the landowners and credi-
tors for financing the Nine Years War (1688–97).22 Locke’s economic writ-
ings were published at Baron Somers’ request as efforts to cope with the
enormous war debts occasioned by the Glorious or Bloodless Revolution
(1688–89).
Locke’s major propositions were questioned in his time by William
Lowndes, James Hodges, Sir Richard Temple, Nicholas Barbon and an
anonymous pamphleteer who suggested that Locke must be a paid agent
of Louis XIV for advocating raising the silver quotient of English coin.23
D. W. Jones made a powerful argument that the people Locke thought
were treasonously clipping coins, the Goldsmiths, Bankers, “the Jews
and other forainers”24 in fact preserved England’s ability to remain in
the war:
Down to late 1694, the answers are clear enough. When trade failed, she
survived by clipping the coin. It was by clipping that she obtained the
bullion to pay her debts. Normally such bullion export would enforce
an intense monetary squeeze, but clipping provided an escape, since
down to late 1694, clipped coin still passed at face value, leaving the
total value of the money stock unchanged . . . . Clipping not only saved
England from a monetary squeeze, but also staved off that collapse in
spending, output and employment which remittances and the failure of
trade would otherwise have produced.25
Jones added that the Whig government’s adoption of Locke’s re-coinage

scheme, (rather than Lowndes’ idea that milled coins have a reduced
amount of silver content than bullion to ensure a sufficiency of circulat-
ing coin) “produced a near disaster for England’s war remittances” as well
as crippling England’s economy during 1696 and 1697.26 Thus, although
Locke was a mercantilist and fervently wished to defeat France in the wars
attendant on the Bloodless Revolution, his economic doctrines that govern-
ments could not set interest rates and that they should not have the power
to set the silver rate of coin were an unhappy mixture of mercantilist and
laissez-faire doctrines. At the risk of oversimplification, one might say that
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Locke’s Considerations and Further Considerations advocate laissez-faire for

the propertied and police for the property-less. Locke certainly thought
that justice entailed the right of those with money to lend it at market rates
and the right of landlords and creditors to be paid with the bullion rate of
silver, rather than the clipped but circulating coin of the realm. The right
of charity did not extend to debtors, tenant farmers, laborers and consum-
ers who experienced mass starvation from the depletion of coin and the
exportation of bullion arising from the government’s adoption of Locke’s
re-coinage scheme.
Contrary to the proponents of an egalitarian Locke, the Locke of
Considerations made clear that, “the Landholder[’s] . . . Interest is chiefly
to be taken care of, it being a settled unmoveable Concernement in the
Commonwealth” and that, “the Landowner, who is the person, that bearing
the greatest burthens of the Kingdom, ought, I think, to have the great-
est care taken of him, and enjoy as many Privileges, and as much Wealth,
as the favour of the Law (with regard to the Publick-weal) confer on
him.”27 However, Locke did not have a sentimental attachment to old aris-
tocratic families that lacked money to improve their estates and fell into
debt. Instead, he favored those like himself, “Men in England, who have
Land, have Money too.”28 Neal Wood thought passages such as these from
Considerations indicated that Locke was a proponent of agrarian capital-
ism29 but Locke made clear that trade was a major source of national wealth.
In fact, he was an investor and participant in the Royal Africa Company, in
the plantations in the Carolinas that made use of the cargo from Africa, and
a member of the Board of Trade.
Property Right, Taxation, and Representation
Locke’s theory of property right and Macpherson’s interpretation of it are

well known.30 Initially, humans had a right to appropriate from the com-
mon store that God and nature had provided for mankind when they
mixed their labor with natural resources and acquired a property in the
product of their labor, including the land they had cultivated or improved.
Prior to the introduction of money, land was roughly equally distributed.
But money, introduced by the common consent of mankind, eliminated
the natural law restrictions on just acquisition, namely spoilage, leaving
“enough and as good” for others, and acquisition through one’s own efforts.
Money does not spoil and enables proprietors to purchase slaves, servants
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and wage-laborers. As Locke stated three times in his economic writings,

