ise is implicit in his remarks. Nor is his surrender here of
consent sufficient to be inconsistent with his general outlook. For at
the back of each governmental act, there is, in his own mind, an active
citizen body occupied in judging it with single-minded reference to the
law of nature and their own natural rights. There is thus a standard of
right and wrong superior to all powers within the State. "A government,"
as he says, "is not free to do as it pleases ... the law of nature
stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others."
The social contract is secreted in the interstices of public statutes.

Its corollary is the right of revolution. It is interesting that he
should have adopted this position; for in 1676 he had uttered the
thought that not even the demands of conscience[3] can justify
rebellion. That was, however, before the tyranny of Charles had driven
him into exile with his patron, and before James had attempted the
subversion of all constitutional government. To deny the right of
revolution was to justify the worst demands of James, and it is in its
favor that he exerts his ablest controversial power. "The true remedy,"
he says, "of force without authority is to oppose force to it." Let the
sovereign but step outside the powers derived from the social contract
and resistance becomes a natural right. But how define such invasion of
powers? The instances Locke chose show how closely, here at least, he
was following the events of 1688. The substitution of arbitrary will for
law, the corruption of Parliament by packing it with the prince's
instruments, betrayal to a foreign prince, prevention of the due
assemblage of Parliament--all these are a perversion of the trust
imposed and operate to effect the dissolution of the contract. The
state of nature again supervenes, and a new contract may be made with
one more fitted to observe it. Here, also, Locke takes occasion to deny
the central position of Hobbes' thesis. Power, the latter had argued,
must be absolute and there cannot, therefore, be usurpation. But Locke
retorts that an absolute government is no government at all since it
proceeds by caprice instead of reason; and it is comparable only to a
state of war since it implies the absence of judgment upon the character
of power. It lacks the essential element of consent without which the
binding force of law is absent. All government is a moral trust, and the
idea of limitation is therein