QuestionsMust we always obey the law?Power is a trust: the people may take it back and appeal to heaven
Must we always obey the law?The right to revolt

Power is a trust: the people may take it back and appeal to heaven

Locke's right of resistance

John Locke 1632 · 1704The mind is born a blank slate; power comes from consent.
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What it claims

When a long train of abuses reveals a design to enslave the people, they have the right to resist, to replace the power, and to judge for themselves, appealing to heaven.

Why

Power is a trust given to protect the people: if it enslaves them, the trust is lost and the people are released from obedience.

The same idea through history
John Locke1689Second Treatise, ch. XIX: the version presented here. It presupposes his theory of property and the state (see the argument on property): one enters society to preserve one's life, liberty and estate.Thomas Hobbes1651Hobbes holds the opposite: the sovereign never breaks the covenant, so the subjects can never be freed from their subjection. Locke, who does not name him, writes against the idea of absolute power.
In short

"Power is a trust: the people may take it back and appeal to heaven" is an argument by John Locke (Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ch. XIX, §§222-243 (1689), 1689) on the question "Must we always obey the law?" (answer: the right to revolt). Its claim: When a long train of abuses reveals a design to enslave the people, they have the right to resist, to replace the power, and to judge for themselves, appealing to heaven. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ch. XIX, §§222-243 (1689)
Valid with an implicit premise

In 1689, just after the English Revolution of 1688, Locke publishes a book written largely in the 1680s: in it he argues that one may resist a king and even replace him. His central idea: the government's power is a trust given by the people for a precise end, the protection of life, liberty and estate. If the government betrays that end, it puts itself into a state of war with the people, who are released from obedience. Locke does not say one may revolt for little: he requires a long train of abuses showing a design. And since there is no judge on earth above the people and the power, what remains, he says, is 'an appeal to heaven'. The P1 to P5 → C form is our reconstruction.

P1The legislative is only a fiduciary power, given for certain ends. When it acts contrary to the trust reposed in it, the trust is forfeited and the power returns to those who gave it, who may place it anew where they think best for their safety.
P2When the legislators endeavour to take away and destroy the people's property, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are absolved from any further obedience. Defence against whoever uses force without right is permitted to everyone.
P3This resistance is not justified by just any mismanagement: it requires a long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the same way, that make the design visible to the people.
P4There is no judge on earth between the people and a power that enslaves them: the people have no other remedy but to appeal to heaven.
P5 · implicit premiseLacking a judge on earth, it is the people, who gave the power and feel its effects, who judge whether the trust has been betrayed.
Therefore, when a long train of abuses reveals a design to enslave the people, they have the right to resist, to replace the power, and to judge for themselves, appealing to heaven.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a case where the power has betrayed its mission, there is no judge on earth, and yet it is not the people who should judge: for instance if judgment were entrusted to another power or to sages. Locke posits that it can only be the people, because they gave the trust.
The argument is valid. If power is a trust (P1) and abuses betray it (P2), the people are released and may resist when the abuses are long enough to show a design (P3). Since there is no judge above (P4), they judge (P5). Its strength is to tie the right to resist to a severe condition (a visible design) and a simple reason (power exists only to protect). Its weak point is P5: a people judging in its own cause, as Kant will say.
Analogy. You entrust your money to a manager so that he makes it grow. If he spends it on himself, you can dismiss him. If no one has authority over him to decide, you are the one who judges, since it is your money. You may be wrong; but the opposite solution, letting the manager judge himself, is worse.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Thomas Hobbes 1651 · attacks premise 1

Hobbes holds that the sovereign makes no covenant with his subjects: the right to represent them is given to him by a covenant of one to another only, and not of him to any of them. There can therefore be no breach of covenant on his part, and none of his subjects, by any pretence of forfeiture, can be freed from his subjection.

Locke replies
see the argument
We have not yet found a direct reply by Locke in the texts.
John Locke 1689 · Locke against absolute power
Locke does not name Hobbes but answers any doctrine of absolute power: to believe that men, entering society, agreed that all should be under the restraint of laws except one, who would keep all the liberty of the state of nature increased with power, is to think that men are so foolish as to guard against pole-cats and foxes while thinking it safety to be devoured by lions.
The debate goes on (our summary) Hobbes and Locke start from a different state of nature (Hobbes sees war of all against all, Locke an imperfect state governed by natural law), and their conclusions follow: if one fears disorder above all, one accepts the absolute sovereign; if one fears abuse above all, one keeps a right of resistance. Each position answers a different danger (our summary).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Hobbes: the sovereign can never break the covenant. Locke: an absolute power protects against neighbours but not against the sovereign himself. The basic disagreement remains: which is the greater danger for a society, disorder or abusive power?
Immanuel Kant 1797 · attacks premise 5

Kant objects that the idea of a right to resist is self-contradictory: a public law authorising it would be needed, and the supreme legislation would cease to be supreme. And he asks who would be judge in a conflict between the people and the sovereign: the people would want to be judge in their own cause.

Locke replies
see the argument
No reply possible: objection raised in 1797, after the author's death (1704).
John Locke 1689 · Locke, in advance, on the judge
Locke foresees the question. When a prince and some of the people disagree on a serious matter where the law is silent, he thinks the proper umpire is the body of the people, who placed the trust in him. But if the prince declines this arbitration, the appeal lies nowhere but to heaven: force without a judge on earth is properly a state of war, and the injured party must judge for himself.
The debate goes on (our summary) Kant writes a century after Locke and asks the same question, but draws the opposite conclusion. Locke accepts the uncertainty: he admits the people may be mistaken, and sets a condition (a long train of visible abuses), hoping peoples seldom stir for little (§230). Kant refuses to found a right on that risk (our summary).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Kant: a people judges in its own cause, so there can be no right to resist. Locke: without a judge on earth, the people judge, and the appeal to heaven is the last resort. The basic disagreement remains: is it better to risk the people's error or the power's impunity?
David Hume 1748 · attacks premise 3

Hume admits resistance in extreme cases, but fears its effects: besides the mischiefs of civil war, a disposition to rebellion among a people is one chief cause of tyranny in the rulers, forcing them into violent measures they would never have embraced had everyone been inclined to submission. It is better to draw the bond of obedience very close.

Locke replies
No reply possible: objection raised in 1748, after the author's death (1704).
John Locke 1689 · Locke, in advance: peoples seldom stir
Locke answers in advance that the risk is limited: until the mischief has become general and the rulers' ill designs are visible to the greater part, peoples, who are more disposed to suffer than to right themselves by resistance, are not apt to stir. Particular cases of injustice do not move them.
U
United States Declaration of Independence defender of the argument · 1776
The 1776 Declaration takes up the same double idea. Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes, and experience shows that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government.
The debate goes on (our summary) Hume and Locke agree on prudence; they differ on the basis. For Locke, resistance rests on a natural right the people cannot give away; for Hume, on public utility, which decides case by case. Hume acknowledges that, reading of the revolts against Nero or Philip II, no one is so blinded by party as not to wish them success (our summary).
Where the debate stands (our summary)Hume: a spirit of rebellion worsens tyranny, better to draw the bond close. Locke: peoples revolt only before visible and lasting abuses. The basic disagreement remains: does a right to resist encourage rebellion, or discourage it by preventing abuses?