“Money is a barren thing, and produces nothing, but by compact transfers
that Profit that was the Reward of one Man’s Labour into another Man’s
Pocket.”31 Through commercial agriculture, productivity is raised and the
poorest wage-laborer fares better than the richest king in pre-commercial
societies.32 Though vast inequalities in property emerged with the intro-
duction of money, humans retained “the great Foundation of Property,”33
namely, their ability to labor. Goods and labor services are justly exchanged
according to the labor theory of value, which stipulates that products are
exchanged according to the amount of labor they contain.
However, the labor theory is far from straightforward. Hobbes’ labor
theory of value stated that, “from the two breasts of our common mother,
God either freely giveth, or for labour selleth to
Locke thought mankind.”34 Locke’s labor theory made nature a cruel
taxation was stepmother with no free gifts since, “labour makes the
voluntary, not far greatest part of things, we enjoy in this World”35
obligatory, like Indeed 9/10ths, 99/100ths36 or 999/1000ths37 are due
the Christian to labor, not nature. “Nature and the Earth furnished
the almost worthless Materials, as in themselves.”38
tithe; taxation
We might note that, in his economic tracts, Locke
without individual said that while money is barren, “land produces
consent, or at naturally something new, profitable and of value to
least the consent mankind.”39 Gerry Cohen wrote that Locke’s Second
of a majority of Treatise attributed supernatural creative power to
labor, since labor by itself cannot produce anything
representatives, is
without land and natural resources.40 The economic
illegitimate. tracts present a more realistic depiction of the rela-
tive roles of nature and labor in the production of
national wealth, but they do not contain a justification of the right to private
property, and indeed their view that labor is not the sole source of wealth
undermines the justification of property right in the Second Treatise.
Moreover, the introduction of money that eliminated all the natural law
restrictions on just appropriation of property also, “made Land scarce, and
so of some Value.”41 B. Jeffrey Reno rightly pointed out that Locke’s view
of land scarcity as raising value, “casts further doubt on the sufficiency of
the labor theory of property.”42 It also suggests an aggressive foreign policy,
since uncultivated land is waste, increase in population and, “of lands and
the right imploying of them is the great art of government”, which would
make England’s prince “too hard for his neighbors.”43 Although Michael
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Sonenscher did not provide any textual warrant for his assertion that
Locke favored a single tax on landed income to allow the natural balance
of society to be restored,44 he made an interesting connection between the
Second Treatise and Some Considerations of the consequences of the Lowering
of Interest and Raising the Value of Money. The just exchange of valued com-
modities created by labor would be restored if the value added by land scar-
city could be taken back by governments in the form of land taxes.
However, Locke thought taxation was voluntary, not obligatory, like the
Christian tithe; taxation without individual consent, or at least the consent
of a majority of representatives, is illegitimate. “The Supream Power can-
not take from any Man any part of his Property without his own consent.”45
Charles Adams thought Locke’s view of consent to taxation was an advo-
cacy of tax evasion.46 Locke however equated an individual’s “own Consent”
with “the Consent of the Majority, giving it either by themselves [as in
the House of Lords], or their Representatives chosen by them [as in the
House of Commons].47 Locke thought it fitting that a proprietor, “should
pay out of his estate his proportion for the maintenance” of his property48
Representation should be “in proportion to the assistance, which it [a part
of the people] affords to the publick.”49 Macpherson thought that Locke
merged individual consent to taxation with the consent of a majority of
elected representatives because Locke favored a property qualification for
the franchise and because the class interests of the propertied overrode sec-
tional interests of landlords, merchants, and manufacturers, and the indi-
vidual interests of propertied men.50
John Dunn finds unsatisfactory the, “extraordinary elision between the
consent of each property-owner and the consent of the majority” but offers
no account of why Locke should have made this extraordinary elision.51
Dunn, although he was wrong in his contention that the poor do not pay
taxes,52 provides a plausible rendering of Locke’s position, “representation
according to potential tax burden appears to be recommended.”53 Locke
asserted that “no part of the People” deserves parliamentary representation
“but in proportion to the assistance, which it affords to the publick.”54 Tully
blandly asserted, “In demonstrating that every man has property in his life,
liberty, person, action and some possessions, Locke extends the franchise
to every adult male” but admits that Locke “does not explicitly state the cri-
terion in the Two Treatises.”55 Other scholars who assert that Locke favored
universal manhood suffrage, such as Martin Hughes, Richard Ashcraft and
Jacqueline Stevens, maintain that the grounds of universal suffrage was that
everyone paid taxes, which is correct but contrary to what Locke asserted in
