Two Treatises of Government by John Locke. - HTML preview

so effectually to dissolve the government: for laws not being made for

themselves, but to be, by their execution, the bonds of the society, to

keep every part of the body politic in its due place and function; when

that totally ceases, the government visibly ceases, and the people

become a confused multitude, without order or connexion.

Where there is

no longer the administration of justice, for the securing of men's

rights, nor any remaining power within the community to direct the

force, or provide for the necessities of the public, there certainly is

no government left. Where the laws cannot be executed, it is all one as

if there were no laws; and a government without laws is, I suppose, a

mystery in politics, unconceivable to human capacity, and inconsistent

with human society.

Sect. 220. In these and the like cases, when the government is

dissolved, the people are at liberty to provide for themselves, by

erecting a new legislative, differing from the other, by the change of

persons, or form, or both, as they shall find it most for their safety

and good: for the society can never, by the fault of another, lose the

native and original right it has to preserve itself, which can only be

done by a settled legislative, and a fair and impartial execution of the

laws made by it. But the state of mankind is not so miserable that they

are not capable of using this remedy, till it be too late to look for

any. To tell people they may provide for themselves, by erecting a new

legislative, when by oppression, artifice, or being delivered over to a

foreign power, their old one is gone, is only to tell them, they may

expect relief when it is too late, and the evil is past cure. This is in

effect no more than to bid them first be slaves, and then to take care

of their liberty; and when their chains are on, tell them, they may act

like freemen. This, if barely so, is rather mockery than relief; and men

can never be secure from tyranny, if there be no means to escape it till

they are perfectly under it: and therefore it is, that they have not

only a right to get out of it, but to prevent it.

Sect. 221. There is therefore, secondly, another way whereby governments

are dissolved, and that is, when the legislative, or the prince, either

of them, act contrary to their trust.

First, The legislative acts against the trust reposed in them, when they

endeavour to invade the property of the subject, and to make themselves,

or any part of the community, masters, or arbitrary disposers of the

lives, liberties, or fortunes of the people.

Sect. 222. The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of

their property; and the end why they chuse and authorize a legislative,

is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to

the properties of all the members of the society, to limit the power,

and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society: for

since it can never be supposed to be the will of the society, that the

legislative should have a power to destroy that which every one designs

to secure, by entering into society, and for which the people submitted

themselves to legislators of their own making; whenever the legislators

endeavour to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to

reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a

state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any

farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge, which God hath

provided for all men, against force and violence.

Whensoever therefore

the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society; and

either by ambition, fear, folly or corruption, endeavour to grasp

themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over

the lives, liberties, and estates of the people; by this breach of trust

they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite

contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume

their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislative,

(such as they shall think fit) provide for their own safety and

security, which is the end for which they are in society. What I have

said here, concerning the legislative in general, holds true also

concerning the supreme executor, who having a double trust put in him,

both to have a part in the legislative, and the supreme execution of the

law, acts against both, when he goes about to set up his own arbitrary

will as the law of the society. He acts also contrary to his trust, when

he either employs the force, treasure, and offices of the society, to

corrupt the representatives, and gain them to his purposes; or openly

preengages the electors, and prescribes to their choice, such, whom he

has, by sollicitations, threats, promises, or otherwise, won to his

designs; and employs them to bring in such, who have promised

before-hand what to vote, and what to enact. Thus to regulate candidates

and electors, and new-model the ways of election, what is it but to cut

up the government by the roots, and poison the very fountain of public

security? for the people having reserved to themselves the choice of

their representatives, as the fence to their properties, could do it for

no other end, but that they might always be freely chosen, and so

chosen, freely act, and advise, as the necessity of the commonwealth,

and the public good should, upon examination, and mature debate, be

judged to require. This, those who give their votes before they hear the

debate, and have weighed the reasons on all sides, are not capable of

doing. To prepare such an assembly as this, and endeavour to set up the

declared abettors of his own will, for the true representatives of the

people, and the law-makers of the society, is certainly as great a

breach of trust, and as perfect a declaration of a design to subvert the

government, as is possible to be met with. To which, if one shall add

rewards and punishments visibly employed to the same end, and all the

arts of perverted law made use of, to take off and destroy all that

stand in the way of such a design, and will not comply and consent to

betray the liberties of their country, it will be past doubt what is

doing. What power they ought to have in the society, who thus employ it

contrary to the trust went along with it in its first institution, is

easy to determine; and one cannot but see, that he, who has once

attempted any such thing as this, cannot any longer be trusted.

