The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property.

Locke makes this claim in his political theory of the social contract, developed in the wake of England’s seventeenth-century constitutional crises and articulated most fully in the Second Treatise of Government (published 1689). Writing against absolutist accounts of monarchy, Locke argues that legitimate government arises from consent and is instituted to remedy the “inconveniences” of the state of nature—especially insecurity in the enjoyment of one’s rights. In Locke’s usage, “property” is broad: it includes not only external goods and estates but also one’s life and liberty. Civil society and law are therefore justified insofar as they protect these rights through impartial rules and adjudication.

The sentence condenses Locke’s central justification for political society: people accept the burdens of government because it better secures what is “their own.” The point is not merely economic. For Locke, property encompasses life, liberty, and material possessions, so the preservation of property means the protection of basic rights. The quote also implies a standard for legitimacy: when government fails to safeguard property (in this expansive sense) or becomes a threat to it, it forfeits its purpose and may be resisted. The line thus links individual rights, consent, and limited government, and it became foundational for later liberal and constitutional thought.

“The great and chief end, therefore, of men’s uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property.”