Ij ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM. 13 



complain ; but by a general providence contained in public instruction 

 both of doctrine and example ; and in the making and executing of 

 good laws to which individual persons may apply their own cases." l 



To a witness of the civil war between Charles I. and 

 the Parliament, it is not wonderful that the dissolution 

 of the bonds of society which is involved in such strife 

 should appear to be " the greatest evil that can happen 

 in this life;" and all who 'have read the "Leviathan" 

 know to what length Hobbes's anxiety for the preserva- 

 tion of the authority of the representative of the sove- 

 reign power, whatever its shape, leads him. But the 

 justice of his conception of the duties of the sovereign 

 power does not seem to me to be invalidated by his mon- 

 strous doctrines respecting the sacredness of that power. 



To Hobbes, who lived during the break-up of the 

 sovereign power by popular force, society appeared to be 

 threatened by everything which weakened that power : 

 but, to John Locke, who witnessed the evils which flow 

 from the attempt of the sovereign power to destroy the 

 rights of the people by fraud and violence, the danger 

 lay in the other direction. 



The safety of the representative of the sovereign 

 power itself is to Locke a matter of very small moment, 

 and he contemplates its abolition when it ceases to do 

 its duty, and its replacement by another, as a matter of 

 course. The great champion of the revolution of 1688 

 could do no less. Nor is it otherwise than natural that 

 he should seek to limit, rather than to enlarge, the powers 

 of the State, though in substance he entirely agrees with 

 Hobbes's view of its duties : 



" But though men," says he, " 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 

 Legislature as the good of society shall require ; yet it being only with 



1 " Leviathan/' Molesworth's ed. p. 322. 



