ABSTRACT
The line between systematic and non-systematic political writings is frequently very difficult to draw. Most of the classics of political philosophy were at least partly the result of a contemporary political controversy. The essential characteristic of a systematic treatise is that, no matter what its purpose, it states the more general and basic principles of political science. The Leviathan and the Two Treatises of Government are no less systematic because Hobbes wished to see an absolutist government established in England and Locke was defending the Revolution of 1688. The old, individualistic theory of the functions of government should be discarded. The earliest American work which is unquestionably a systematic study is the Sketches of the Principles of Government published in 1793 by Nathaniel Chipman, at that time judge of the Federal district court for Vermont. The concept of natural law, and of the rights derived there from, is the corner stone of his political system.
