Locke's essay on Civil Government was the
justification in theory of a revolution which had already been
accomplished in practice, while the Social Contract, tinged as it was
by silent reference in the mind of the writer to Geneva, was yet a
speculation in the air. The circumstances under which it was written
gave to the propositions of Locke's piece a reserve and moderation
which savour of a practical origin and a special case. They have not
the wide scope and dogmatic air and literary precision of the
corresponding propositions in Rousseau. We find in Locke none of those
concise phrases which make fanatics. But the essential doctrine is
there. The philosopher of the Revolution of 1688 probably carried its
principles further than most of those who helped in the Revolution had
any intention to carry them, when he said that "the legislature being
only a fiduciary power to act for certain ends, there remains still in
the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative."[218]
It may be questioned how many of the peers of that day would have
assented to the proposition that the people--and did Locke mean by the
people the electors of the House of Commons, or all males over
twenty-one, or all householders paying rates?--could by any expression
of their will abolish the legislative power of the upper chamber, or
put an end to the legislative and executive powers of the crown. But
Locke's statements are direct enough, though he does not use so terse
a label for his doctrine as Rousseau affixed to it.

Again, besides the principle of popular sovereignty, Locke most likely
gave to Rousseau the idea of the origin of this sovereignty in the
civil state in a pact or contract, which was represented as the
foundation and first condition of the civil state. From this naturally
flowed the connected theory, of a perpetual consent being implied as
given by the people to each new law. We need not quote passages from
Locke to demonstrate the substantial correspondence of assumption
between him and the author of the Social Contract. They are found in
every chapter.[219] Such principles were indispensable for the defence
of a Revolution like that of 1688, which was always carefully marked
out by its promoters, as well as by its eloquent apologist and
expositor a hundred years later, the great Burke, as above all things
a revolution within the pale of the law or the constitution. They
represented the philosophic adjustment of popul