Sect. 223. To this perhaps it will be said, that the people being

ignorant, and always discontented, to lay the foundation of government

in the unsteady opinion and uncertain humour of the people, is to expose

it to certain ruin; and no government will be able long to subsist, if

the people may set up a new legislative, whenever they take offence at

the old one. To this I answer, Quite the contrary.

People are not so

easily got out of their old forms, as some are apt to suggest. They are

hardly to be prevailed with to amend the acknowledged faults in the

frame they have been accustomed to. And if there be any original

defects, or adventitious ones introduced by time, or corruption; it is

not an easy thing to get them changed, even when all the world sees

there is an opportunity for it. This slowness and aversion in the people

to quit their old constitutions, has, in the many revolutions which have

been seen in this kingdom, in this and former ages, still kept us to,

or, after some interval of fruitless attempts, still brought us back

again to our old legislative of king, lords and commons: and whatever

provocations have made the crown be taken from some of our princes

heads, they never carried the people so far as to place it in another

line.

Sect. 224. But it will be said, this hypothesis lays a ferment for

frequent rebellion. To which I answer, First, No more than any other hypothesis: for when the people are made

miserable, and find themselves exposed to the ill usage of arbitrary

power, cry up their governors, as much as you will, for sons of Jupiter;

let them be sacred and divine, descended, or authorized from heaven;

give them out for whom or what you please, the same will happen. The

people generally ill treated, and contrary to right, will be ready upon

any occasion to ease themselves of a burden that sits heavy upon them.

They will wish, and seek for the opportunity, which in the change,

weakness and accidents of human affairs, seldom delays long to offer

itself. He must have lived but a little while in the world, who has not

seen examples of this in his time; and he must have read very little,

who cannot produce examples of it in all sorts of governments in the

world.

Sect. 225. Secondly, I answer, such revolutions happen not upon every

little mismanagement in public affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling

part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all the slips of human

frailty, will be born by the people without mutiny or murmur. But if a

long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the same

way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel

what they lie under, and see whither they are going; it is not to be

wondered, that they should then rouze themselves, and endeavour to put

the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which

government was at first erected; and without which, ancient names, and

specious forms, are so far from being better, that they are much worse,

than the state of nature, or pure anarchy; the inconveniencies being all

as great and as near, but the remedy farther off and more difficult.

Sect. 226. Thirdly, I answer, that this doctrine of a power in the

people of providing for their safety a-new, by a new legislative, when

their legislators have acted contrary to their trust, by invading their

property, is the best fence against rebellion, and the probablest means

to hinder it: for rebellion being an opposition, not to persons, but

authority, which is founded only in the constitutions and laws of the

government; those, whoever they be, who by force break through, and by

force justify their violation of them, are truly and properly rebels:

for when men, by entering into society and civil-government, have

excluded force, and introduced laws for the preservation of property,

peace, and unity amongst themselves, those who set up force again in

opposition to the laws, do rebellare, that is, bring back again the

state of war, and are properly rebels: which they who are in power, (by

the pretence they have to authority, the temptation of force they have

in their hands, and the flattery of those about them) being likeliest to

do; the properest way to prevent the evil, is to shew them the danger

and injustice of it, who are under the greatest temptation to run into

it.

Sect. 227. In both the fore-mentioned cases, when either the legislative

is changed, or the legislators act contrary to the end for which they

were constituted; those who are guilty are guilty of rebellion: for if

any one by force takes away the established legislative of any society,

and the laws by them made, pursuant to their trust, he thereby takes

away the umpirage, which every one had consented to, for a peaceable

decision of all their controversies, and a bar to the state of war

amongst them. They, who remove, or change the legislative, take away

this decisive power, which no body can have, but by the appointment and

consent of the people; and so destroying the authority which the people

did, and no body else can set up, and introducing a power which the

people hath not authorized, they actually introduce a state of war,

which is that of force without authority: and thus, by removing the

legislative established by the society, (in whose decisions the people

acquiesced and united, as to that of their own will) they untie the

knot, and expose the people a-new to the state of war, And if those, who

by force take away the legislative, are rebels, the legislators

themselves, as has been shewn, can be no less esteemed so; when they,

who were set up for the protection, and preservation of the people,

their liberties and properties, shall by force invade and endeavour to

take them away; and so they putting themselves into a state of war with

those who made them the protectors and guardians of their peace, are

properly, and with the greatest aggravation, rebellantes, rebels.

