Whilst he was waiting at Rotterdam for a ship to take him home after the Revolution, Locke received the following letter from The Hague:

The writer was Lady Mordaunt, wife of his friend who was to become Earl of Monmouth and Earl of Peterborough and who was already in England with William III. The Convention she mentions was the Convention Parliament, then working out the constitutional future of England after James II had sputtered out. By 11 February Locke was in London: on the 12th the Declaration of Right was completed: on the 13th William and Mary were offered the crown.

This letter, except perhaps for its last phrase, aptly expresses the traditional view of the reasons why Locke sat down to write Two Treatises of Government. What was wanted was an argument, along with a scheme of government, an argument deep in its analysis and theoretical, even philosophical, in its premises, but cogent and convincing in its expression.

Motives of the present undertaking

The age we live in is a busy age; in which knowledge is rapidly advancing towards perfection. In the natural world, in particular, every thing teems with discovery and with improvement. The most distant and recondite regions of the earth traversed and explored—the all-vivifying and subtle element of the air so recently analyzed and made known to us—are striking evidences, were all others wanting, of this pleasing truth.

Correspondent to discovery and improvement in the natural world, is reformation in the moral; if that which seems a common notion be, indeed, a true one, that in the moral world there no longer remains any matter for discovery. Perhaps, however, this may not be the case: perhaps among such observations as would be best calculated to serve as grounds for reformation, are some which, being observations of matters of fact hitherto either incompletely noticed, or not at all would, when produced, appear capable of bearing the name of discoveries: with so little method and precision have the consequences of this fundamental axiom, it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong, been as yet developped.

Be this as it may, if there be room for making, and if there be use in publishing, discoveries in the natural world, surely there is not much less room for making, nor much less use in proposing, reformation in the moral.

In 1693 Leibniz published a large collection of medieval documents supporting the position of the Empire against the claims of the French. To this collection he attached a preface, about half of which is translated below. In it Leibniz showed that he was moving a little away from his earlier view that the Republic of Christendom could be restored, and toward a more modern position which accepted the existence of independent national states. But the most important part of the preface is that containing an excellent statement of his general theory of justice as the charity of the wise, which he attempts to relate to international principles. There are also a great many observations about the psychology of rulers which show that Leibniz could, when he liked, be fairly ‘realistic’. (The present translation, from Latin, follows the text to be found in vol. IV of the Dutens edition. The parts of the text which have been translated are those which contain the main theoretical propositions; what has been cut are mainly historical examples, most of them now rather obscure.)

1. Although the scope of this work is clear from the title, with the attached preface, and particularly from the index of documents, it seemed to me nonetheless that it would be useful to prefix a somewhat more ample introduction, in order to speak of the proper use of public acts, and to show by examples what sort of thing can be expected from our collection, indicating at the same time the sources of the true law of nature and of nations.

This piece, probably written during the 1690s (to judge from internal evidence), is one of the fullest statements of Leibniz' general purposes as a statesman, scholar, scientist, etc. Though some of the earlier paragraphs are a bit simple and ‘optimistic’ in the bad sense of the word, the Memoir improves markedly as it moves on; and toward the end there are trenchant attacks on sectarianism, and good statements of Leibniz' belief that working for the common good is the highest human duty. (The present translation follows the text in vol. X of Klopp's edition of Leibniz.)

1. It is uncommon to meet persons to whom this memoir is suited. There are still some of them, for all that, and perhaps more than one thinks, though one does not always have the occasion to know them. And it is for them that I have drawn it up.

2. I find that even enlightened men of good intention usually let themselves be carried away by the torrent of general corruption, and do not think with enough skill about the means to pull themselves out of it and do some good.

3. […]

THE LIFE AND WORK OF LEIBNIZ

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the son of a Leipzig University professor, was born in 1646, two years before the end of the Thirty Years' War. He was thoroughly educated – partly through his own efforts – in scholastic philosophy and in jurisprudence, including the Roman law (which was later to be important to his theory of justice). At an early age he attempted a correspondence with Hobbes, whom he was already beginning to see as his principal philosophical antagonist; but Hobbes never replied, in part, perhaps, because of Leibniz' left-handed compliments (‘certain men are … wrong in ascribing license and impiety to your hypotheses’). Following a brief period of service to the Elector of Mainz, Leibniz resided in Paris for a few years; here he first observed Louis XIV's expansionist policies, which he was afterwards to combat as a writer and as a diplomatist. In Paris, too, he expanded his interests to take in logic and mathematics, and made a number of important permanent friendships. Unable to secure the diplomatic post he wanted, Leibniz finally attached himself to the house of Brunswick-Lüneburg, rulers of the (soon-to-be) Electorate of Hanover, and became official apologist for and historian of this principality.

