Even if the tyranny seems to spare me, it is likely that it is creeping towards me. If I wait too long, then I will be one of the injured and unable to rebel. Monarchists like Hobbes and Barclay admit of a right to self-defense against a tyrant, but not a right to any offensive revolutions. This, Locke says, is the same as denying a person’s right to disobey at all. If I must wait until the tyrant has me in chains before I can fight him, then I will be unable to do so. That is why I have “not only a right to get out of [tyranny], but to prevent it” (220). We must not disobey too late.
But we should not be too hasty either. Keeping the peace might be a worthy consideration in politics. If we disobey too early, we run the risk of inciting chaos. John Locke justifies our overthrowing of a tyrannical government, but it is unclear whether we ought to weigh this right to revolution against the destruction that a civil war might cause. Since tyranny means a “long train of abuses” and “experiments in arbitrary power,” there might be an experiment so small, an abuse so early in the tyrant’s train, that we ought to bear it without revolting (225; 210). If we give our rulers no room to commit injustice, then it is doubtful that any government will last longer than a month.
Some people do not care that their revolt will cause trouble. Every society has its “busy head[s] and turbulent spirit[s]” who “stir whenever they please” in an attempt to overthrow the government (230). Others lie on the opposite end of the spectrum, being “more disposed to suffer than to right themselves by resistance” (230). Most people fit in this latter category. The majority’s “slowness and aversion ... to quit their old constitutions” allows the state to remain stable even when it flirts with tyranny (223). When the “body of the people do not think themselves concerned in” the plight of “one or a few oppressed men,” most people will look away, as if the minority’s cries of injustice were the wailings of a “madman” (208). Though there be tyranny, any “particular injustice, or oppression of here and there an unfortunate man, move [the people] not” (230). The people tolerate more and fight back less than one might expect.
Does Locke think that this slowness to enact justice is acceptable? In a few places in the treatise he addresses an objection, his replies to which might answer this question. The anarchy objection, as I call it, is that the right he gives the people to fight tyrants will set a precedent of chaos and destruction that will “overturn all polities” (203).
Like the argument above, many of Locke’s replies to the anarchy objection are ‘is’ claims, rather than ‘ought’ claims. However, my question is not how people behave when they face small injustices, but how they ought to behave. If people somehow became so quick-moving that they could organize a rebellion after every injustice, should they do so? Locke avoids this question by taking the hypothetical to be impossible.
But in some of his replies to the anarchy objection, Locke hints that order and obedience are good in themselves, even when the ruler is doing wrong. For example, in Locke’s first and second replies to the anarchy objection he points out that a people can hold the prince sacred. This keeps the prince safe from rebellion while keeping the people safe from all the prince's officers and lower magistrates, who are still subservient to established law. Since his lower officers are forbidden to obey illegal orders, the only trouble the prince can cause is whatever he can do with his own body. This is hardly what people mean by tyranny. The prince, then, is more like a figurehead. Still, his sacred immunity remains, and in surprising agreement with Hobbes, Locke commends it, declaring it “safer for the body [of the people] that some few private men should be sometimes in danger than that the head of the republic should be easily and upon slight occasions exposed” (205). It is doubtless convenient for the stability of government how powerless the injured minority is, and how little sympathy the unaffected majority feels for them.
But this slowness protects the government only when its tyranny is slight, because upon experiencing a severe enough degree of tyranny, the majority does care. A time will come when “the inconveniency is so great that the majority feel it and are weary of it, and find a necessity to have it amended” (168). These are the two conditions that, when met, can overcome the majority’s inertia and move them to rebellion:
[First,] if either these illegal acts have extended to the majority of the people; or [second,] if the mischief and oppression has lighted only on some few, but in such cases as the precedent and consequences seem to threaten all, and they are persuaded in their consciences, that their laws, and with them their estates, liberties, and lives are in danger. (209)
The majority are roused only when the tyranny harms them, or when it harms the minority in such a way that preludes future harm to themselves. Simply put, the people only move if they feel harmed or threatened.