Sect. 228. But if they, who say it lays a foundation for rebellion, mean

that it may occasion civil wars, or intestine broils, to tell the people

they are absolved from obedience when illegal attempts are made upon

their liberties or properties, and may oppose the unlawful violence of

those who were their magistrates, when they invade their properties

contrary to the trust put in them; and that therefore this doctrine is

not to be allowed, being so destructive to the peace of the world: they

may as well say, upon the same ground, that honest men may not oppose

robbers or pirates, because this may occasion disorder or bloodshed. If

any mischief come in such cases, it is not to be charged upon him who

defends his own right, but on him that invades his neighbours. If the

innocent honest man must quietly quit all he has, for peace sake, to him

who will lay violent hands upon it, I desire it may be considered, what

a kind of peace there will be in the world, which consists only in

violence and rapine; and which is to be maintained only for the benefit

of robbers and oppressors. Who would not think it an admirable peace

betwix the mighty and the mean, when the lamb, without resistance,

yielded his throat to be torn by the imperious wolf?

Polyphemus's den

gives us a perfect pattern of such a peace, and such a government,

wherein Ulysses and his companions had nothing to do, but quietly to

suffer themselves to be devoured. And no doubt Ulysses, who was a

prudent man, preached up passive obedience, and exhorted them to a quiet

submission, by representing to them of what concernment peace was to

mankind; and by shewing the inconveniences might happen, if they should

offer to resist Polyphemus, who had now the power over them.

Sect. 229. The end of government is the good of mankind; and which is

best for mankind, that the people should be always exposed to the

boundless will of tyranny, or that the rulers should be sometimes liable

to be opposed, when they grow exorbitant in the use of their power, and

employ it for the destruction, and not the preservation of the

properties of their people?

Sect. 230. Nor let any one say, that mischief can arise from hence, as

often as it shall please a busy head, or turbulent spirit, to desire the

alteration of the government. It is true, such men may stir, whenever

they please; but it will be only to their own just ruin and perdition:

for till the mischief be grown general, and the ill designs of the

rulers become visible, or their attempts sensible to the greater part,

the people, who are more disposed to suffer than right themselves by

resistance, are not apt to stir. The examples of particular injustice,

or oppression of here and there an unfortunate man, moves them not. But

if they universally have a persuation, grounded upon manifest evidence,

that designs are carrying on against their liberties, and the general

course and tendency of things cannot but give them strong suspicions of

the evil intention of their governors, who is to be blamed for it? Who

can help it, if they, who might avoid it, bring themselves into this

suspicion? Are the people to be blamed, if they have the sense of

rational creatures, and can think of things no otherwise than as they

find and feel them? And is it not rather their fault, who put things

into such a posture, that they would not have them thought to be as they

are? I grant, that the pride, ambition, and turbulency of private men

have sometimes caused great disorders in commonwealths, and factions

have been fatal to states and kingdoms. But whether the mischief hath

oftener begun in the peoples wantonness, and a desire to cast off the

lawful authority of their rulers, or in the rulers insolence, and

endeavours to get and exercise an arbitrary power over their people;

whether oppression, or disobedience, gave the first rise to the

disorder, I leave it to impartial history to determine.

This I am sure,

whoever, either ruler or subject, by force goes about to invade the

rights of either prince or people, and lays the foundation for

overturning the constitution and frame of any just government, is highly

guilty of the greatest crime, I think, a man is capable of, being to

answer for all those mischiefs of blood, rapine, and desolation, which

the breaking to pieces of governments bring on a country. And he who

does it, is justly to be esteemed the common enemy and pest of mankind,

and is to be treated accordingly.

Sect. 231. That subjects or foreigners, attempting by force on the

properties of any people, may be resisted with force, is agreed on all

hands. But that magistrates, doing the same thing, may be resisted, hath

of late been denied: as if those who had the greatest privileges and

advantages by the law, had thereby a power to break those laws, by which

alone they were set in a better place than their brethren: whereas their

offence is thereby the greater, both as being ungrateful for the greater

share they have by the law, and breaking also that trust, which is put

into their hands by their brethren.

Sect. 232. Whosoever uses force without right, as every one does in

society, who does it without law, puts himself into a state of war with

those against whom he so uses it; and in that state all former ties are

cancelled, all other rights cease, and every one has a right to defend

himself, and to resist the aggressor. This is so evident, that Barclay

himself, that great assertor of the power and sacredness of kings, is

forced to confess, That it is lawful for the people, in some cases, to

resist their king; and that too in a chapter, wherein he pretends to

shew, that the divine law shuts up the people from all manner of

rebellion. Whereby it is evident, even by his own doctrine, that, since

they may in some cases resist, all resisting of princes is not

rebellion. His words are these. Quod siquis dicat, Ergone populus

tyrannicae crudelitati & furori jugulum semper praebebit? Ergone

multitude civitates suas fame, ferro, & flamma vastari, seque, conjuges,

& liberos fortunae ludibrio & tyranni libidini exponi, inque omnia vitae

pericula omnesque miserias & molestias a rege deduci patientur? Num

illis quod omni animantium generi est a natura tributum, denegari debet,

ut sc. vim vi repellant, seseq; ab injuria, tueantur?

