![]() ![]() One might think that if all society needs to do when they are not satisfied with their government is to rebel, that there would be frequent rebellion and unrest in the society. If the legislative does not forfeit its power, Locke not only encourages rebellion and revolution, but also views it as societies obligation. In this chapter Locke also states that if the legislative should attempt to take away property of its people or try to put them to slavery, the legislative forfeits its power to the people (Locke 1). But when a Government dissolves with its society still intact, whether through “foreign force” or a rebellion, the people retain the right “to return to the state he was in before, with a liberty to shift for himself,” and most importantly, the right to re-form that government as they choose. When a government no longer has its society, it too will dissolve. If this agreement is broken, and the individual decides to separate “as he thinks fit, in some other society” then the community will dissolve. What makes a society (or community) is the agreement of many individuals to act as one body. Locke argues that if the society is dissolved, the government will also dissolve: “It is impossible for the frame of a house to subsist when the materials of it are…jumbled into a confused heap by an earthquake.”(Locke 1). To understand the purpose of the document, one must first “distinguish between the dissolution of the society and the dissolution of the government.”(Locke 1). In this section of the Treatise -Chapter XIX- John Locke discusses the dissolution of government, the way in which a People can re-form that government, and the natural and just rebellions that occur from a monarchial abuse of power. For this reason, those who govern must be elected by the society, and the society must hold the power to instate a new Government when necessary. To Locke, a Government existed, among other things, to promote public good, and to protect the life, liberty, and property of its people. This belief was the foundation of his philosophy on Government. Locke believed, contrary to claims that God had “made all people naturally subject to a monarch”, that people are “by nature free.”(Tuckness). Locke described the role of civil government like this: “ Political power, then, I take to be a right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community, in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the common-wealth from foreign injury and all this only for the public good”(Locke). Then by seeing that state, determine where necessary laws and governing bodies are needed. The best way to figure this out, Locke reasoned, was to imagine a state in which no government existed.
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