nm1159: er and we saw that in some ways the er er a Lockean state of nature was 
similar in some ways difference the some ways different some ways it was er er 
er very different in that it was regulated it wasn't the ho-, necessarily the 
horrible state of anarchy that you ha-, had in the case of Hobbes but 
nonetheless there are inconveniences in Locke's state of nature and therefore 
er individuals do need to come out of the state of nature and set up er a 
political community er which will have its a-, which will have a government er 
do you remember you need the need for an impartial judge a judge who can en-, 
could enforce a its decisions er and here we have the idea of the social 
contract again like Hobbes Locke invokes the idea of a social contract of 
individuals contracting with one another to set up government and one of the 
again one of the ways to er appreciate or u-, comprehend Locke's idea of the 
social contract is to compare and contrast it with Hobbes' idea of the social 
contract er there are again similarities and differences there is a similarity 
a basic similarity in that you've got the idea of e-, every individual agreeing 
with every other individual to give up something to do with their natural 
rights every individual agreeing with every other individual promising every 
other individual to give up something to do with their natural rights so that's 
the basic similarity er the difference well the differences concern what 
precisely is given up er and to what these things are given up so let's look at 
each of those first of all what what precisely is given up now you'll remember 
that in the case of Hobbes er what individuals give up is the nat-, is natural 
right their natural right itself er with the exception of the natural right to 
life and there were some puzzles and difficulties about that as i suggested the 
the the exceptions here didn't really amount to much so just to permissibly 
oversimplify in the case of Hobbes what 
individuals give up is their natural right or their natural rights but probably 
in the case of Hobbes better to s-, well to speak about their natural right so 
in a sense they give up everything er in the case of Locke they do not there is 
a crucial sense in which they do not give up anything clearly that's they do 
give up something and i'll explain that in a moment er but what they give up is 
the right to protect their natural rights and the right to enforce their 
natural rights the key point is they do not give up those natural rights 
themselves that is a absolutely crucial difference between Locke and Hobbes 
they do not repeat do not give up their natural rights what they give up is the 
right to enforce them er you'll remember in the state of nature if somebody 
infringes your natural rights you have the right to go and punish them or to 
try and rectify the violation er in in the social contract individuals say to 
each other we will no longer enforce our 
natural rights ourselves we'll give up that right and will as you as you will s-
, will see what they do is hand that right over to government and we'll come to 
that in a minute er one way of putting this is the way that er er Nozick put it 
N-O-Z-I-C-K er a f-, a er er contemporary political theorists er who wrote a 
famous or infamous book perhaps called Anarchy State and Utopia published in 
nineteen-seventy-four i think some see Anarchy State and Utopia as something on 
a level with er John Rawls' A Theory of Justice as a profound or and a 
penetrating work of political theory others see it as a nasty right wing 
political tract er i'll leave you to decide by if you if you wish to read or 
read about it the reason i'm referring to it here is that Nozick s-, pes-, 
specifically starts from a Lockean conception of state of nature what he is 
saying is let us assume the validity of Locke's state of nature and theorize 
from there er in fact he theorizes he comes to somewhat some 
slightly different well er he theories differs from Locke's and there on to 
some extent but there are many similarities it's a sort of updating of Lockean 
political theory i'm referring to him here because he makes a useful 
distinction between procedural and substantive rights that is to say in the 
social contract individuals do not give up their substantive rights they only 
give up their procedural rights they give up the right to the procedure for 
enforcing those rights but they don't give up the rights themselves that is to 
say as we'll see for Locke individuals keep their natural rights whilst they're 
under government they do not surrender them by putting themselves under 
government and this of course crucially limits what a government can 
legitimately do this of course is a key reason why Locke is the great liberal 
political theorist and er governments are not er do not have the authority to 
infringe natural rights by individuals putting themselves under 
government do not give up their natural rights they only give up their 
procedural rights to enforce their natural rights for Locke then the 
inconvenience of the state of nature means that there are no or tha-, i-, i-, 
in the state of nature there is no inf-, effective and impartial interpreter of 
natural rights er an enforcer of natural rights and this is an inconvenience so 
they er g-, er by pref-, er br-, er they engage in the social contract to set 
up er this i-, impartial enfor-, enforcer of er natural rights the government 
and i'll come say more about that in a minute but the second difference you'll 
remember regarded between Hobbes and Locke here regards what precisely is given 
up in at social contract sorry to what these things are given up in the case of 
