Locke's two _Treatises of Government_ (published in 1690) carry us back into the region of worn-out controversies. The troublous times which intervened between the outbreak of the Civil War and the Revolution of 1688, including some years on either side, naturally called forth a large amount of controversy and controversial literature on the rights of kings and subjects, on the origin of government, on the point at which, if any, rebellion is justifiable, and other kindred topics. Not only did the press teem with pamphlets on these subjects, but, for three-quarters of a century, they were constantly being discussed and re-discussed with a dreary monotony in Parliament, in the pulpits, in the courts of law, and in the intercourse of private society. It is no part of my plan to give any account of these disputes, except so far as they bear immediately on the publication of Locke's treatises. It is enough, therefore, to state that the despotic and absolutist side in the controversy had been, or was supposed to have been, considerably re-inforced by the appearance in 1680 of a posthumous work, which had been circulated only in manuscript during its author's lifetime, entitled _Patriarcha, or the Natural Power of Kings_, by Sir Robert Filmer. This curious book (a more correct edition of which was published by Edmund Bohun in 1685) grounds the rights of kings on the patriarchal authority of Adam and his successors. Adam had received directly from God (such was the theory) absolute dominion over Eve and all his children and their posterity, to the most remote generations. This dominion, which rested on two independent grounds, paternity and right of property, was transmitted by Adam to his heirs, and is at once the justification of the various sovereignties now exercised by kings over their subjects, and a reason against any limitation of their authority or any questioning of their titles. By what ingenious contrivances the two links of the chain--Adam and the several monarchs now actually reigning on the earth--are brought together, those curious in such speculations may find by duly consulting the pages of Sir Robert Filmer's work.