![[Samuel_Wale,_The_Bill_of_Rights_Ratified_at_the_Revolution_by_King_William,_and_Queen_Mary,_Previous_to_their_Coronation_(1783).jpg]] The [[Glorious Revolution]] led to the establishment of an English nation that limited the power of the king and provided protections for English subjects. England’s [1689 Bill of Rights](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689) established a constitutional monarchy, established Parliament’s independence from the monarch, and protected rights such as freedom of speech, regular elections, and the right to petition the king. It guaranteed rights to all English subjects including residents of the colonies, including trial by jury and habeas corpus (the requirement that authorities bring an imprisoned person before a court to demonstrate the cause of their imprisonment). [[John Locke]], a doctor and educator who had taken refuge in Holland during the reign of James II and had returned to England after the Glorious Revolution, published *[Two Treatises of Government](https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.503178/page/n5/mode/2up)*  in 1690. Locke argued that government was a social contract between leaders and the people, and that representative government existed to protect “life, liberty and property.” Locke rejected the divine right of kings and instead advocated for the role of Parliament in a limited monarchy. Locke’s political philosophy had an enormous impact on future generations of colonists and established the paramount importance of representation in government. Historians have celebrated John Locke as a leading figure in the humanist developments called the Enlightenment, and have often ignored or excused Locke’s support of both slavery and a strict separation of society into an almost feudal arrangement of wealthy proprietors and dependent tenants, described in the *[Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina](https://archive.org/details/fundamentalconst00caro/page/n5/mode/2up)* two decades earlier. Although the ideas about individual rights and a social contract that are central to the [[Enlightenment]] were certainly developed and described by European philosophers such as John Locke (1632-1704), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Votaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), and Nicolas de Condorcet (1743-1794), recently scholars have suggested that some of the ideas they championed may already have existed in the Americas. And even that some of these American ideas may have influenced their thinking as they developed the ideals that were expressed in documents like the [[Declaration of Independence]] and the [Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp). [[Lahontan|Louis Armand, Baron de Lahontan]] (1666-1716) was a somewhat impoverished minor French aristocrat who traveled extensively as a young man in the Great Lakes regions that are now Canada, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. He wrote a multi-volume memoir of his travels, the second volume of which contained his recollections of a long conversation Lahontan had with a [[Huron]] diplomat named [[Kandiaronk]]. The Huron, whom Lahontan called Adario in the dialogue, was chief of the Hurons living around Fort [[Michilimackinac]] and had led them in wars against the Iroquois. Kandiaronk was famous as an orator and was often invited to dine with the French Governor-General, [Frontenac](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_de_Buade_de_Frontenac), because he was said to be the best conversationalist in America. The Jesuit historian, [Charlevoix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Fran%C3%A7ois_Xavier_de_Charlevoix), said no Indian he had met “ever possessed greater merit, a finer mind, more valor, prudence or discernment in understanding those with whom he had to deal”. Part of Kandiaronk’s understanding of the French had come from over a decade of study that included a visit to France, and he criticized the French acceptance of the arbitrary authority of a king and what he considered their general obsequiousness. Kandiaronk argued that a love of money and property had poisoned the European mind, and that the worst insult one could give to a Huron would be to try to tell him what to do. Many of the ideas Kandiaronk introduced into the conversation became central to the Enlightenment worldview, and it has been documented that philosophers such as Leibniz were familiar with Lahontan’s writing. So it seems reasonable to imagine that the concepts of liberty and consensus that people such as the Huron lived by, may have influenced the ideals that went into the revolutionary documents of the American founding era. --- Next: [[5.6 But Slavery]] Back: [[5.4 Glorious Revolution]]