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Considerations, namely, that landlords bear the sole tax burden.56 Contrary
to Locke and some Locke scholars, the land tax was not the major source
of government revenues both before and after the Glorious Revolution.57
The Land Tax and the Excise
John Dunn wrote that if individual consent is essential for legitimate taxa-
tion then, “all taxes can only be specific gifts from particular subjects . . . .
An air of massive bad faith hangs over this whole area of the argument.”58
Richard Bonney indicates that the idea of consent to taxation is misleading
because, “all taxation requires the threat of coercion to ensure its imple-
mentation and a belief amongst potential taxpayers
that the threat can be implemented successfully by
If Locke’s view the governing power.”59
that landowners I propose to link Locke’s Two Treatises of
are the sole Government to his economic writings to help untan-
taxpayers was false, gle this notion of voluntary taxation and to try to
understand why Locke made the erroneous claim
it may have been
that all taxation falls upon landowners when he
a “noble lie” to knew that excise taxes were the major source of gov-
advance the cause ernment revenues.60
of parliamentary There is a sense in which the land tax could be
supremacy with said to be consensual in contrast to excise taxes (like
respect to the our sales taxes) which people are compelled to pay. In
Locke’s era, the land tax was rated by means of self-
power of the purse.
assessment and gentlemanly negotiations with fellow
landowners. The professionalism of excise collectors,
so admired by Charles Davenant,61 was scorned by Locke,62 who like many
of his class, preferred the collection of land taxes by country gentlemen who
were more likely to accept the oaths of self-assessment made by the land-
owner.63 Richard Bonney contested Locke’s view that landowners are the sole
taxpayer with his suggestion that, “the costs of the English land tax were fun-
damentally borne not by the landlords, but by farmers and their labourers .
. . .”64 W. R. Ward wrote, “Land stewards were openly recommended to shift
the land tax on to tenants where possible, and in parts of the north at least
this counsel was accepted.”65 Indeed, when Locke’s land tax was assessed,
he wrote to his friend, and Member of Parliament, Edward Clarke, who
offered inducements to Cornelius Lyde, commissioner for assessment of the
land tax, to have the assessment lowered. Lyde complied66 and subsequently
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Locke employed him as a steward to collect rents and taxes from Locke’s
tenants.67
Excises were first introduced to fund parliamentary armies during
the English Civil War but became more onerous during the Restoration.
The excise never became a major source of government revenue until the
Restoration,68 when it became the most routine and collectible of taxes,
while simultaneously retaining its unpopular reputation as being born of
standing armies and tyranny during the Commonwealth. Edward Hughes
thought Locke’s distorted views on taxation derived from the fear of the
connection between excise taxes and standing armies,69 a fear that was
expressed throughout the eighteenth century. In A Letter from a Person of
Quality, to his Friend in the Country (1675), Locke and Shaftesbury wrote
that a standing army was the means to raise illegal taxes and that the power
of the peerage and a standing army, “are like two Buckets, the proportion
that one goes down, the other goes exactly up.”70
Locke did not provide reasons why landowners are the only taxpayers
besides his view that merchants will not accept taxes (but pass them on as
higher prices to consumers), laborers cannot accept taxes (because they are
living at subsistence and must pass on taxes as higher wages) and thus land-
lords must bear the tax load.71 Locke’s merchant who buys a bottle of wine
does not pay the duty on it (as does the landlord) but passes it on in higher
prices of whatever commodity he sells, and the laborer who buys a bottle of
beer (for refreshment or because water was unsafe to drink) passes on the
excise tax to landlords (but not to merchants) in higher wages.72 The reason
Locke’s premise was incorrect can be derived from Gregory King’s estimates
of national income in 1688 where 367, 000 tradesmen and artisans earned
four to five times as much as the 313, 000 cottagers and paupers living on
a cruel subsistence, 794, 000 in building trades earning three times bare
subsistence, with seamen, miners, laborers, soldiers and out-servants faring
less well but considerably better than the paupers and vagrants.73
William Kennedy asserted that the seventeenth century was unique
in taxing the poor and in producing, “new and strange theories, some of
which were put forward by important men, and one of which—the doc-
trine that the poor man does not pay taxes on necessaries but shifts them
in higher wages—came to have important practical influence, in the eigh-
teenth century . . . . As Locke states it, the argument contains a piece of
mere faulty logic, but its essence is that the labourer lives on the margin of
subsistence and so cannot bear taxation and remains independent.”74 Paul
Langford correctly asserted, “Locke was much quoted for his view that all
taxes of whatever kind fall on land, which bore the strain of ultimately even
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of customs and excise duties, the landowners, who knew well the difference
