264 ADMINISTHATIVK NIHILISM vi 



"And this is intended should be done, not by carr applied to 

 individuals, further than their protection from injuries, when 

 they shall 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." * 



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 preservation of 

 the authority of the representative of the sovereign 

 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 invali- 

 dated by his monstrous doctrines respecting tlic 

 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 Jolin 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 



1 Leviathan, Molesworth'a ed. p. 322. 



