The First Treatise of Government, Chapters 1-5, pp. 5-36 Summary and Analysis

The book begins with a discussion of slavery and the fact that it is the opposite of what the nation (seventeenth-century England) stands for, but Locke feels, that is not what Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha says. This treatise tells all men that they are slaves, according to Locke. No man is born free when the monarchy is based on absolutism, and there are many people, especially in the last generation, who are promoting the view of rule by divine rights. "To make way for this doctrine they have denied mankind a right to natural freedom, whereby they have not only, as much as in them lies, exposed all subjects to the utmost misery of tyranny and oppression, but have also unsettled the titles, and shaken...