Hobbes you'll remember individuals give up their natural rights hand over their 
natural rights to the sovereign directly to the sovereign indeed for Hobbes 
nothing else is possible there is no other entity to 
whom or to which you could over hand over natural rights there are only 
individuals er and they hand over partic-, to a particular individual the 
sovereign or particular group of individuals if er if the sovereign er er er i-,
is an assembly in the case of Locke though we have another entity which is of 
great importance sort of intermediate if you like between the individual and 
the government the political community the body politic the commonwealth these 
are all er words which Locke uses interchangeably sometimes he pi-, the people 
or a people er so for for Locke individuals give up what they do give up which 
is their procedural rights remember not their natural rights to a political 
community to a body politic to a commonwealth or if you like to a people that 
people that commonwealth that body politic then sets up a government so they 
don't hand over their procedural rights directly to a government they hand it 
their procedural rights over to a body politic a 
people which then sets up a government to to give an analogy let us er think of 
individuals say within this university who all interested in playing tennis so 
they get together and decide to form a tennis club that's if you like step one 
but having formed a tennis club they actually need to run the tennis club so 
they then have to appoint a committee so there's two steps you form the club 
and then you form the committee similarly for Locke you form the body politic 
the body politic then forms it as it were its executive committee er that is 
the say the government there's a bit more to it than that but that analogy er 
is fair enough i think now some see this in terms of two contracts there is a 
temptation to see this in terms of two contracts first contract amongst the 
individuals themselves to set up the p-, political community the people second 
contract er is sometimes seen as being between the people thus formed and the 
government contract one between the individuals to set 
up a people contract two between the people and the government and it is 
sometimes seen in this way er the reason it is sometimes seen in this way 
because there are other theorists before Locke who did conceive and i've 
mentioned this before there are other theorists before Locke who did conceive 
of there being a contract between the people and the government Locke in-, 
actually doesn't see it that way although he comes up with er er ideas which 
have a similar effect because Locke sees the people as setting up a government 
as a trustee the government is a trustee li-, er the idea here like a trustee 
that runs a trust fund trustee that runs a trust fund runs the fund on the beha-
, on behalf of and has duties to the beneficiaries well similarly the 
government is set up as a trustee of the people it runs er affairs on behalf of 
the beneficiary which is the which is the people so rather than the er 
government and the people being in a contractual relationship they are on the 
relationship of a trustee the government to a beneficiary of the trust the 
people but it's important to note and we'll come back to this it's important to 
note that the people are not just the beneficiaries they are also the 
interpreters of the terms of the trust now normally where you've got a trust 
fund and a trustee it is the not the beneficiary who interprets the terms of 
the trust it is of course the courts of law that interpret the terms and the be-
, the beneficiary does not himself interpret the terms of the trust in the case 
of Locke and government as we'll see the people are not only the beneficiaries 
but they're also the interpreters of the terms of the trust let's see what 
Parry i i mentioned before Geraint Parry in his helpful book John Locke says 
about this this is pages ninety-nine and one-two-four er he says er for Locke 
contract created a political society and is the means whereby once free 
individuals become subject to the new 
jurisdiction government is not established directly f-, by contract for some 
earlier political thinkers government too had been the product of contract 
Locke took a different line from these predecessors the only contract is that 
of association which is and then he quotes Locke which is all the compact there 
is or needs to be between the individuals that enter into or make up a 
commonwealth government is instituted by a distinct act of trust whereby the 
associated community transfers its executive right to a smaller body of persons 
for the more effective performance of society's duties er and again he says the 
political community is established by contract civil government is established 
by a distinct act of trust whereby the people conditionally transfer their 
executive right to some amongst themselves who would act as umpires and rule-
makers for the rest this act of trust is the fundamental 
constitutional act of the political community which determines the way in which 
the authority is institutionalized it is the original and supreme act of 
society that's a quote from Locke it establishes the form of government the 
mode of succession the relations of legislative to executive all the 
institutions of government owe their authority to to that act of trust and i 
think that expresses it very well er note to come back to a point i've already 
made that this means that the political community the body politic if you like 
the people is distinct from and can remove the government that is to say if the 
