On Condorcet and Tucker on Locke as a democratic majoritarian

A few days ago, I noted (recall) that in Condorcet’s (1794) Outlines of an historical view of the progress of the human mind Locke is not a social contract theorist, but a republican, majoritarian democrat, who anticipates Condorcet’s own views and who Condorcet groups together with Sidney and Rousseau. I believe the last scholar to defend an interpretation like this is Willmoore Kendall in (1941) John Locke and the Doctrine of Majority Rule. My interest in this is not to defend this reading of Locke myself; rather, as regular readers know, my interest is to deny that Locke should be treated as a ‘father of liberalism’ (this is a joint project with John Thrasher).

If you are familiar with Hume’s essay “Of the Original Contract,” which one might teach in the context of arguments that criticize social contract theory, one may well come to think Condorcet’s view is quite idiosyncratic. For in it, Hume treats Locke as a social contract theorist of sorts, and in fact treats Locke’s account as a noxious exemplar of a theory wholly at odds with common opinion. And in his History Hume treats Locke as a Whig propagandist (“Compositions the most despicable, both for style and matter, have been extolled, and propagated, and read; as if they had equalled the most celebrated remains of antiquity.”)

And, yet, Condorcet’s view is not wholly idiosyncratic for his time. The Eighteenth-century jurist, Blackstone, also treats Locke as a republican (but does not link him to democracy as such). And in Jacourt’s entry on ‘democracy,’' in The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert, Locke is mentioned at the very end of the section we might label ‘suggested readings’ alongside Sidney (and Temple).

In fact, I suspect this sense of Locke as a thorough republican is in no small part the effect of Josaiah Tucker’s long argument against Locke and his followers (by which Tucker means, especially, Priestley and Price) in the first part of his (1781) A Treatise Concerning Civil Government in the debates shaped by, as James Harris, drawing on Pocock, has rightly noted, the American revolution. (As Harris notes the material against Locke was first published in 1778.) Dean Tucker (1713 –1799) treats “Dr. PRIESTLY,” as “"the fairest, the most open, and ingenuous of all Mr. LOCKE's Disciples, excepting honest, undissembling Rousseau.” (p. 22)

And, in fact, majoritarian democracy is a crucial feature of the distinctiveness of Locke’s position. I quote Tucker:

For Mr. Locke and his Followers have extended the Privilege of voting, or of giving actual Consert, in all the Affairs of Government and Legislation, beyond what was ever dreamt of before in this, or in any other civilized Country; -Nay, according to their leading Principles, it ought to be extended still much farther, than even they themselves have done….Now, according to the Principles of Mr. LOCKE and his Followers…for the Right of voting is not annexed to Land, or Franchises, to Condition, Age, or Sex; but to human Nature itself, and to moral Agency: Therefore, wherever human Nature, and moral Agency do exist together, be the Subject rich or poor, old or young, male or female, it must follow from these Principles, that the Right of voting must exist with it: For whosoever is a moral Agent is a Person ; and Personality is the only Foundation of the Right of voting. (pp. 25-27)

The extended view, the one that goes beyond Locke’s and his followers, is in fact, the one that Condorcet would adopt shortly thereafter in order to justify women’s rights: that moral reasoning is the source of equal rights including the right to vote. Since Tucker was well known in France as a political economist (Turgot corresponded with him), so it would be worth exploring whether Condorcet was familiar with this work

Now Kendall treats chapter 1 section 3 (and combines it with VIII.95) of the Second treatise as crucial to Locke’s majoritarianism. By contrast, Tucker reconstructs Locke’s argument as also being rooted in liberty of conscience that (echoing (recall) Toland’s interpretation of Locke) can be extended to all religions (including Jews and Muslims). Tucker concludes his reconstruction of Locke, “it is evident, that none, no, not Women nor Children, ought to be excluded from the Right of voting on every political Question that may occur; unless indeed you can prove beforehand, that those, whom you exclude, have no Conscience at all, and have no Sense whatever of Right and Wrong.” (33) Tucker thinks there is nothing in Locke to stop this inference (and he treats it as an unwelcome to Locke’s followers). Again, Condorcet accepts this conclusion. (One person’s modens ponens, etc.)

I don’t mean to suggest that Tucker anticipates Condorcet’s (and Kendall’s) readings in all respects. Because Tucker puts so much emphasis on conscience in his reconstruction of Locke, he denies that a Lockean could ever truly welcome majoritarianism and elected representatives (p. 37). Tucker treats Rousseau as the only Lockean who grasps this point: “that the People could not transfer their indefeasible Right of voting for themselves to any others; and that the very Notion of their choosing Persons to represent them in these Respects, was a Species of Contradiction.” (39 with a reference to Rousseau’s Social Contract)

Now, unlike Condorcet and Kendall, Tucker does not downplay Locke’s contractarianism. While Hume tends to treat this as a silly fiction; Tucker tends to treat it as a dangerous fiction because (and this is quite natural after Rousseau) it makes practically all title to government illegitimate: “Few Governors, I believe, would like to be catechized after this Manner by their Subjects: And fewer still would be able to answer these Questions to the Satisfaction of a Lockian Patriot.” (86) Tucker then goes on to ridicule the idea that the historical details of the Glorious Revolution have anything to do with Locke’s philosophy.

So, where are we? Condorcet’s treatment of Locke as a majoritarian democratic republican is (as we might say) ‘in the air’ during the last quartile of the eighteenth century. It is recognized by some that this is itself a development of Locke by his followers and not in all respects, perhaps, Locke’s own view. I don’t mean to suggest it’s the only reading of Locke around then. In Scotland, as we have seen, Robertson and Smith read Locke as a Whig-Mercantile apologist of empire.