But even plants can do this. To Locke, the people are patients, not agents. They do not cognize that tyranny is upon them; they sense it. They “can think of things no otherwise than as they find and feel them” (230). When tyranny is approaching, they wait until the danger is so obnoxious that their senses can no longer avoid it. Locke does not use words of sensation literally, but nevertheless, these words give the connotation that the people’s method of judgement is not an intellectual one. And given that no political theory can stop a revolution when the people feel that they are oppressed badly enough (224), it also follows that no theory can start a revolution until they feel sufficiently oppressed. If they do not feel moved, they will not move themselves.
Though the people’s basis for deciding whether to revolt is more instinctual than intellectual, Locke takes it to be valid regardless. Locke has faith that the majority will make the most just decision. In a controversy between the ruler and some of the people, “in a matter where the law is silent or doubtful, and the thing be of great consequence, ... the proper umpire in such a case should be the body of the people” (242). It is the people’s job to decide what is worth revolting over, because if something is wrong, the people will see it eventually.
But I worry that tyranny can emerge long before it becomes “visible to the people” (225), especially a people that fails to think rigorously about the state of their government. I see in Locke’s system a tragic middle period when tyranny it present, but the people do not yet notice it, and another period where they notice it but do not see a need to revolt against it.
This second gap, where the tyranny is visible but unopposed, is possible because the people only care about their own well-being. It is selfish to wait until an evil is harming you or threatening to harm you before you care to stop it. Locke’s gratitude for humanity’s slow disposition, seeing as it protects the government from constant overturning, condones the selfishness that causes it.
One could argue that a selfish man would still rebel at the first sight of injustice. He could fear that the ruler who kills one man unjustly might do the same to him. But selfish people will not risk their lives unless they have no other choice, and so the right to attack a tyrant “will not easily engage them in a contest wherein they are sure to perish” (208). This means that they will only fight if they are convinced they will win, or if they already consider their life to be in so much danger that obedience is as risky as revolt. This selfish method of judgment is consistent with man’s purpose for entering into a civil society in the first place: protecting his own property (131). If the society he enters is unjust but keeps his property safe, the selfish man’s first instinct will be to keep quiet and reap the unjust reward of the tyranny that spares him.
Only sympathy can explain why or how I could make war against a tyrant who has not harmed or threatened me personally. There must be some fraternal feeling between countrymen if any of them are unable to still while the ruler terrorizes his neighbor. There must be some minority of men who are not the busy heads who revolt too hastily, but who still rebel more quickly than the selfish majority thinks is necessary.
Still, the selfish behavior of the majority alleviates two of my fears: on the one extreme, fear of excessive rebellion, and on the other, fear that tyranny will be allowed to prevail without resistance. I need not fear either of these because the people are too slow to revolt before it gets bad enough and are too ardent to stay quiet after it does. As a political thinker, I am comforted. But as a member of a commonwealth, I cannot rest with the knowledge that human nature will run its course, because I exist somewhere along that course. Locke writes from the perspective of someone distant from particular political issues, while I, for better or for worse, am attached to them.
Upon every injustice I meet, “I myself can only be judge in my own conscience” whether rebellion is justified (21). I want to know how to make that decision. Earlier I considered the choice to defend an oppressed minority to be a question of whether the personal benefits of rebelling outweigh the personal costs. But the selfish conditions that compel the majority to rebel are not the only ones that compel me. So, ignoring how other men tend to make their judgements, I will ask how every man should make their judgement. If I must judge for myself when rebellion is necessary, how do I be the best judge I can?
Assuming I can overcome the selfishness and timidity that keep me from joining another man’s cause, I want to know where my obligations lie, and whether these obligations justify my war against a tyrant. If he attacks my wife, surely I can reasonably consider myself obliged to defend her. What about my cousin? Friend? Coworker? It is unclear on whose behalf I am obliged to rebel once they are oppressed, and which of these obligations, if any, are strong enough to justify rebellion.
It is imprudent to join a weak man's cause—because it is as sure to stir trouble as it is to fail—but an imprudent decision is not always the wrong one. Locke admits that justice sometimes demands turbulence (176). Those who say that citizens should accept tyranny and sacrifice justice in order to keep the peace “may as well say upon the same ground that honest men may not oppose robbers or pirates because this may occasion disorder or bloodshed” (228). A peace based on the threat of violence is not a peace worth keeping. Ousting a tyrant, like attacking a pirate, is worth the trouble it might cause, because “whatsoever cannot but be acknowledged to be of advantage to the society and people ... will always, when done, justify itself” (158). Even though a revolt will cause distress, if the overthrow of the tyrant is advantageous to society, then the benefits of the revolution will overcome its costs, the greatest of which being potential disorder.