government breaks the terms of the trust the poli-, the pol-, body politic can 
remove the people can remove the government and it can do this without 
threatening its own dissolution again the contrast is with Hobbes for Hobbes if 
the government is removed there is no people the only thing that holds 
individuals together as a 
collective entity you'll remember is the s-, the authority of the sovereign no 
sovereign no people now for Locke it's not like that there is a body separate 
from the sovereign actually doesn't use the term sovereign so we must talk 
about the government meaning the legislature and the executive the people can 
remove the government and thereby and not risk dissolving itself er er the 
government er the the the the people the body politic can in fact remove one 
government and appoint another and of course he's very keen to make this point 
because that's how Locke conceptualized what went on at the English Revolution 
the English people removed one government one king and er James the Second and 
and and and and and and set up another king William and Mary er so it's it's 
vital for hob-, for for what Locke wants to do to conceptualize the people as 
being able to act er independently of the government and indeed to to remove a 
government if necessary or w-, 
when the conditions are such that they ought to be removed and to set up 
another one so to summarize then er these points individuals form a political 
community they already are remember in a community of a sort in the state of 
nature unlike for Hobbes where the state of nature is not even any kind of 
community for Locke individuals are already in a form of community but it's not 
satisfactory so they form a political community a people they give up to this 
political community this people this body politic the right of enforcing their 
natural rights but nothing more they do not give up those rights themselves 
they only give up the right to enforce their rights and this political 
community this commonwealth this people then sets up a government which 
executes this task for them this task of enforcing their natural rights or 
enforcing the protection of their natural rights er is done for the people by 
the government which it sets up again that is all that 
the government does let me rephrase that that is all the gov-, that the 
government can legitimately do er unfortunately as we'll see not all 
governments are legitimate er but that is all that the government can 
legitimately do that is to say the government ought to do can legitimately do 
no more than what the political community was set up to do in the first place 
now i want to say move on to saying something about er Locke's account of 
government by consent you may wish i wasn't going to sa-, talk about this 
'cause it's complicated and confusing er but it should be talked about because 
er the idea of government by consent is important it's a crucial part of 
Locke's theory er very important part of Locke's theory Locke as we'll see has 
often been criticized for being unclear about what he is saying er many critics 
of Locke say either he is unclear or what he is saying is silly or perhaps both 
er but it's er i-, i-, it i-, it is important it is important to 
try and understand it the starting point is this er Locke is not only saying 
legitimate government is government which abides by natural law that is to say 
legitimate government is not only government er which doesn't infringe the term 
for the contract and invade natural rights it is I-E it abides by natural law a 
legitimate government is one which abides by natural law it doesn't infringe on 
our natural rights but legitimate government is also a government which is 
consented to which is consented to er government by consent a government cannot 
be legitimate unless it is consented to whatever that means and we'll try and 
flesh that out a bit and so the starting point let's have a look at what he 
says para twenty-two page two-eight-three beginning of chapter four the natural 
liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth and not to be 
under the will or legislative authority of man but to have only the law of 
nature for his rule that 
is the natural condition of man the liberty of man in society is to be under no 
under no other legislative power but that established by consent the only way 
you can be legitimate power over people is for that i-, is for a power which d-,
er er er er for that power to be consented to but what does this mean 
consenting to the power of government or consenting to government or consenting 
to be putting t-, consenting to put oneself under government and there are 
notorious difficulties here in in-, and interpreting and understanding Locke 
and as i say he he has been subject to many criticisms you may think or may or 
may not think these criticisms are valid but let us er try and get hold of what 
Locke is saying as i say i mean the the the idea of government ky-, by consent 
is not just something you find in Locke er it has become very important er you 
often talk about democracy we often characterize democracy today do we not as a 
system of government by 
consent this idea of government by consent is held to be very important today 
and dictatorial regimes are often criticized by Liberal Democrats precisely 
because in those regimes there is no government by consent the Iraqi people are 
not being consented to be governed by Saddam Hussein so a Liberal Democrat 
would say er and Locke is regarded as the fountainhead of this idea of 
government by consent er so let us try at any rate to understand what Locke 
means by it well the first point to note i suppose is that er the the idea of 