between a 1s.and a 4s.land tax,” were unconvinced, “by the demonstrably
absurd reasoning about the effects of indirect taxation.”75
If Locke’s view that landowners are the sole taxpayers was false, it may
have been a “noble lie” to advance the cause of parliamentary supremacy
with respect to the power of the purse. When Locke first advanced his
theory that all taxation ultimately falls on the landowners, Samuel Pepys
wrote in November 1666 that, “the true reason why the country gentlemen
are for a land-tax and against a general excise is, because they are fearful
that if the latter be granted they shall never get it down again; whereas
the land tax will be so much, and when the war ceases, there will be no
ground got by the Court to keep it up.”76 Locke’s early thoughts on taxation
do not survive in the fragment of his early writings on interest and money,
which he wrote for Shaftesbury during the Second
Locke, the ignoble Anglo-Dutch War, but a letter from John Strachey to
Locke in January 1672 reveals that Locke had made
tax evader
his views on landowners bearing all the taxes circu-
and possessive late to his relatives, friends and political associates.
individualist, was Strachey questioned Locke’s view that all taxes fall on
also Locke, the land. He told him that despite Locke’s argument, “the
noble champion Country will hardly be brought to yield,” and indi-
cated that, “Excise on Ale not making barley cheaper,
of parliamentary
but only less Ale is sold for the money, and thereby
control of the Drinkers and not the Countryman pay the tax.”77
government Charles Davenant, writing between the pub-
revenues. lication of Locke’s Considerations and Further
Considerations, was a strong advocate of the excise
tax as a more effective way than the land tax of
supplying wars and less onerous to the poor than capitation taxes and
hearth taxes. He too asserted that all taxes ultimately are born by land-
owners. Davenant shrewdly mentioned a political reason for the myth
that landowners shoulder the tax burden, “They say, Land-Taxes, Polls
and Customs, lye so heavy upon the Men of Interest and Figure in the
Nation, that by such kind of Impositions, the Gentlemen of England will
never enable a King to rule without a Parliament.”78 The economic historian
C. D. Chandaman supported Pepys’ and Davenant’s grounds for Locke’s
“noble lie” about taxation, namely, that customs and excise constituted 90
percent from the mid to the late 1680s, which were routinely passed through
parliament, and paid the cost of suppressing the Monmouth Rebellion, and
enabled James II to expand the royal prerogative.79 The land tax, which the
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gentry were reluctant to pay, would give them an inducement for careful
inspection and control of government revenues. Locke, the ignoble tax
evader and possessive individualist, was also Locke, the noble champion of
parliamentary control of government revenues.
Locke began his Two Treatises of Government during the Exclusion Crisis
and Papal Plot of 1679–81 and published them after the Glorious Revolution,
when William of Orange supplanted the Catholic James II on the throne of
England. Locke’s economic writings were first written at the behest of Locke’s
patron Shaftesbury at the time of the Second Anglo-Dutch War but were first
published after the Glorious Revolution at the behest of Baron Somers. Since
wars raise taxes, Locke’s economic writings serve to fund revenues to supply
the bloody wars in Ireland and the continent arising from “the Bloodless
Revolution.” Locke’s apparent advocacy of supplying the war through land
taxes was not successful in obtaining requisite revenues for the Nine Years
War (1688–97). The war was paid for partly by the practice of clipping coins,
which maintained domestic currency and enabled troop supplies,80 a prac-
tice to which Locke was strongly opposed, and by customs, excise and land
taxes. The Bank of England, to which Locke was an initial subscriber, was
founded on the pledged taxes of customs and excises.81 The land tax was a
much more unreliable source of government revenue.82 Locke as an inves-
tor favored the excise, but as a political theorist, he favored the land tax. He
followed Peter King’s advice that the best investments were, “either by the
Excise or Customes” and prudently invested in the certain returns of the
excise taxes (the Bank of England, the wine tallies, the malt lotteries).83
Macpherson and His Critics on Taxation and Representation
Macpherson thought that Locke assumed that the franchise was restricted
to those who paid the land tax. William Blackstone referred to the practice
prevailing in Locke’s time, “no estate shall qualify a voter, unless the estate
has been assessed to some land tax aid, at least twelve months before the
election.”84 Locke stated that, “no part of the People . . . [deserves parliamen-
tary representation] but in proportion to the assistance, which it affords to
the publick.”85 John Simmons argued that here Locke was calling for the
elimination of rotten boroughs, for geographical constituencies based on
population and taxable wealth, and should be understood not as personal
franchise requirements but as territorial requirements, but does not explain
why the criteria for geographical constituencies should be different from
individual franchise requirements.86
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Jacqueline Stevens and Richard Ashcraft maintained that the poor, in

