John Locke and the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina

IN 1663, all earlier patents being revoked, this district, now known as Carolina, was given by Charles the Second to eight "lords proprietors," Lord Chancellor Clarendon, the Duke of Albemarle, Lord Craven, Lord Berkeley, Lord Ashley, Sir George Carteret, Sir William Berkeley, and Sir John Colleton. Of these patentees Ashley was the most active and influential; and thus it happened that Locke, being Ashley’s principal adviser and assistant, became in some sort of irregular way the chief secretary or manager of the whole company of lords proprietors of Carolina. His conduct in this new position shows something more than the versatility of his talents and the superabundance of his energy.

A little had been done, without much prudence, before Locke became interested in the matter; but the real work began in April, 1669, when the proprietors undertook to contribute £500 apiece towards the fitting out of an expedition, and steps were immediately taken for putting the money to good use. All was ready by the 10th of August, when the good ship Carolina, with eighty-six men and six women on board, including officers, crew, and passengers, started for the new colony, along with a smaller craft, the Port Royal, and a little sloop, the Albemarle, as to the number of whose officers, crews, and passengers we are not informed. The Carolina cost £930 17s. 11d., the Port Royal £199 5s. 8d., and the Albemarle £82 1s. 10d.; and the entire charges for fitting out these vessels, including the wages of the seamen, made a total of £3200 16s. 6d. for the whole preliminary expense of this first English expedition in aid of the stragglers and small groups of emigrants from other colonies who had begun to take irregular possession of some corners of the province. The expedition seems small when compared with the exploits of more recent times. But it was a great one for that day, and no little labor and good management were required in buying and fitting out the ships, and in getting them afloat, between the end of April and the middle of August. Those were busy months for all who had the management of the enterprise; and, Exeter House being its headquarters, and Locke its principal superintendent, there can be no doubt that he had plenty of work on his hands that summer.

To him, moreover, was specially assigned a much more delicate, and doubtless a much more congenial, task than the superintendence of this business. No young colony can thrive without adequate supplies of food, clothing, and the like; and many hopeful ventures failed in old times for lack of these. But quite as frequent a cause of failure was bad government, amid a profusion of material resources; and good government is a harder thing to provide than money and provisions. Wonderful pains were taken to provide good government for Carolina, and perhaps no colony was ever started with a more elaborate scheme of political, social, and religious organization. Locke had a large share in this work, though there can hardly be any doubt that it was initiated by Lord Ashley, and modified by his fellow-proprietors. The scheme that was produced agrees entirely with all we know of Lord Ashley’s theoretical opinions, and his notion of the ways in which they should be put into practice, while some of those opinions are distinctly at variance with the views which Locke had already expressed in his "Essay concerning Toleration" and his "Reflections upon the Roman Commonwealth," and which he long afterwards expressed in almost identical terms in his published writings. There is such close resemblance, however, between some of its provisions and some of the views which Locke had set on record before his acquaintance with Lord Ashley began that he must certainly have had a share, not only in its detailed working out, but also in its original concoction. We may safely assume, accordingly, that it grew out of conferences in which Locke took part in his undefined capacity of secretary, and that to him was intrusted the task of setting forth the results of those conferences in orderly and intelligible shape, without power of altering the conditions that had already been agreed upon.

The scheme was set forth in "The Fundamental Constitutions for the Government of Carolina," of which there is extant a draft in Locke’s handwriting, dated the 21st of June, 1669, and which, with some alterations, were issued by the proprietors on the 1st of March, 1669-70. It attempted to adapt to the circumstances and exigencies of the new colony a comprehensive and overwhelming system of feudal government, tempered, however, by a remarkable liberality in religious affairs. It is in the latter respect only that we have any means of estimating the extent of Locke’s share in the projecting of these "Constitutions," apart from his proper business as a draughtsman; and therefore it will suffice to call attention to the clauses by which a large measure of religious liberty was secured for Carolina.

"No man," it is stipulated in the first of these clauses, "shall be permitted to be a freeman of Carolina or to have any estate or habitation within it, that doth not acknowledge a God, and that God is publicly to be worshiped." Whether Locke initiated that rule, we have no means of knowing; but his views expressed elsewhere clearly show that he agreed with it. The next clause, however, we are told, "was not drawn up by Mr. Locke, but inserted by some of the chief of the proprietors, against his judgment, as Mr. Locke himself informed one of his friends." "As the country comes to be sufficiently planted and distributed into fit divisions," it was there appointed, "it shall belong to the Parliament to take care for the building of churches and the public maintenance of divines, to be employed in the exercise of religion according to the Church of England, which, being the only true and orthodox and the national religion of the King’s dominions, is also of Carolina, and therefore it alone shall be allowed to receive public maintenance by grant of Parliament." By comparing that clause with those that follow, we shall be able to measure their liberality, such liberality as few men besides Locke, in his day, would have been likely to advocate….

Whether Locke originated those generous arrangements or not, he was certainly responsible for the wording of them, in which the generosity was clearly expressed; and it is strange that either he or Lord Ashley, who agreed with him in this matter, should have been able to persuade the other proprietors of Carolina to accede to such provisions. You must believe in God and consent to worship him, and you must make no secret of your belief, or your form of worship, if you want to settle in Carolina, they said in effect to all would-be emigrants; but that is all we require of you. Any seven or more of you may adopt any sort of notion about God, and any plan for worshiping him, that commend themselves to your judgments, provided of course that the freedom claimed by you does not interfere with the freedom of other persons; and not only shall you be allowed to hold your beliefs and opinions without any restraint, but you shall also be protected by the state from all sorts of interference with you in doing so.

No other colony, English or foreign, was ever started with such guarantees for "liberty of conscience," and it is well to remember that, long after the "Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina" had been formally abrogated, the moral authority of these guarantees remained in force, and that, in consequence of them, Carolina became a much freer asylum for religious outcasts from Europe than either Massachusetts or Pennsylvania.

The political and territorial arrangements of the "Constitutions" never actually came into operation. Issued first in 1670, they were reissued, with some modifications, in 1682, and again, with more important modifications, in 1698. But the real institutions of the colony were home-grown and developed out of experience, and the supremacy of the lords proprietors was virtually repudiated long before Carolina, by this time divided into two prosperous communities, became part of the United States.