John Locke

John Locke is identified as the philosopher who, while serving as secretary to one of Carolina’s proprietors, helped formulate a blueprint for an elitist colonial society. His role connects his political reputation to a concrete institutional project that aimed to limit democracy, even as the settlers’ resistance to such arrangements helped defeat it.

Role in the Carolina project

In 1663, Carolina was founded by eight proprietors, including Sir Anthony Ashley-Cooper. Ashley-Cooper and Locke, his secretary, formulated the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina. The document set out a hierarchical order under which political authority would remain concentrated among the proprietors and landed elite.

The constitution’s preamble said the government should suit the monarchy and avoid establishing a numerous democracy. It was not merely a general statement of preference: the clauses specified how status, landholding, and political participation would be organized.

A designed hierarchy

At the bottom of the proposed social structure were the “leet-men,” who had no political power. Their status was to pass to their descendants, with the constitution declaring that their children would remain leet-men “to all generations.” Above them were landgraves and caziques, designated to form the aristocracy. Each landgrave was to receive 48,000 acres, and each cacique 24,000 acres.

The plan also provided for a parliament, but sharply restricted its authority. Landgraves and caziques would be represented, while debate would be limited to measures already approved by the eight proprietors. The arrangement thus allowed a formal parliamentary body without giving it independent power to set policy.

The limits of the blueprint

The Carolina constitution belonged to a broader series of English colonial efforts to establish societies in which a small privileged group controlled political and economic life. Such plans proved difficult to impose on settlers in North America, where alternatives gave them leverage to demand incentives, greater economic freedom, and political rights.

In Maryland, settlers insisted on owning their land and compelled Lord Baltimore to create an assembly; in 1691, that assembly persuaded the king to make Maryland a Crown colony, ending Baltimore’s political privileges. Carolina underwent a similarly prolonged conflict with its proprietors, who eventually lost: South Carolina became a royal colony in 1729. The account gives no separate personal actions or later outcome for Locke, but places his constitutional work within a project that failed to secure the lasting, tightly controlled hierarchy its authors had designed.