Artifact 4

Artifact 4 is from HUMN 561, Society, Class, and Wealth, and is called “Social Contract Theory in the Declaration of Independence.”  This excerpt is from the middle of my paper, which I began with discussing the influence that Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jaques Rousseau had on Thomas Jefferson, the main writer of the Declaration. I concluded with the assertion that Jefferson was mainly influenced by Locke, and that the separation of the United States and Great Britain was justified by the words of these men.

John Locke had the greatest impact on Jefferson’s writing of the Declaration of Independence. Jayne says, “that John Locke's Second Treatise of Government made a profound influence on Jefferson can be seen in the ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence” (41). Jefferson paraphrased chapter 11 of the Second Treatise in his government commonplace books (a commonplace book is a personal collection of information from various sources). Jayne adds: “What Locke's chapter 11 stressed and Jefferson made use of in his paraphrase was that to alter the legislative power without the consent of the people who established it, and then to make laws with that altered legislative body, was to violate the sacred principle of government by consent of the people” (43). He most likely thought this while he drafted the Declaration.

Jefferson was also influenced by the Second Treatise’s chapter 19, “On the Dissolution of Government.” It contains similar ideas he used in his commonplace book and which he used in the Declaration. “In short, the dissolution of government as the effect of legislative usurpations or alterations . . . became a principal thrust of the Declaration.” (Jayne 45). Jefferson also used ideas from chapter 18, “On Tyranny,” especially when he listed the abuses made by the King of England towards the American colonists. Locke and Jefferson used the idea of tyranny in their works. Individuals must protect themselves from tyranny after government was formed (Jayne 47). Therefore, the American colonists had the right to fight their mother country for the abuses perpetuated against them. This is what Jefferson conveyed in the Declaration.

Jayne continues: “Still another similarity between the Second Treatise and the Declaration is the contention that the people had the power to judge whether or not the government's power had become absolute or arbitrary and whether the government was doing them harm” (47). The people can appeal to God (Locke) or to prudence (Jefferson). But they cannot abuse this power or take it lightly; they must judge fairly and rightly.

Most of the parallels between the Second Treatise and the Declaration occur in the Jefferson’s list of King George III’s abuses toward the American colonists. The first states that “he has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good” (Jefferson). In Locke, the “public good” is a purpose of the government (Jayne 48). The king had not given the colonists any say in the laws imposed on them, and naturally they found. They did not get to say for themselves what they thought would be good for them. There were no colonial representatives in Parliament to make sure their interests were represented. According to Jayne, “this alone, according to a Lockean criterion, provided grounds for the dissolution of government” (48). Locke would have agreed with the colonists, and his words were enough for Jefferson to include that in the list of abuses.

Jefferson’s second abuse showed that colonial governors (British appointees) did not have the right “to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance” (Jefferson). The king’s consent was required, but the king did not attend to his duty in a timely manner (or at all, really).  Again contrary to the public good, the colonists had a right to complain. Without laws, the order they had created would descend into chaos.

The third abuse states the king “has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only” (Jefferson). This would alter the legislature in a way that Locke would call for ending of government. Jayne says that “such arbitrariness on the part of the king is one of the specific ways in which the legislative is altered, according to Locke in chapter 19, which states generally that the alteration of legislative power from the way the people have established it dissolves the government” (49). The colonies could not perform as a country without an established government.

The fourth, fifth, and sixth abuses committed by the king are like the third, but the thirteenth is the only one which names others in its charge: “He has combined with others [the people of England] to subject us to a jurisdiction [Parliament] foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended legislation” (Jefferson). He then lists the several laws which affected the American colonists negatively, such as imposing taxes without the colonists’ consent. Jayne says that “both Parliament's claim of legislative authority and the king's assent to it were the Lockean legislative usurpation and alteration that dissolved the government, since Parliament had not been authorized by the colonial people to make laws for them” (50). It is becoming clear Jefferson and the Continental Congress believed the king and Parliament of England had no more sway over them and their social contract with them dissolved. They had functioned well on their own for some time, so why should they not then break away?