addition to paying taxes, also provided labor and military services and thus
qualify for suffrage in terms of Locke’s criterion of assistance to the public.87
However, Locke did not emphasize, as did Hobbes and the Levelers, that mili-
tary services must be voluntary, as he did for taxation. Nor did he hold that
labor services are voluntary in the case of slaves in colonial America or, as
Locke’s Report to the Board of Trade indicates, in the case of the unemployed
able-bodied poor in England. Ashcraft insists that it is absurd to deny that
Locke’s association with political radicals in the Exclusion Crisis, “bespeaks
a fundamental sympathy with them.”88 It is one thing to approve of the gutter
anti-Catholicism of the fabricated Papal Plot during the Exclusion Crisis89 and
quite another thing to claim that is absurd to think that Locke may have had
instrumental reasons for associating with lower class anti-Catholics, or to deny
Locke’s democratic sympathies. Although Ashcraft
rejects Macpherson’s (and Neal and Ellen Wood’s)
If Locke’s view
view that Locke advocated a property qualification
was that there for the franchise, he admits that there is no conclusive
should be no evidence for his view of universal manhood suffrage.90
taxation without If Locke’s view was that there should be no taxa-
representation, tion without representation, why did he falsely
why did he falsely maintain that landlords bear the sole tax burden?
Macpherson’s view that a property qualification for
maintain that
the franchise is essential to protect private property
landlords bear the from a potentially tyrannical majority—those with-
sole tax burden? out an estate or those whose property is limited to
their life, liberty and ability to labor—accounts for
the claim and Macpherson’s many critics have not yet rendered a plausible
account of Locke’s claim about landlords being the sole taxpayers. The best
that Macpherson’s critics can assert is that Locke should have advocated
universal suffrage because everyone pays taxes or that landlords bear the
greatest tax burden because of land scarcity creating a surplus value beyond
that created by labor. Their best is not sufficient to unsettle Macpherson’s
interpretation of Locke’s views on taxation and representation.
Edward Andrew is a professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. Recent