At Hanover Leibniz, in addition to his official duties and philosophical efforts, carried on a wide range of political activities and correspondences.

In this brief piece, probably written during the 1690s, Leibniz attempted to connect his theory of justice as the charity of the wise man with his psychology and his theology. (There are two versions of this work, both contained in vol. II of Grua's Textes Inédits, the present translation is of the first version, which is shorter and simpler than the second. A comparison of the two versions is most instructive, particularly since Grua prints, in brackets, all the phrases and sentences excised by Leibniz in the final version.)

1. Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom. It is necessary that practice accompany knowledge.

2. Wisdom is the science of felicity, [and] is what must be studied above all other things.

3. Felicity is a lasting state of pleasure. Thus it is good to abandon or moderate pleasures which can be injurious, by causing misfortunes or by blocking [the attainment of] better and more lasting pleasures.

4. Pleasure is a knowledge or feeling of perfection, not only in ourselves, but also in others, for in this way some further perfection is aroused in us.

5. To love is to find pleasure in the perfection of another.

6. Justice is charity or a habit of loving conformed to wisdom. Thus when one is inclined to justice, one tries to procure good for everybody, so far as one can, reasonably, but in proportion to the needs and merits of each: and even if one is obliged sometimes to punish evil persons, it is for the general good.

7. […]

The following excerpts from seven letters written by Leibniz between 1683 and 1712 give some sense of the range of his political interests. To Landgraf Ernst he speaks mainly of the idea of a ‘right of resistance’ to rulers, concluding that ordinarily such resistance is unjustifiable, and almost always unwise; to Bossuet he suggests means of re-uniting the ‘Republic of Christendom’ under a reformed (and tolerant) Catholic Church; for Thomas Burnett he provides his fullest account of constitutional government and of natural élites, and makes characteristic remarks about the public duties of great scientists (like Newton) and about French aggression and possible means of containing it. (The letters to Landgraf Ernst are to be found in Rommer's Leibniz und Landgraf Ernst von Hesse-Rheinfels; those to Bossuet are in vols. I and II of Foucher de Careil's edition; and those to Burnett are contained in vol. III of Gerhardt's edition.)

EXCERPTS FROM TWO LETTERS TO LANDGRAF ERNST OF HESSERHEINFELS CONCERNING ABSOLUTE POWER AND RESISTANCE (1683–91)

1. The question whether it is good to have hereditary and absolute princes can be taken in several senses – one, whether the people are obliged to obey them, and two, whether a prince can in good conscience claim such a right, and exercise it, if it is transmitted to him by his ancestors.

The dating of the composition of Two Treatises and the question of whether the Second was composed before the First

Professor Richard Ashcraft in his recent book, Locke's Two Treatises of Government, 1987, has decisively rejected the version of the composition and dating of Locke's book set out in this Introduction. In his view the First was written in 1680–1 and the Second in 1681–2, neither as early as 1679, in whole or in part.

Neither in this book, nor in his extremely detailed analysis of Revolutionary Politics and Locke's Two Treatises of Government, 1986, does Professor Ashcraft produce any new references in materials previously unknown to underwrite his new interpretation. I had hoped that in the exhaustive analysis, interesting and valuable as it is in so many ways, which he has undertaken on the books and papers of the radicals who surrounded Shaftesbury in the 1680s, who plotted against James II after Shaftesbury's death and who involved themselves in Monmouth's attempt to overthrow him, some allusion to the text of Two Treatises might appear. It was perhaps unlikely, considering Locke's cautious habits and his attitude to what he had written, that any such allusion would be in plain language. But one or other of those who associated with Locke might well have known and written about the manuscript de Morbo Gallico (see above, pp. 62–5).

This effective satire on Louis XIV and his anti-German expansionism, written in Latin and translated into French by Leibniz himself, is beyond doubt his most brilliant and entertaining political work. The constant citation of scripture is probably intended as a parody of Bossuet's style, and the grotesque references to Grotius, Plato and others show what a nice sense of irony Leibniz possessed. More than once Leibniz' genuine rage at French excesses breaks through, and then the irony becomes grim. (The present translation follows Leibniz' own French version, as printed in the Academy Edition; but a few textual variants preserved in the Foucher de Careil edition have been interpolated.)

The majority of men having the habit of regarding their particular interest sooner than the public good, and the present sooner than the future, I am not surprised to see that there are men who see clearly that the salvation of the Church depends solely on the greatness of France, but who [yet] have more regard for the interest of their princes or of their own nation, than for the general good of Christendom, on the pretext of conserving the liberty of their country – which, however, they will not preserve against Ottoman arms, if France does not secure them against slavery. One could, however, pardon to some degree the indiscreet zeal which they show for their country, if they did not allow themselves to speak indignantly of the good intentions of the King [Louis XIV].