The most influential early expositors of systematic liberal theory were John Locke and John Stuart Mill. Locke ([1690] 1960) viewed individuals as endowed with and animated by reason, characterized as the ‘Voice of God,’ through which they can discern and act upon the dictates of divinely given natural law.
From birth, all are equally endowed with this reason, which is the basis for their decisions to leave the state of nature, to enter into civil and political society, and to act in the community.
To Locke and to the liberal theorists who followed him, private property is an essential condition for individual freedom, as well as a principal goal of its exercise.
Locke’s theory of property, which has received much attention from commentators, need not detain us beyond a recognition of three elements that are central to liberal citizenship.
More generally, according to Laslett, Locke was perhaps the first philosopher to regard ‘citizenship … as a specific duty, a personal challenge in a world where every individual either recognized his responsibility for every other, or disobeyed his conscience’ (Locke [1690] 1960: 117–20, 135)