In the Declaration’s last paragraph, Jefferson appeals “to the Supreme Judge of the world.” This, of course, refers to God. Rakove says, “the appeal to the ‘Supreme Judge’ is again an echo of Locke, who described a legitimate rebellion against tyranny as an ‘appeal to heaven’” (98). So Jefferson, even though he did not believe in a God who had a hand running the world, knew that others in the fledgling country did, and so wrote that phrase into the Declaration. After all, the Declaration was written to the whole world, and others who believed in God too (and perhaps they would help fight the war already raging).

Hearkening back to the second paragraph of the Declaration, Jefferson made his first appeal to God: “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” God created all men equal and gave them certain rights which cannot be denied by any government. Jayne says, “The God of the Declaration, like Locke's God in the Treatise, created all men equal by treating them all equally at the time of their creation” (60). No one had any kind of special favor granted at the time of their creation; all were given the same kind of treatment and the same rights. Jefferson and the Continental Congress said “Nature’s God” does not discriminate between persons. One might say that God’s social contract with man became, in part, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

John Locke’s social contract theory can be found all over the Declaration of Independence. The way Thomas Jefferson used Locke’s ideas was a masterful strike at the heart of England, its king. His words dissolved the social contract between the newborn United States and its mother country in a way that Locke would have approved of. A new social contract would soon unite Americans and their government in a way that has stood the test of time for well over two hundred years. Social contract theory came along at the right time for the right person to read and study its concepts and give birth to a new nation.

Works Cited

Benhabib, Seyla. "Thomas Hobbes on My Mind: Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes." Social Research, vol. 89, no. 2, 2022, pp. 233-247. ProQuest, http://ezproxy.apus.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarly-journals%2Fthomas-hobbes-on-my-mind-i-leviathan%2Fdocview%2F2731077069%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D8289.

"Britannica Editor Jeff Wallenfeldt Discusses the History of The Declaration of Independence." Directed by Anonymous, Encyclopedia Britannica, 2020. Alexander Street, https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/britannica-editor-jeff-wallenfeldt-discusses-the-history-of-the-declaration-of-independence.

Britannica Editors. "social contract". Encyclopedia Britannica, 24 Nov. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/topic/social-contract. Accessed 28 December 2025.

Froese, Katrin. "Beyond Liberalism: The Moral Community of Rousseau's Social Contract." Canadian Journal of Political Science, vol. 34, no. 3, 2001, pp. 579-600. ProQuest, http://ezproxy.apus.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarly-journals%2Fbeyond-liberalism-moral-community-rousseaus%2Fdocview%2F204609087%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D8289, doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423901778018.

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Jayne, Allen. Jefferson's Declaration of Independence : Origins, Philosophy, and Theology. University Press of Kentucky, 1997, pp. 41-61. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/apus/detail.action?docID=1915028.

Jefferson, Thomas. The Declaration of Independence. Project Gutenberg, 1971. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1/pg1-images.html.

Locke, John. Second Treatise of Government. Jonathan Bennett, 2017, https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/locke1689a.pdf

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Patapan, Haig. “Politics of Immortality: Hobbes on ‘Humane and Divine Politiques.’” Political Theology, vol. 18, no. 1, February 2017, 60-77. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.ezproxy1.apus.edu/10.1179/1743171915Y.0000000009.

Rakove, Jack N. The Annotated U. S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Harvard University Press, 2009, pp. 73-98. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/apus/detail.action?docID=3300819.

Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. The President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1971. Print.

Rousseau, Denise M. "Free Will in Social and Psychological Contracts." Society and Business Review, vol. 11, no. 2, 2016, pp. 210-216. ProQuest, http://ezproxy.apus.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarly-journals%2Ffree-will-social-psychological-contracts%2Fdocview%2F1823185998%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D8289, doi:https://doi.org/10.1108/SBR-04-2016-0031.

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Seabright, Paul, et al. "Evaluating Social Contract Theory in the Light of Evolutionary Social Science." Evolutionary Human Sciences, vol. 3, 2021. ProQuest, http://ezproxy.apus.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarly-journals%2Fevaluating-social-contract-theory-light%2Fdocview%2F2503556584%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D8289, doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2021.4.

Stoner, James R. “Is there a Political Philosophy in the Declaration of Independence?” Intercollegiate Review, vol. 40, no. 2, 2005, pp. 3-11. ProQuest, http://ezproxy.apus.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Fscholarly-journals%2Fis-there-political-philosophy-declaration%2Fdocview%2F210665356%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D8289.