To this purpose, I think it may not be amiss to set down what I take to be political power. That the power of a magistrate over a subject may be distinguished from that of a father over his children, a master over his servant, a husband over his wife, and a lord over his slave. All which distinct powers happening sometimes together in the same man, if he be considered under these different relations, it may help us to distinguish these powers one from another, and show the difference betwixt a ruler of a commonwealth, a father of a family, and a captain of a galley.

Political power, then, I take to be a right of making laws, with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the commonwealth from foreign injury, and all this only for the public good. (Book II, Chapter 1, "On Political Power")

Basic set up:

John Locke is one of the most important political philosophers of all time. In this excerpt from Two Treatises on Government , he defines "political power" for his readers. You were probably clued in by the word "government" in the title: this is a super-political read.

Locke's Two Treatises on Government is all about—surprise, surprise—politics. In the above excerpt, Locke is trying to find answers to questions such as: what constitutes a government? What's the difference between a head of a family and the head of a government? What are the responsibilities of a government?

Given that the Restoration period is a time when England was still sorting out its political identity (the commonwealth had been rejected in favor of monarchy, but there were still loads of people who preferred a republic to monarchy), politics was a pretty big deal for the thinkers and writers of this era… much like it is today.

Don't go looking for plot: Two Treatises on Government is a philosophical, not a fictional, text. But given that many of the authors of this period not only wrote poetry and drama, but also journalism, non-fiction, and philosophy, it's hard to draw a line between "literary" and "non-literary" authors during this period. Also, Locke is uber-important.