The basis of John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government is that civil society is formed to protect and preserve one’s life, liberty, and property. In order for any society—of which Locke argues there are many—to be civil, said society must offer what nature is lacking. First, a civil society must have written and known laws that all people follow. No one, Locke argues, can be above the law. A civil society must have an impartial judge, and lastly, it must have the power to enforce laws and judgements. To achieve this, Locke claims one must give up certain liberties, namely self-preservation and the right to punish transgressors; however, Locke also claims these liberties must be given up freely, and with consent. In freely giving up this power, a common-wealth is formed—that common-wealth, through a majority appointed government, assumes the power to protect and preserve humankind. With the Second Treatise of Government, Locke maintains that all civil societies must be formed by consent, and he further argues that any common-wealth or government must operate at all times for the “peace, safety, and public good of the people.”
Locke outlines a handful of different societies and considers each one’s ability to preserve and protect humankind. Preserving humankind requires a certain amount of power, which, Locke contends, can only be found in a political society. Conjugal society, according to Locke, is a “voluntary compact between man and woman,” and it leads to procreation and family. Locke ultimately argues that a successful society has as many people as possible, and thus conjugal society is exceedingly important. However, Lock contends that the power given voluntarily within a conjugal society is not complete, as offspring are only subjects of the society until they are able to care for themselves. Domestic society, Locke continues, includes one’s wife and offspring, but it also includes servants and slaves. While a man in Locke’s time had come complete control over slaves, the power over one’s wife and children is not absolute. A man “has no legislative power of life and death over any of them,” Locke says. Thus, both conjugal and domestic society are limited in the power they are able to assume. Political society, on the other hand, does have the power to protect and preserve property and punish transgressors, as long as consent for such power is freely given by the people: “Those who are united into one body, and have a common established law and judicature to appeal to, with authority to decide controversies between them, and punish offenders, are in civil society one with another.” Thus, Locke suggests that political society is the best way to protect and preserve humankind.
According to Locke, a successful political society must include three types of government, which, operating both independently and together, must always work for the best interest of humankind. Locke contends that the establishment of legislative government is the “first and fundamental positive law of all common-wealths.” Legislative government has “supreme power” over the people; however, that power cannot be arbitrary, it cannot be used to strip one of personal property without consent, and it cannot be transferred to any other person or body. While the power of the legislative government isn’t exactly limited, it is still safeguarded to ensure it works for the people. The executive government enforces laws, and it must always operate continuously. “It is necessary there should be a power always in being, which should see to the execution of the laws that are made, and remain in force,” Locke writes. Without the executive government, the “supreme power” of the legislative cannot be maintained. The federative government, Locke claims, has “the power of war and peace, leagues and alliances, and all the transactions, with all persons and communities without the common-wealth.” In other words, the federative government works with outside common-wealths for the betterment of their own political society.
While the power of the political society, particularly the legislative power, is absolute, Locke argues that since that power was freely given in the first place by the governed population, those people can revoke the very same consent. According to Locke, even the supreme power of the legislative is “only a fiduciary power to act for certain ends, there remains still in the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative.” As such, if government of the common-wealth is found to be corrupt, their power is forfeited and returned to the common-wealth.
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Consent of the Governed and the Role of Government ThemeTracker
Consent of the Governed and the Role of Government Quotes in Second Treatise of Government
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 shew the difference betwixt a ruler of a common-wealth, a father of a family, and a captain of a galley.
This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power, is so necessary to, and closely joined with a man's preservation, that he cannot part with it, but by what forfeits his preservation and life together: for a man, not having the power of his own life, cannot, by compact, or his own consent, enslave himself to any one, nor put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take away his life, when he pleases. No body can give more power than he has himself; and he that cannot take away his own life, cannot give another power over it.
Let us therefore consider a master of a family with all these subordinate relations of wife, children, servants, and slaves, united under the domestic rule of a family; which, what resemblance soever it may have in its order, offices, and number too, with a little common-wealth, yet is very far from it, both in its constitution, power and end: or if it must be thought a monarchy, and the paterfamilias the absolute monarch in it, absolute monarchy will have but a very shattered and short power, when it is plain, by what has been said before, that the master of the family has a very distinct and differently limited power, both as to time and extent, over those several persons that are in it; for excepting the slave (and the family is as much a family, and his power as paterfamilias as great, whether there be any slaves in his family or no) he has no legislative power of life and death over any of them, and none too but what a mistress of a family may have as well as he.
But though men, when they enter into society, give up the equality, liberty, and executive power they had in the state of nature, into the hands of the society, to be so far disposed of by the legislative, as the good of the society shall require; yet it being only with an intention in every one the better to preserve himself, his liberty and property; (for no rational creature can be supposed to change his condition with an intention to be worse) the power of the society, or legislative constituted by them, can never be supposed to extend farther, than the common good; but is obliged to secure every one's property, by providing against those three defects above mentioned, that made the state of nature so unsafe and uneasy.
But in governments, where the legislative is in one lasting assembly always in being, or in one man, as in absolute monarchies, there is danger still, that they will think themselves to have a distinct interest from the rest of the community; and so will be apt to increase their own riches and power, by taking what they think fit from the people: for a man's property is not at all secure, tho' there be good and equitable laws to set the bounds of it between him and his fellow subjects, if he who commands those subjects have power to take from any private man, what part he pleases of his property, and use and dispose of it as he thinks good.
That the aggressor, who puts himself into the state of war with another, and unjustly invades another man's right, can, by such an unjust war, never come to have a right over the conquered, will be easily agreed by all men, who will not think, that robbers and pyrates have a right of empire over whomsoever they have force enough to master; or that men are bound by promises, which unlawful force extorts from them.
As conquest may be called a foreign usurpation, so usurpation is a kind of domestic conquest, with this difference, that an usurper can never have right on his side, it being no usurpation, but where one is got into the possession of what another has right to. This, so far as it is usurpation, is a change only of persons, but not of the forms and rules of the government: for if the usurper extend his power beyond what of right belonged to the lawful princes, or governors of the commonwealth, it is tyranny added to usurpation.
He that will with any clearness speak of the dissolution of government, ought in the first place to distinguish between the dissolution of the society and the dissolution of the government. That which makes the community, and brings men out of the loose state of nature, into one politic society, is the agreement which every one has with the rest to incorporate, and act as one body, and so be one distinct common-wealth. The usual, and almost only way whereby this union is dissolved, is the inroad of foreign force making a conquest upon them: for in that case, (not being able to maintain and support themselves, as one intire and independent body) the union belonging to that body which consisted therein, must necessarily cease, and so every one return to the state he was in before, with a liberty to shift for himself, and provide for his own safety, as he thinks fit, in some other society. Whenever the society is dissolved, it is certain the government of that society cannot remain.
To conclude, the power that every individual gave the society, when he entered into it, can never revert to the individuals again, as long as the society lasts, but will always remain in the community; because without this there can be no community, no common-wealth, which is contrary to the original agreement; so also when the society hath placed the legislative in any assembly of men, to continue in them and their successors, with direction and authority for providing such successors, the legislative can never revert to the people whilst that government lasts; because having provided a legislative with power to continue for ever, they have given up their political power to the legislative, and cannot resume it.