consent is obviously tied in with the idea of the social contract each 
individual contracts with with every other individual to set up a political 
society a commonwealth and this involves the idea that each individual agrees 
with every other individual er to to put himself under government he consents 
thereby to put himself under government each individual in the social contract 
consents to being under to putting himself under government er but 
so that's the the starting point and so far so good but there are notorious 
difficulties in giving more precise understanding to this notion of government 
by consent many people say that Locke is hopelessly vague o-, or incoherent or 
both er and he was subject as we'll see later er next term to i-, what many 
consider to be a devastating attack and critique by the philosopher David Hume 
for many people Hume's attack seemed k-, killed this whole idea of er 
consensual contract and all the rest of it stone dead whether that's really 
true or not is something i think is an oversimplification we-, we'll we'll come 
to er so with those warnings about the er difficulties of getting hold of what 
h-, Locke is trying to say let us now look at what Locke is trying to say er 
and i think we can s-, grasp what Locke is getting at better if we as it were 
separate out five questions now these questions overlap er interpenetrate to 
quite quite an extent as we'll see but i think i-, i-, i-, it does help to 
initially at any rate distinguish er five different sorts of questions one can 
ask even though as i say the answers overlap a great deal first question what 
does consent mean what does the word consent mean second question what counts 
as the giving of consent what actions words or whatever counts as the giving of 
consent third question who consents in Locke's theory who is doing this 
consenting fourth question what do they consent to or to what do they consent 
fifth question in what circumstances does this consent occur when does this 
consenting go on in what circumstances does this er consenting occur as i say 
in fact these questions and their answers to them are all bound up together er 
in Locke's writing but i think it helps to er abstract them out to some extent 
first of all what does the word or the con-, what does the term consent mean 
what is the concept of consent amount to now this is a tricky question in 
itself er consent as it were typically or 
archetypically means something like this the giving of permission er and notice 
that permission giving permission doesn't actually necessarily imply approval 
in in or a full-hearted approval at any rate er speak in old-fashioned terms a 
father might give permission for her daughter to get for his daughter to get 
married without actually approving of the marriage he might think the the the 
his prospective son-in-law might have all sorts of reservations about him but 
for all for one reason or another he might actually give permission so 
permission doesn't necessarily involve ap-, approval it often will but it 
doesn't necessarily and there is a trickier issue of to what extent the giving 
of permission has to be free and unforced to count as an authentic case of the 
giving of consent there is in fact when you think about it something of a 
continuum here er at tha-, at one end is the perfectly fr-, er is perfectly 
free consent giving permission under no duress whatsoever you quite 
freely give your permission to whatever it is moving slightly along the scale 
there is grudging consent i suppose one could call it well you give permission 
with some reservations in a grudging manner but nonetheless you give it then 
there is acquiescence which is i don't like it but i've got to accept it so you 
still are accepting it sort of just about consent and th-, further along the 
scale too there is forced acquiescence does that count as consent well depends 
how much force is involved in the forcing but if a man holds a gun at your 
chest and says i want to take your money there is a sense in which you're going 
to consent to the taking of your money because you don't like the alternative 
but can you really say that's giving of consent that's forced acquiescence so 
just w-, how much of that spectrum can legitimately be incorporated in this 
concept of consent there is room for room for some argument and critics of 
Locke sometimes in effect accuse 
him of counting acquiescence in e-, circumstances where little else is possible 
as the giving of consent I-E to simplify slightly critics of Locke sometimes 
say that he will count forced acquiescence as consent and as we'll see this is 
a key component a key component of Hume's criticism of Locke's social contract 
theory second question what actions what words or whatever can be counted as 
showing that consent has been given how do you know that consent has been given 
well the clearest case quite obviously is b-, er where expressed words are used 
i hereby give my consent is perfectly unambiguous quite clearly i have given my 
consent if i utter words like that er and for Locke this is quite clearly what 
goes on in the original social contract er this involves what Locke would call 
express consent express consent er er f-, a form of words which quite 
categorically makes it clear that you're giving consent that is express consent 
no problem trouble 
is that Locke also notoriously makes use of another concept the idea of tacit 
consent and this is where critics tend to home in on Locke this whole idea of 
tacit consent critics says this is far too loose a concept and it's not really 
possible when you're talking about tacit consent to say when consent has or has 