publications include Patrons of Enlightenment and Imperial Republics:
Revolutions, War and Territorial Expansion from the English Civil War to
the French Revolution.
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Notes
1. C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to
Locke (Oxford: Clarendon, 1962); C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive
Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Don Mills, Ont.: Oxford University Press, 2011), with an
introduction by Frank Cunningham.
2. John Dunn, Political Obligation in its Historical Context: Essays in Political
Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 9.
3. I do not mean to suggest that Macpherson was right in all details. For exam-
ple, Ann Kussmaul, in Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981) demonstrated that Macpherson incorrectly merged
servants with wage-laborers in Possessive Individualism. My Shylock’s Rights: A Grammar
of Lockian Claims (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), which Macpherson did
not regard highly, argued that liberalism was not reducible to possessive individualism
but included support for religious toleration.
4. Jacob Viner, “‘Possessive Individualism’ as Original Sin,” Canadian Journal of
Economics and Political Science 29 (1963): 548–59; Alan Ryan, “Locke and the Dictator-
ship of the Bourgeoisie,” Political Studies 13 (1963): 219–30.
5. I might note that the leading alternative to Macpherson’s “possessive individual-
ism” was J. G. A. Pocock’s The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and
the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). Pocock
emphasized Harrington and the view that property was not an end in itself, or the pur-
pose of political associations, but was a means to republican citizenship. There has been
a vast literature on the question of whether the American Revolution was animated by
Lockean “possessive individualism” or by republican “civic humanism” or by a mixture
of both. See Thomas Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the
American Founders and the Philosophy of John Locke (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1988); Isaac Kramnick, Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism: Political Ideology
in Late Eighteenth-Century England and America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1990); Joyce O. Appleby, Liberalism and Republicanism in the Historical Imagination
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992); Michael P. Zuckert, Launching
Liberalism: On Lockean Political Philosophy (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2002).
6. Macpherson, Possessive Individualism, 252–55.
7. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Indianapo-
lis: Hackett, 1980), xviii–xix.
8. Macpherson, Possessive Individualism, 211.
9. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1953), 248; Pangle, 161; Stephen Forde, “The Charitable John Locke,” Review of Politics
71 (2009): 428–58.
10. James Tully, A Discourse on Property: John Locke and his Adversaries (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1980), 131–32, 137; John C. Winfrey, “Charity versus Justice
in Locke’s Theory of Property,” in John Locke: Critical Assessments vol. 3, ed. Richard
Ashcraft (London: Routledge, 1991), 385–401; John Dunn, Locke (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1984), 43; James Tully, “After the Macpherson Thesis,” in An Approach
to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993), 113; A. John Simmons, Lockean Theory of Rights (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1992): 327.
11. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1960), 206.
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12. Kirstie McClure, Judging Rights: Lockean Politics and the Limits of Consent
( Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 255–58 provides a convincing argument why
charity to the needy cannot supersede the right of merchants to charge whatever amount
they can obtain for their produce. Typically, merchants, rather than a single merchant,
would sail to cities suffering famine and enhanced demand, and thus no individual mer-
chant could be held responsible for failure to supply the needy.
13. Gopal Sreenivasan, The Limits of Lockean Rights in Property (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995), 42–43. Locke’s Report may be found in John Locke, Political
Writings, ed. David Wootton (London: Penguin, 1993), 446–61. Locke required that the
disabled poor obtain licenses to beg, that those without them are to be impressed into
the navy if in maritime counties, are to have their ears cut off and then transported to the
colonies, that mothers be separated from their children three years of age and up so that
both can earn their daily bread and “a little warm-water gruel” in winter. This extraor-
dinarily Draconian document has been taken to be an instance of the Lockean right to
charity, or has been excused as typical of the time, even when compared with the more
humane proposals of Thomas Firmin and John Bellers for employing and training the
poor. See Winfrey “Charity versus Justice” and M. G. Mason, “John Locke’s Proposals
on Work-House Schools,” in Ashcraft ed. John Locke: Critical Assessments vol. 3, 396–97,
269–80. Patrick Kelly cast doubt on Locke as typical of his time when he pointed out:
“Even Locke’s fellow Commissioners at the board of Trade found his poor-law propos-
als unacceptably harsh.” See John Locke, Locke on Money, ed. Patrick Kelly (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1990), 104.
14. Correspondence of John Locke, vol. 4, 786; vol. 8, 23–24; Locke, Locke on
Money, 16.
15. Tully, Discourse on Property, 151–54, 162–70; Simmons, Lockean Theory of
Rights, 301, 305, 307–18.
16. Simmons, Lockean Theory of Rights, 305.
17. Simmons, 329–31.
18. Macpherson, Possessive Individualism, 58, 62.
19. Tully, Discourse on Property, 154.
20. Locke on Money, 285–86.
21. Karen Iversen Vaughn, John Locke: Economist and Social Scientist (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1980), 14; subsequently, Henry Pelham’s lowering of interest
to 3 percent eased Britain’s debt load and enabled her imperial supremacy over France
in the eighteenth century. See Roy Douglas, Taxation in Britain Since 1660 (London:
MacMillan, 1999), 27–28.
22. Joyce O. Appleby, “Locke, Liberalism and the Natural Law of Money,” in John
Locke: Critical Assessments, vol. 3, 314, 318.
23. William Lowndes, A Report Containing an Essay for the Amendment of the
Silver Coin (London: Charles Bell, 1695); James Hodges, The Present State of England,
as to Coin and Publick Charges (London: Andrew Bell, 1697); Sir Richard Temple, Some
Short Remarks upon Mr. Lock’s Book in Answer to Mr. Lounds, and Several Other Books
and Pamphlets Concerning Coin (London: Richard Baldwin, 1696); Nicholas Barbon,
A Discourse Concerning Coining the New Money in Answer to Mr. Lock’s Considerations
