Essay On Locke's Justification For The Revolutionary War

The American Revolutionary War came about after decades of grievances on the part of the American colonies, grievances which were put in place by the British Parliamentary system. The lack of American representation in parliament paired with the multitudes of acts designed to take advantage of the colonies were cause enough for the colonies to revolt and to overthrow their government. There are few who would disagree with the American’s justification for the revolution, would Locke be one of them? No he would not, the American colonies were fully justified under Lockean reasons for revolution, considering how long they endured the grievances and the legislature that was passed against them.
Locke laid out the types of legislative and executive

As Locke puts it, “Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all the slips of human frailty, will be born by the people without mutiny”, basically a populace will put up with next to anything to maintain their government (113). The reason? A government that is in place is almost always chosen over creating a new one from scratch; part of this is due to the doubt and uncertainty that comes with the unknown. The colonies did exactly as Locke prescribed in his text, they took all the abuse by the British, with nothing but discontented murmurings, no actions taken, until they simply couldn’t anymore.This point was to prevent an overturning of the government for just any little thing, and in the colonial period Americans withstood as much as they could bear from the British. In 1689 an English bill of rights was put into effect protecting its citizen’s rights; this was the beginning of a long road of pushing back the British for the Americans. From then, until the brink of the war in 1775, the British passed act after act utilising the American’s for their raw materials and attempting to contain them under the British