...induce subjects to submit to government voluntarily. The first word of the Two Treatises is "slavery": "Slavery is so vile and miserable an estate of man,...Englishman, much less a gentleman, should plead for it" (T L1, 5). Thus, Locke begins his case by making clear exactly what is at stake in arguments about...

...contradiction is highlighted by the opening lines of the first of Locke's Two Treatises o/Gouernment: "Slavery is so vile and miserable an Estate of Man,...an Englishman, much less a Gentleman, should plead for't."8 Locke's readers are faced with the problem of how he could have been so intimately involved...

...empiricism's most eloquent advocates, who famously wrote in his Two Treatises of Government (1690), "Slavery is so vile and miserable an Estate of Man, and so directly opposed to the generous Temper and Courage of our Nation; that 'tis hardly to be conceived that an...

...duty imply that all are equal. Yet Locke begins his work in a spirit that differs from his argument: "Slavery is so vile and miserable an Estate of Man,...an Englishman, much less a Gentleman, should plead fort."27 Slavery is vile and miserable, he says, not disadvantageous for one's preservation. And he...

...Establishing this foundational opposition at the beginning of his First Treatise of Government, Locke stated, "Slavery is so vile and miserable an Estate of Man,...an Englishman, much less a Gentleman, should plead for't."2 The general claim that slavery is the litmus test of liberalism, however, has not been as...

...condition into which free citizens might sink. In the latter sense, slavery, Locke famously observed, "is so vile and miserable an Estate of Man, and so...that 'tis hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman . . . should plead for it." Yet plead for it as a labor system Locke did, justifying slavery as an...

...into which JJ j J free citizens might sink. In the latter sense, slavery, Locke famously observed, "is so vile and miserable an Estate of Man, and so...that 'tis hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman . . . should plead for it." Yet plead for it as a labor system Locke did, justifying slavery as an...

...ruler and a people. "Slavery is so vile and miserable an Estate of Man," began Locke's Second Treatise, "and so directly opposite to the generous Temper and...hardly to be conceived, that an Englishman much less a Gentelman, should plead for't" (II. i). The ultimate kind of "private dependence," it represented a...

...Locke, who in another section referred to slavery as "so vile and miserable an Estate of Man . . . that 'tis hardly to be conceived that an Englishman much less a Gentleman, should plead for 't," the origin of the institution was entirely outside the social contract. When any man, by fault...