Matthew Fielding Locke
After the war, Locke returned to Mississippi, and in 1849 married Elizabeth A. Biue. Shortly thereafter they moved to Upshur County, Texas. He established a plantation about 13 miles (21 km) northeast of present-day Gilmer and founded the nearby town of LaFayette (which he named after his son, LaFayette C. Locke, who was born in 1850). Locke began the first of two terms as a state representative in 1855 in the Sixth Texas Legislature. In the Seventh Legislature, Locke was elected Speaker of the House "pro tempore" on 26 December 1857 when Speaker William S. Taylor took ill. When Taylor resigned on 18 January 1858, Locke was elected Speaker over Reps. Isaac N. Dennis and John Henry Brown, 39 votes to 14 and 13, respectively.
Two Treatises of Government
Jerome Huyler and Michael. P. Zuckert approach Locke in the broader context of his oeuvre and historical influence. Locke is situated within changing religious, philosophical, scientific, and political dimensions of 17th century England. Objecting to the use of the contemporary concept of economic man to describe Locke’s view of human nature, Huyler emphases the “virtue of industriousness” of Locke’s Protestant England. Productive work is man’s earthly function or calling, ordained by God and required by self-preservation. The government’s protection of property rights insures that the results of industry, i.e. “fruits of one’s labor,” are secure. Locke’s prohibition of ill-gotten gains, whether for well-connected gentry or the profligate, is not a lack of Locke’s foresight to the problems in the latter stages of liberalism but an application of equal protection of the law to every individual.