John Locke, as the author of the Two Treatises of Government (1690), must be recognized as one of the foremost influences on American revolutionary thought. Although recent scholarship into the origins of the ideology of the American Revolution has uncovered influences other than Locke, nonetheless there can be little doubt that Locke's account of the nature of human society was a central element in the revolutionaries' attempt to formulate a justification for their withdrawal of allegiance to the British crown. Locke's importance as a writer must be recognized in another sense as well, for it is Locke's ideal conception of what a society should be that has come, for better or worse, to be realized in the modern world. Locke's belief that the polity should be based on free and rational consent of individuals, that government should be organized for the protection of the rights of the citizen, especially...