not been given now what on earth is meant by tacit consent well to give an 
illustration not given by Locke say you want to borrow a friend's car er now if 
you ask the friend and the friend says yes i he-, i i consent to you borrow-, 
using my car this is express consent no problem you know perfectly well he's 
consented to your using his car but supposing we envisage a different set of 
circumstances the friend knows that you very much want to borrow his car you 
have often borrowed it in the past your friend does not actually say i'm not 
going to give my consent on this occasion nor indicate that he does not want 
you to use it so you take this set of 
circumstances as showing that he gives his consent and indeed he may be giving 
his consent but he's only tacit consent he hasn't expressly said so there are 
sets of circumstances when it can be assumed er er or it can be taken that 
consent is given even though there's no no express consent has been given that 
is the idea of tacit consent and you be-, c-, c-, begin to see that you might 
have trouble with this and we'll come back to that because the critics say 
Locke does get into trouble with this 
but we'll come back to that er in the meantime let us move on to the third 
question who consents now in the case of the social contract itself er again er 
er this is clear the idea is clearly that each individual each and every 
individual consents each individual makes a contract with every other 
individual so this is a case of each and every individual consenting they 
consent to the setting up of a political community you'll remember er and each 
individual consents to be a member of the political community and thereby 
consents to being under government because a political community is a community 
which is going to set up a government so consenting to be a member of a 
political community is to consent to being under government so here we have the 
idea of each er and every individual consenting but when the body politic thus 
formed when the people has been formed by this act of individuals con-, each 
and every individual consenting when the people has been formed it then sets up 
a government er and here you get the idea of the body politic the 
people collectively consenting to the formation of the government or to the 
formation of a particular government it's not we don't we have now moved subtly 
from the idea of every individual consenting to the idea of the people as a 
whole consenting the collectivity now consents to the setting up of this 
government er and Locke tends to shift between the idea of individual consent 
and collective consent in a way which is not always easy to follow and perhaps 
it's not always necessarily er consistent or coherent er also to further 
complicate the issue Locke sometimes makes use of the idea as the people as a 
whole consenting to particular acts of government you sometimes get the idea 
particularly when he's talking about er taxation he talks about n-, er taxation 
needing the consent of the people but reading this carefully it doesn't mean 
that er in order to impose a tax you've got to get the consent of every 
individual oh no it means that you've 
got the conse-, the consent of the people as a collectivity in in india-, 
indeed it somehow it gets more watered down than that it turns out to mean in 
practice you've got to get the consent of the representatives of the people 
taxation must have the consent of the representatives of the people which is 
taken as the same thing as the consent of the people er but this isn't actually 
the consent of every individual and indeed he has a whole theory of majority 
decision making here er it's a er th-, er the people act collectively how do 
you know what the people want or what the people say or what the peo-, what the 
decision of the people is what do you see what the majority of the people say 
here you get the idea of majority decision making which has become a key part 
of democratic thinking the people act by majority vote er and there's a there's 
a whole sort of subliterature on this there's a er well known book by Wilmoore 
Kendall called John Locke and the Doctrine of Majority 
Rule and he th-, no one nobody else seems to agree with him but Wilmoore 
Kendall sees in Locke er a theory of majority tyranny but leave that on one 
side at the moment it's it's not a it's not a view which many people er share 
but the point is that he moves subtly from the idea that every individual 
consents to the idea that the people consent and the people consents means the 
bu-, er means the consent of the majority of the people and he he tends to 
shift between those fourth point or fourth question what is consented to now 
we've already raised this in talking about er er the previous question what is 
consented to er er and there are some difficulties here well we've already had 
difficulties and now we've got more er first of all in some circumstances what 
is being consented to is clearly to being a member of a political community 
that's what individuals are consenting to in the original social contract that 
is what is going on in the social contract 
individuals consent to being members of a political community er each 
individual consents to being a member of the political community and in 
consenting to be a member of the political community individuals are thereby 
also consenting to being under government they are consenting to obey the 
government er as i said before by b-, consenting to be a member of a political 
community you know that a political community is a community which is going to 
set up a government that's the definition of a political community there-, 
