Excavations


... nothing is more essential to public interest than the preservation of public liberty.

- David Hume



Tuesday, March 9, 2021

Canada's Trinity and John Locke: an update

In an early post, “Canada and John Locke’s Two Treatises” (published July 20, 2012)[1] I wrote that Locke’s trinity of “Peace, Safety, and publick good of the people” comes close to Canada’s “Peace, order and good government” but the textual resemblance had not been developed by Janet Ajzenstat in her book, Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament (2007).[2]  While I remain skeptical as to the influence of Locke on the beginnings of Canada, there is some evidence to suggest that our Constitutional motto may have found an antecedent in the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), who knew Locke and was himself a product of the Glorious Revolution.  He employs the trinity “order, peace, and concord.”[3]  But it was his grandfather, the 1st Earl of Shaftesbury (1621-1623), who is recognized in history as the benefactor of Locke, and who also helped shape his political imagination, given the Earl’s opposition to the court of the Roman Catholic King, Charles II.[4]

Western culture is replete with references or allusions to the Trinity – since Augustine, of course – and I have discussed the matter variously elsewhere. A more modern equivalent, stemming from Communism, might be the ubiquity of the five-year plan.  At any rate, it is worth exploring the Trinity in a Canadian context; perhaps one might begin with the influence of Augustinian predestination (via Calvin) on the colonial impulse.



[1] See my list of ‘Popular Posts’ on the homepage.

[2] John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 353.

[3] Lord Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, etc., Vol. II, ed. John M. Robertson (London: Grant Richards, 1900 [Scholar Select Reprint], p. 144. First published in 1711.

[4] See John Dunn, Past Masters: Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 3-6,8-9.

No comments:

Post a Comment