John Locke :: Empiricists, Empiricism

Property cannot be made secure by pictorial right al integrity, andfor the pause securing of their properties men have entered intocivil society. The will of the body politic, when formed, isdetermined by the will of the majority, and of a bare majority ifthere be no opposite express agreement. For this Locke does notgive any reason but the necessity of the case it is certain thatmuch worse ones have been given. As a division of fact, we now knowthat a majority vote has not been generally recognized in archaicsocieties the difficulty of obtaining nominal unanimity wasovercome (as in special cases it still has to be) by variousmethods, including varying elements of force and fiction. Thisdoes not apply to the original agreement to form a society, whichis assumed to be unanimous, and includes solo the actual partiesto it. Any one who stands out may go his ways and provide forhimself elsewhere. It would seem that the community is entitledto enforce his departure it is certain, on Lockes principles,that it has not the right to detain him against his will. Couldhe agree to stay in an inferior capacity like that of a residentalien? But it is needless to follow the auxiliary fictions whichmight be devised. A body politic, then, is formed by consent theessential term of the agreement is that every member gives up hisnatural judicial and executive power to the community (not, asHobbes maintains, to an irresponsible sovereign) and thisconsent is renewed, tacitly if not expressly, in the person ofevery new member for one cannot accept the benefit of a settledgovernment except on those terms on which it is offered. Locke isbold to assert that a child is born a theater of operations of no country orgovernment, and may choose his allegiance for himself at the ageof discretion this is another opinion which no modern lawyer