therefore you're consenting to being under government consenting to obey the 
government er as well as being a member of the community political community er 
and notice this is again a matter of express consent so going back to what we 
were talking about earlier so in the social contract people are individuals are 
expressly consenting to being members of a political community which has the 
implication of consenting to being under government 
to obey the government and that is tolerably clear but now we get to something 
which isn't quite so clear sometimes in fact very often ma-, major part of what 
Locke's talking about er er er we we we we have a d-, have a different idea and 
here confusion er arises because a lot of the time i-, Locke is not talking 
about individuals being a member consenting to being a member of a political 
community but merely consenting to being under government without also 
consenting to be becoming members of a political community er er puzzling idea 
but part of what's going on here is this that er er such individuals who are 
under government but not members of a political community er means they are not 
citizens of the community they do not have the accompanying rights such as the 
right to vote they're under government they conse-, the idea they consent to 
government without being members of a political community if you were to go to 
another on holiday to another country as we'll see er 
if you were to go to France for your holidays you this could be construed as or 
part of what er you are ad-, er er i-, im-, implying you are doing is 
consenting to be under the authority of the government of France but you're not 
becoming a member of the French French French state so when you visit another 
country you are putting yourself under the government under the authority of 
the government of that country without being a member of the political 
community and Locke a lot of the time is talking about individuals putting 
themselves or consenting to be under government without necessarily being 
members of the political community and there are some complicated points there 
er now the key point here one of the key points here that is that this kind of 
consent to being a member of a political p-, sorry to be under government is a 
matter of tacit consent people who form a political community co-, expressly 
consent to becoming members of a political community but a 
lot of the time what Locke is talking about is people tacitly consenting to 
being under government er and i'll an-, er er i will now take this further 
'cause we now come to the fifth question this will take this further when and 
in what circumstances is consent given well the express consent to being a 
member of the political community in the social contract er is clear and this 
is er er this is one thing that when one one er notion of when consent is given 
at the original social contract where people er consent individuals consent 
expressly consent to being er a a p-, a p-, a member of a political community 
Locke is not entirely clear under what other circumstances people expressly 
consent to being members of a political community although it does see-, it 
does seem that he is considering other circumstances but let us not dwell on 
that because i want to come to what the the the difficult and important part of 
what Locke is saying and this is an an and this is 
again involves the idea of tacit consent because not only is when you think 
about it not only is consent given or Locke must be committed to saying that 
not only is consent given by individuals who set up the political community in 
the first place after all when did that happen well you remember Locke tells us 
it it was so long ago that it was before records began very often this social 
contract er if it were to to be taken literally at all happened a long long 
time ago er and it wasn't us that con-, did this consenting we weren't alive 
then nor were our fathers or our grandfathers or even our great-grandfathers or 
great-great-grandfathers it happened a long time ago all this express 
consenting to be members of a political community so it's really got nothing 
whatever to do with us today it's got really got nothing whatever to do with an 
account of government as it exists er er and you might say at this point and 
indeed er er this is one of the things of course that critics 
of social contract theory say and including Hume you know well this nonsensical 
idea of giving of consent or of having social contracts ages ago got nothing to 
do with government today and you might say well at this point let's give up on 
the whole idea of taking Locke seriously er but of course he doesn't just say 
this he does give an account of how we or er what she's writing if we use 
Locke's theory today how we ourselves are giving consent the point is this what 
according to Locke's theory consent is also given by individuals in subsequent 
generations it's not just the founding generation that give their consent it is 
subsequent generations that give their consent not necessarily to be members of 
the political community but at least being under government er each individual 
it is true is simply born into a political community or simply born under the 
authority of the government you might say all right i was born er er er er in 
Britain i was under the authority 
of the British government er i never gave my consent to this nobody every asked 
me it just is like that er you might feel you know er you're you're forcibly 
put under er er er a government rather than consenting to be under it and many 
[laugh] critics of Locke will think there's a a great deal in that argument er 