Huic breviter

responsum sit, Populo universo negari defensionem, quae juris naturalis

est, neque ultionem quae praeter naturam est adversus regem concedi

debere. Quapropter si rex non in singulares tantum personas aliquot

privatum odium exerceat, sed corpus etiam reipublicae, cujus ipse caput

est, i.e. totum populum, vel insignem aliquam ejus partem immani &

intoleranda saevitia seu tyrannide divexet; populo, quidem hoc casu

resistendi ac tuendi se ab injuria potestas competit, sed tuendi se

tantum, non enim in principem invadendi: & restituendae injuriae

illatae, non recedendi a debita reverentia propter acceptam injuriam.

Praesentem denique impetum propulsandi non vim praeteritam ulciscenti

jus habet. Horum enim alterum a natura est, ut vitam scilicet corpusque

tueamur. Alterum vero contra naturam, ut inferior de superiori

supplicium sumat. Quod itaque populus malum, antequam factum sit,

impedire potest, ne fiat, id postquam factum est, in regem authorem

sceleris vindicare non potest: populus igitur hoc amplius quam privatus

quispiam habet: quod huic, vel ipsis adversariis judicibus, excepto

Buchanano, nullum nisi in patientia remedium superest.

Cum ille si

intolerabilis tyrannus est (modicum enim ferre omnino debet) resistere

cum reverentia possit, Barclay contra Monarchom. 1. iii.

c. 8.

In English thus:

Sect. 233. But if any one should ask, Must the people then always lay

themselves open to the cruelty and rage of tyranny? Must they see their

cities pillaged, and laid in ashes, their wives and children exposed to

the tyrant's lust and fury, and themselves and families reduced by their

king to ruin, and all the miseries of want and oppression, and yet sit

still? Must men alone be debarred the common privilege of opposing force

with force, which nature allows so freely to all other creatures for

their preservation from injury? I answer: Self-defence is a part of the

law of nature; nor can it be denied the community, even against the king

himself: but to revenge themselves upon him, must by no means be allowed

them; it being not agreeable to that law. Wherefore if the king shall

shew an hatred, not only to some particular persons, but sets himself

against the body of the commonwealth, whereof he is the head, and

shall, with intolerable ill usage, cruelly tyrannize over the whole, or

a considerable part of the people, in this case the people have a right

to resist and defend themselves from injury: but it must be with this

caution, that they only defend themselves, but do not attack their

prince: they may repair the damages received, but must not for any

provocation exceed the bounds of due reverence and respect. They may

repulse the present attempt, but must not revenge past violences: for it

is natural for us to defend life and limb, but that an inferior should

punish a superior, is against nature. The mischief which is designed

them, the people may prevent before it be done; but when it is done,

they must not revenge it on the king, though author of the villany. This

therefore is the privilege of the people in general, above what any

private person hath; that particular men are allowed by our adversaries

themselves (Buchanan only excepted) to have no other remedy but

patience; but the body of the people may with respect resist intolerable

tyranny; for when it is but moderate, they ought to endure it.

Sect. 234. Thus far that great advocate of monarchical power allows of

resistance.

Sect. 235. It is true, he has annexed two limitations to it, to no

purpose:

First, He says, it must be with reverence.

Secondly, It must be without retribution, or punishment; and the reason

he gives is, because an inferior cannot punish a superior. First, How to

resist force without striking again, or how to strike with reverence,

will need some skill to make intelligible. He that shall oppose an

assault only with a shield to receive the blows, or in any more

respectful posture, without a sword in his hand, to abate the confidence

and force of the assailant, will quickly be at an end of his resistance,

and will find such a defence serve only to draw on himself the worse

usage. This is as ridiculous a way of resisting, as juvenal thought it

of fighting; ubi tu pulsas, ego vapulo tantum. And the success of the

combat will be unavoidably the same he there describes it:

/*[4]

-----Libertas pauperis haec est:

Pulsatus rogat, et pugnis concisus, adorat, Ut liceat paucis cum dentibus inde reverti.

*/

This will always be the event of such an imaginary resis