The foundational base of western democracy has been shaped by Locke’s ideas of constitutionalism, freedom and property. Elucidate. (Answer in 350 words)

- The foundational base of western democracy has been shaped by Locke’s ideas of constitutionalism, freedom and property. Elucidate. (Answer in 350 words)
Introduction
Locke's Two Treatises supplied Western democracy with three durable ideas: that political authority is limited and conditional, that freedom is natural and prior to government, and that property is created by labour and secured by consent.

Body

1. A state of nature that is free, not warlike: It is governed by the law of nature, which is reason, and no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions. Men leave it only to cure inconveniences, the want of a settled law, an impartial judge and a reliable executing power.
2. Government as trust, not surrender: Unlike Hobbes, Locke has the people transfer limited powers and retain sovereignty. When the trust is broken the people are judge, and a right of revolution follows, which legitimised 1688 and 1776.
3. Constitutionalism: The legislature is supreme but not absolute, bound by natural law, unable to tax without consent or to delegate its power; the executive and federative powers are separate; prerogative is bounded by the public good. Montesquieu, the American Constitution and Article 16 of the 1789 Declaration all descend from this.
4. Freedom and toleration: Rights are natural and inalienable, not grants of the state, and the Letter Concerning Toleration removes conscience from the magistrate's competence. This is the seed of a limited public sphere.
5. Property from labour: Every man has a property in his own person, and mixing his labour with nature makes the product his. The spoilage limit and the proviso to leave enough and as good are then transcended by the invention of money, to which men tacitly consent, legitimising unequal accumulation.
6. The critical counter-case: Macpherson reads all this as possessive individualism, a moral charter for capitalist appropriation that denies full rationality to the labouring class. Pateman notes the exclusion of women, and Locke's colonial writings used the labour theory to dispossess Amerindians.

Conclusion
Democracy kept Locke's procedures, consent, limits, rights and revolution, while progressively discarding his property qualification. He is therefore the foundation of Western democracy rather than its finished form.