so certainly you have no choice in being born you have no cons-, no consenting 
goes on when you're born into this world under the authority of a particular 
government it's nonsensical to say there's any cons-, process of consent tacit 
or otherwise involved in this and of course Locke isn't saying anything so 
nonsensical as that what Locke says is that er each individual when he comes to 
adulthood consents to remain under the government when he comes to adulthood 
when he eaches reaches the age of majority when he's a fully a p-, a properly 
rational fully rational individual then he consents or doesn't as the case may 
be now whether this makes 
sense is highly arguable and we'll come come to that in a minute but the idea 
is that each individual when he reaches adulthood then he consents to being 
under government he hasn't had any say in the matter there's been no consenting 
up till that point but then of course er childhood is not a matter of 
consenting you do what you're told but when you get to adulthood then you 
decide half of what is being involved in being an adult is that now you are a 
fully autonomous individual and part of being a fully autonomous individual for 
Locke is consenting or not consenting to being under government 
but what does this consenting consist in do we have people coming round from 
the government knocking on our door saying you're now reached age eighteen do 
you consent to be under government we don't have anything like that so what on 
earth is Locke on about er and er as i say the thing to thing to remember is 
that this is tacit consent and he says you consent to remain under government 
by for example inheriting property if you inherit property you're part of what 
this can be taken as meaning is that you can consent to be under the government 
where the er over which er th-, you can st-, er under the government where that 
property is situated or merely perhaps even staying within the territory of the 
state and this is what Hume and other critics fasten on what an absurd idea but 
let us see what Locke actually says here er and this is paragraph one-nineteen 
page three-four-seven every er er every man as have been showed naturally free 
and nothing being able to put him into subjection to any earthly power but only 
by his own consent the difficulty is what ought to be looked upon as tacit 
consent express consent that's that's clear enough the difficulty is what ought 
to be looked upon as tacit consent and how far it binds I-E how far shall 
anyone be looked on to have consented and thereby submitted to any government 
where he has made no expression of it at all and to this i say to this i say 
that every man that hath any possession or enjoyment of any part of the 
dominions of any government doth thereby give his tacit consent and is as far 
forth obliged to obey obedience to the laws of that government during such 
enjoyment as anyone under it whether this is his posses-, whether this his 
possession be of land to him and his heirs for ever or lodging er for only a 
week or whether it be barely 
travelling freely on the highway and in effect it reaches as far as the very 
being of anyone within the territories of that government that is to say if you 
remain under that government if you remain within the territories er over which 
that government has authority that means you are tacitly consenting to be under 
that government er as i say many critics think this is entirely nonsensical er 
and to say that merely staying within the territories signifies you've 
consented to be under that government er critics have come down on this like a 
ton of bricks er as i say Hume is the most er best known theorist who has 
criticized this er and we shall take up such criticisms there may be the 
criticisms aren't quite as er self-evidently er true as many many many think 
but we'll take up such criticism when we look at Hume's critique of Locke's 
social contract but we should remember here one thing sh-, we should remember 
here and this makes it look a little less 
nonsensical one thing we should remember here that Locke is talking about 
legitimate government Locke is talking about legitimate government er he is not 
saying that er such consent occurs under tyrannies under despotical governments 
tyrannical governments er indeed the existence of consent is one of the marks 
of a legitimate government a legitimate government is one where there is 
consent or to put the point the other way round if there is no consent then 
that shows the government is illegitimate and people are inclined to say and 
Hume does as we'll see say this sort of thing there are some governments where 
it's s-, so manifestly impossible to leave their jurisdiction as to say that if 
you remain there er it cannot be shown as giving your giving of consent to take 
a modern e-, or not quite modern a more modern example people who remained in 
East Berlin couldn't be sh-, taken as showing they consented to the government 
of East Germany why not because they couldn't get 
out of East Berlin even if they wanted to not at their not at least without 
climbing over a dirty great wall and being shot while they did it so the fact 
that people remained in East Berlin couldn't be shown in any sensible way as 
showing they consented to be under the government of East Berlin but legitimate 
government now that's a different matter if you want to leave this country you 
don't have to climb over a wall nobody's going to shoot you and so on but 
anyway we'll leave those er er man-, many people say ah yes but in fact it's so 
difficult to do it that it's just the same thing but we'll we'll leave the 