about Raising the Value of Money (London: Richard Chiswell, 1696); An Abstract of the
Consultations and Debates, between the French King and his Council, Concerning the New
Coyn and Coynage that is Intended to be Made in England (London: s.n., 1695), 13, 15.
24. Locke on Money, 335, 370.
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25. D. W. Jones, War and Economy in the age of William III and Marlborough
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 228; also 247–48.
26. Jones, 245; see also, Henry Roseveare, The Financial Revolution 1660–1760
(London: Longmans, 1991), 38–40; J. Keith Horsefield, British Monetary Experiments
(London: G. Bell and Sons, 1960), 39–52; Sir John Craig, Newton at the Mint (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1946), 9–10; C. E. Challis, “Lord Hastings to the Great
Silver Recoinage, 1464–1699,” in Challis, A New History of the Royal Mint (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992), 381–84; Appleby, “Locke, Liberalism and the Natural
Law of Money,” 300–321.
27. Locke on Money, 241, 280; see also, 177, 527, 561.
28. Ibid., 295.
29. Neal Wood, John Locke and Agrarian Capitalism (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1984). I am not arguing against Wood’s description of Locke as an
agrarian capitalist; I am just indicating that Locke thought national wealth had other
sources than agriculture and that English politicians would have done well to encourage
trade and manufactures as well as agriculture.
30. Macpherson, Possessive Individualism, 176–221; Macpherson’s “Introduction,” in
Locke, Second Treatise, xvi–xix.
31. Locke on Money, 181, 256, 534.
32. Locke, Second Treatise on Government, 41.
33. Ibid., 45.
34. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Michael Oakeshott (New York: Collier, 1968), 185.
36. Ibid., 40.
37. Ibid., 43.
38. Ibid.
39. Locke on Money, 181, 256, 534.
40. G. A. Cohen, “Marx and Locke on Land and Labour,” in G. Cohen ed., Self-
Ownership, Freedom and Equality, 165–94.
42. B. Jeffrey Reno, “Private Property and the Law of Nature in Locke’s Two Trea-
tises: The Best Advantage of Life and Convenience,” American Journal of Economics and
Sociology 8 (2009): 653.
43. Locke, Second Treatise on Government, 42. Other editors of Locke’s Second
Discourse, such as Paul Sigmund, Mark Goldie, and David Wootton, indicate that the
great art of government is the increase of hands, not lands. For the reasons for this
ambiguity, see Edward Andrew, “A Note on Locke’s ‘The Great Art of Government,’”
Canadian Journal of Political Science 43 (2009): 511–19.
44. Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the
Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2007), 205. Sonenscher’s statement may be more applicable to Locke’s followers amongst
the Physiocrats (and Henry George) than to Locke himself. As recent scholarship has
revealed, it is easier to tax land in absolutist regimes, such as France, than those with
representative governments, like England. See Peter Mathias and Patrick O”Brien,
“Taxation in Britain and France, 1715–1810,” Journal of European Economic History 5
(1976): 601–50; Philip T. Hoffman and Kathryn Norberg, “Conclusion,” in Hoffman and
Norberg eds., Fiscal Crises, Liberty and Representative Government 1450–1789 (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1994), 299–310.
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46. Charles Adams, For Good or Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civiliza-
tion. (Lanham, MD; Madison Books, 1999), 285. Such a view might be even more appli-
cable to Montesquieu who claimed “If some citizens do not pay enough, there is no great
harm; their plenty always reverts to the public; if some individuals pay too much, their
ruin turns against the public.” Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, trans. Anne M. Cohler,
Basia C. Miller and Harold S. Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 217.
Perhaps, owing to the current global economic crises, tax evasion should be viewed as
a mortal, not venial sin.
47. Second Treatise, 40, square brackets added by me to provide what seems to be
the most plausible construction of Locke but controverted by those who hold that Locke
advocated a unicameral legislature. See Robert Faulkner, “The First Liberal Democrat:
Locke’s Popular Government,” Review of Politics 63 (2001): 27, 36–37.
49. Ibid., 158.
50. See endnotes 6 and 7.
51. John Dunn, “Consent in the Political Theory of John Locke,” in Political Obli-
gation in its Historical Context: Essays in Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1980), 40–44.
52. Ibid., 45.
53. Ibid., 47.
55. Tully, Discourse on Property, 173.
56. Martin Hughes, “Locke on Taxation and Suffrage,” History of Political Thought
11 (1990): 423–42; Martin Hughes, “Locke, Taxation and Reform: A Reply to Wood,”
History of Political Thought 13 (1992): 691, 698; Jacqueline Stevens, “The Reasonable-
ness of John Locke’s Majority: Property Rights, Consent and Resistance in the Second
Treatise,” Political Theory 24 (1996): 433; Richard Ashcraft, “The Radical Dimension
of Locke’s Political Thought: A Dialogic Essay on Some Problems of Interpretation,”
History of Political Thought 13 (1992): 759–68. Locke claimed erroneously that landlords
bore the entire tax burden. See Locke on Money, 105, 272, 275, 554.
57. Richard Kleer’s and Robin Einhorn’s view that the land tax was the major source
of government revenues during the wars following the Glorious Revolution is incorrect.
See Richard A. Kleer, “‘The Ruine of their Diana’: Lowndes, Locke and the Bankers,”
History of Political Economy 36 (2004): 551 and Robin L. Einhorn, American Taxation,
American Slavery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 15. However, Patrick
O’Brien, “The Political Economy of Taxation,” Economic History Review, 41 (1988):
1–32 noted that the only times the English landed classes paid a substantial minor-
ity of government revenues was when their property was threatened during the Nine
Years War (1688–97), the War of Spanish succession (1701–14) and the Napoleonic Wars
(1798–1815) when Pitt the Younger introduced the income tax. For the fact that excises
and customs made up most of government revenue before and after the Glorious Revo-
lution, see Stephen Dowell, A History of Taxation and Taxes in England (London: Frank
Cass, 1965), vol. 2, 11, 34, 68; William Kennedy, English Taxation, 1640–1799 (London:
G. Bell and Sons, 1913), 56, 61, 80–81; W. R. Ward, The English Land Tax in the Eighteenth
Century (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), 18–19; C. D. Chandaman, The English
Public Revenue 1660–1688 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 37–39, 190; J. V. Beckett, “Land
Tax or Excise: the Laying of Taxes in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century England,”
English Historical Review 100 (1985): 285–308); Douglas, Taxation in Britain, 6, 16.
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58. Dunn, “Consent,” 43.

