406 GOVERNMENT ix 



in the state of nature. Instead of making a com- 

 plete surrender of all the rights and powers which 

 they possessed in that state, to the Sovereign, and 

 thus creating State omnipotence by the social 

 contract, as Hobbes wrongfully declared them to 

 have done, they gave up only just so much of 

 them as was absolutely necessary for the purposes 

 of an executive witli_strictly limited powers. With 

 the Stuarts recognised by France, and hosts of 

 Jacobite pamphleteers on the look-out for every 

 coign of vantage, it would never do to admit the 

 Hobbesian doctrine of complete surrender. So 

 Locke is careful to assert that when men entered 

 into commonwealths they must have stipulated 

 (and, therefore, on approved a priori principles, 

 did stipulate) that the power of the Sovereign was 

 strictly limited to the performance of acts needful 

 " to secure every one's property." 



131. 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 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. 1 



1 The following passages complete the expression of Locke's 

 im aning: " Political power, then, I take to be a right of making 