validity of those criticisms for another time but merely to show er that that r-
, do remember that Locke is giving account of legitimate government he's only 
saying that this kind of tacit consent occurs under legitimate government he's 
not trying to say and indeed his very point is to point out that this kind of 
tacit consent does not occur under 
despotical government so let's try and give a summary overall picture of er er 
of Locke's account of government or rather the nature of legitimate government 
er and remember that a key objective of Locke is precisely to distinguish 
between legitimate and illegitimate government er and of course you know 
thinking of the historical circumstances part of what he was doing was showing 
that the government of James the Second was illegitimate er legitimate 
government is voluntarily created and consented to and its purpose is to uphold 
the natural law and natural rights and to do no more than this it is limited 
government er it is if you like liberal government this is the er the the sort 
of archetypal expression of liberal political theories it's a liberal account 
of government or to put the key points another way government has to meet two 
conditions before it can be deemed to be legitimate first it must be consented 
to second it must stick to what it has been set up to do 
uphold natural law and natural rights that is to say it must not break the 
terms of the trust by which it was created if it persistently violates natural 
law and natural rights then it becomes illegitimate and it can quite pope-, 
quite properly be removed by other people er this of course according to Locke 
is what the English people did to James the Second at the Glorious Revolution 
let's see what he actually says about this er paragraphs two-o-eight to nine 
pages four-o-four to five he says er and part of what he's trying do sho-, is 
to show here un-, un-, under what circumstances it is proper for people to seek 
to remove the government because he's er cognisant of the criticism that if 
every time the government does something which is against the rules people say 
ah we can overthrow the government this is er er clearly going to er er lead to 
er er er instability er s-, so he talks about the right of resisting he talks 
about the resight-, of er er 
resisting manifest acts of tyranny which will not suddenly or on slight 
occasions disturb the government for if e-, for if to reach no farther than 
some private men's cases though they have a right to defend themselves and to 
recover by force what by unlawful force is taken to them yet the right to do so 
will not easily engage them in a contest wherein they are sure to perish it 
being as impossible for one or a few oppressed men to disturb the government 
where the body of people do not think themselves concerned if just a few people 
think they're being unduly oppressed by the government er as a few individual 
grievances we're not going to get any any removal of the government but if 
either of these illegal acts have extended to the majority of the people or if 
the mischief and oppression has lighted only on some few but in such cases as 
the precedent and consequence is seen to threaten all and they are persuaded in 
their 
consciences that their laws and with them their estates and liberties and lives 
are in danger and perhaps their religion too how will they be how how they will 
be pe-, hindered from resisting illegal force used against them i cannot tell I-
E when there's general er infringement of natural rights and when it's 
affecting all or at least a majority of the people when it's affecting a few 
people in a such a way as er leads the rest of them to think they're under 
threat then er removal or resistance against the government can become possible 
and it b-, can can can become er legitimate er and there's two points to note 
about this and we'll end on this er first of all who is to judge who is to 
judge whether the government has broken the terms of the trust er Locke havers 
a bit on this but essentially he says it is the it is the people who must 
decide it is the people who must decide paragraph two-forty page four-two-six 
who shall be judge 
whether the prince or legislative that is to say the legislator ha-, act 
contrary to their trust the people shall be judge for who shall be judge 
whether his trustee or deputy acts well and according to the trust reposed in 
him but he who disputes him and must by having disputed him still have power to 
discard him when he fails in his trust so crucially it is the people who decide 
whether the trust has been broken and some see in this of course the genesis of 
er a theory of democracy er the second point to note is to return to a point 
i've made several times already er that th-, th-, this idea of the people 
removing the government implies or involves the idea er of the people as an 
entity which can act er apart from the government 
I-E the people themselves can act to remove the government remember this 
doesn't make sense for Hobbes the people only exist can only act through the 
sovereign er no sovereign no people for Locke er the government and the people 
are separate entities and the people can act as an entity to remove the 
government they can then be without a government and set up another government 
so that here's the people as an agency as it were er which is something which 
doesn't even make sense for Hobbes well next time which will i think will be 
the last lecture because on the following Thursday actually term ends er er and 
by convention cert-, er term doesn't er ends at midday i think er er i'll be 
talking about s-, controversies regarding Locke's account of private property