59. Richard Bonney, “Revenues,” in R. Bonney ed., Economic Systems and State
Finance (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 434–35.
60. That Locke was aware that excise taxes were the largest source of government
revenues is likely in that he was Registrar of the Excise from 1671–74 when he first wrote
his economic tracts at the behest of his patron, Lord Shaftesbury, and he was Secretary
of the Board of Trade when Baron Somers urged him to publish his thoughts on inter-
est, money and taxation. In his economic tracts, Locke did not deny that customs and
excise constituted the bulk of government revenues but rather asserted that laborers
pass on excises in higher wages and merchants pass on customs duties as higher prices.
See Locke on Money, 272–78, 553–58.
61. Charles Davenant, An Essay on the Ways and Means of Supplying the War
(London: Jacob Tonson, 1701).
62. Locke on Money, 274.
63. Michael Braddick, The Nerves of State: Taxation and the Financing of the English
state, 1558–1714 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 96–97; John Brewer,
Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English state, 1688–1783 (London: Unwin Hyman,
1989), 147.
64. Bonney, “Revenues,” 482.
65. Ward, English Land Tax, 23.
66. The Correspondence of John Locke, ed. E. S. De Beer (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976),
vol. 4, 653–54 refers to Lyde’s compliance with Locke’s wishes; vol. 5, 454; vol. 6, 20,
63–64, 497; vol. 7, 493 refer to favors (career promotions for himself and his son) Lyde
expected from Locke and Clarke.
67. Ibid, vol. 5, 438, 441, 554, 571, 583–84, vol. 6, 57, 172; vol. 6, 288; vol. 7, 18–19, 121–
22, 170 and vol. 8, 260 made clear that Locke’s tenants paid a percentage of the land tax.
68. Braddick, Nerves of State, 10 pointed out that, although the excise was intro-
duced during the Commonwealth, direct taxes on land and personal property consti-
tuted the majority of government revenues, whereas indirect taxes (excise and customs)
constituted most of government revenues during the Restoration and after the Glorious
Revolution, reaching an apogee during the reign of James II.
69. Edward Hughes, Studies in Administration and Finance 1558–1825 (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1934), 118–21.
70. A Letter from a Person of Quality, to his Friend in the Country (London: s.n.,
1675), 19, 29.
71. Locke on Money, 275, 278, 559.
72. Locke, in his economic tracts, has a crude class division of landlords, mer-
chants, and laborers. Neal and Ellen Meiskins Wood amended this triad to landlords,
tenant farmers and laborers to fit their portrait of Locke as an agrarian capitalist.
Richard Ashcraft, “Radical Dimension of Locke’s Political Thought,” 713, pointed out
that the Woods’ triad is not the same as Locke’s triad of landlords, merchants and labor-
ers; “Moreover, Locke is able to find room in his society for ‘workmen who are engaged
in our manufactures,’ ‘the thriving tradesman,’ as well as artisans and handicraftsmen.”
However, manufacturers, thriving tradesmen, and artisans do not fit into Locke’s schema
of merchants who will not pay taxes and laborers who cannot pay taxes.
73. King’s figures are taken from Jones, War and Economy in the age of William III
and Marlborough, 74–75. Locke’s Report to the Board of Trade, which Patrick Kelly indi-
cated was too Draconian for his fellow Board members (Locke on Money, 104), advocated
change in the Poor Laws by cutting down the subsistence level of the unemployed poor
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and forcing them to labor on this bare minimum. That is, the inelasticity of laborer’s
subsistence asserted in Considerations was disavowed in Locke’s Report.
74. Kennedy, English Taxation, 1640–1799, 56, 61, 80–81.
75. Paul Langford, The Excise Crisis: Society and Politics in the age of Walpole
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 159. An example is William Pultney, Earl of Bath and later
first minister, three times cited Locke’s view that all taxes terminate on land in opposing
Robert Walpole’s attempt to lower the land tax to a shilling on the pound but reviving
the excise on salt, but inconsistently claimed that the salt tax hurt the poor. The Case
of the Revival of Salt Duty, Fully Stated and Considered (London: H. Haines, 1732), 38,
48–50, 54, 58. Walpole’s long and successful career was based on a steady lowering of the
land tax and his frequent statements to the effect that the landed gentry were unfairly
bearing the burden of taxation.
76. The Diary of Samuel Pepys: Transcribed by Rev. Mynors Bright (London: G. Bell,
1904), vol. 6, 48.
77. Locke’s early thoughts on taxation do not survive in the fragment of his
early writings on interest and money, which he wrote for Shaftesbury during the
Second Anglo-Dutch War, but a letter from John Strachey to Locke in January 1672
(Correspondence of John Locke, vol. 1, 364) reveals that Locke had made his views on
landowners bearing all the taxes circulate to his relatives, friends and political associates;
Strachey questioned Locke’s view that all taxes fall on land, told him that despite Locke’s
argument, “the Country will hardly be brought to yield,” and indicated that “Excise on
Ale not making barley cheaper, but only less Ale is sold for the money, and thereby the
Drinkers and not the Countryman pay the tax.” Patrick Kelly noted that Strachey’s views
were partly incorporated in Locke’s Considerations (Locke on Money), 275.
78. Davenant, An Essay on the Ways and Means of Supplying the War, 145.
79. Chandaman, English Public Revenue, 20, 37–39, 76,190.
80. Jones, War and Economy, 228, 247–48.
81. Roseveare, Financial Revolution, 36.
82. Beckett, “Land Tax of Excise,” 294; Dowell, History of Taxation, vol. 3, 82; Jones,
War and Economy, 70.
83. Correspondence of John Locke, vol. 7, 149, 161, 174, 624, 705; vol. 8, 103, 161, 180,
186, 198–99, 267, 272.
84. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England [12th edition]
(London: T. Cadell, 1793), 173.
86. A. John Simmons, On the Edge of Anarchy: Locke, Consent and the Limits of
Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 95.
87. Stevens, “Reasonableness,” 432; Ashcraft, “Radical Dimension,” 759–68.
88. Ashcraft, “Radical Dimension,” 770.
89. Peter Laslett, “Introduction” to Locke, Two Treatises, 43–44, wrote: “It is certain
that Locke knew all about what was going on, and that he took no opportunity to disap-
prove the forced confessions, the judicial murders, mob oratory and agitation.”
90. Ashcraft, “Radical Dimension,” 759, 767–68.
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Possessive Individualism and Locke's Doctrine On Taxation

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Possessive Individualism and Locke's Doctrine on Taxation

Author(s): Edward Andrew

Crawford Brough Macpherson’s The Political Theory of Possessive Individu-

the good society , vol. 21, no. 1, 2012

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and representation. Macpherson dealt with Locke’s views on taxation and

Justice and Charity

The fundamental criticism of Macpherson’s Locke is that he was not

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Jones added that the Whig government’s adoption of Locke’s re-coinage

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Locke’s Considerations and Further Considerations advocate laissez-faire for

Property Right, Taxation, and Representation

Locke’s theory of property right and Macpherson’s interpretation of it are

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and ­wage-laborers. As Locke stated three times in his economic writings,

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The Land Tax and the Excise

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Macpherson and His Critics on Taxation and Representation

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Jacqueline Stevens and Richard Ashcraft maintained that the poor, in

Edward Andrew is a professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. ­Recent

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45. Locke, Second Treatise on Government, 138.

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58. Dunn, “Consent,” 43.

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and wage-laborers. As Locke stated three times in his economic writings,

Edward Andrew is a professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. Recent