John Locke's Influence on Government

John Locke was born in Wrington, a village in Somerset, on August 29, 1632. He lived to become the most influential people in England, and perhaps one of the most influential people in the seventeenth century. His mother died while he was still an infant, and his father was a "Country lawyer@ and a small land owner who served as a captain of horse in the Parliamentary Army during the Civil War. Locke=s father later died …

…people, influenced the founding fathers of the United States Constitution. Locke thought that the purpose of government was to protect the natural rights of citizens. The natural rights according to Locke were life, liberty, and property, and that all people automatically earned these rights by being born. When a government did not protect these rights, the citizens had a right to replace the government. Thomas Jefferson later incorporated these ideas into the Declaration of Independence.