But what gives anyone the right to oppose a pirate or robber in the first place? The answer is the state of war. A man who holds a knife to my throat puts me in this state. In doing so, he forsakes his right to live and grants me, by my right to self-preservation, permission to kill him. Even if he claims to want only my money, I cannot trust him to spare my life once I am in his power. By endangering my life, liberty, or estate, the criminal tells me that he is no more than a lion, a predator who will destroy society if he is allowed to roam freely in it.
The same argument applies to a tyrant. A tyrant is a type of criminal who, having gained a prominent position in government, uses “power beyond right” to advance his interests (199). Like a common criminal, a tyrant puts me in a state of war. If he tries to kill me, I have the right to kill him first. And even if the tyrant does not want me dead, I can still kill him, for the same reason I can kill a thief who promises to spare my life. The tyrant’s renunciation of reason justifies my use of force, for “in all states and conditions the true remedy of force without authority is to oppose force to it” (155). Once anyone, monarch or peasant, breaks the law, they open the door for others to justly kill them. But one wonders how widely the door is opened, and who constitutes these “others” that have permission to walk through it—so to speak—and commit an act of murder.
In the state of nature, the criminal’s trespass is one “against the whole species,” so anyone can join the victim’s cause in order “to preserve mankind in general” (8). If someone is being harmed, then “any one that joins with him in his defense and espouses his quarrel” (16) justly brings himself into the state of war. And if a man voluntarily puts himself at war with another man’s abuser, he is not limited to defending the victim, but can actually “assist him in recovering from the offender so much as may make satisfaction for the harm he has suffered” (10). Thus, in the state of nature, I need not wait until I have been slighted before I attack a criminal.
But when I leave the state of nature and enter the state of civil society, I find new limitations to my right to kill an offender. One limitation found in the civil state but not in the state of nature, is that sometimes harm of the innocent is necessary, and the victims of this harm are men I cannot justly defend. For civil society to function, the government must take some of its citizens’ property. This means more than taxes. Under the right circumstances, a ruler might justly take some of his people’s lives and liberties. His actions will appear tyrannical, but they will not be so. One finds a fine example of this in the military, where “the preservation of the army, and in it of the whole commonwealth, requires an absolute obedience to the command of every superior officer” (139). The commands need not be smart or safe; even if they are certain to kill me, I am still bound to obey them. So, when I ask myself whether to rebel, I must first consider whether the ruler’s power is like the army commander’s, where the preservation of the state depends on obedience to his commands.
But by “preservation of … the whole commonwealth,” Locke must mean the preservation of the state qua state, not the preservation of the state qua tyranny. Otherwise, I would have to obey a tyrant’s every command because obedience to him is necessary for the preservation of his regime. The government that my obedience preserves must be a true government, one that is “directed to no other end but the peace, safety, and public good of the people” (131). If I live under the government so described and its ruler commands me to die for it, I cannot justly rebel.
However, if I determine that the offence was unnecessary (or that it was only necessary for the preservation of an unjust government), then my next step is to ask myself whether an earthly appeal is possible. If it is, then I must try this peaceful remedy first. No retaliation is justified if the victim had the opportunity to appeal to a judge whom he had in common with the aggressor. I can only revolt against hostile force, and “nothing is to be accounted hostile force, but where it leaves not the remedy of ... an appeal” (207). Sometimes I am left without appeal by circumstance, not design. In these cases, like when one's life is in immediate danger, it is irrelevant whether one has a common judge with the aggressor or not, because in the moment the judge is impotent. The life that one risks losing is something a judge cannot return—the damage would be “irreparable” (207).
It can be hard to tell if I have a common judge with my country’s leader. A court of appeal might exist in name, but if within it there is a manifest and continual perversion of justice, then the appeal is not actually possible. But it is unclear what counts as a perversion of justice, because a legitimate judge might still rule in the aggressor’s favor, but this does not mean that the judge is corrupt or feckless.
For these reasons it is difficult to pin down a general rule for determining whether I have an earthly appeal for any given case of injustice. What is important is that I must consider the question carefully before I go running to the armory. If the injustice is appealable or necessary, then I must hold my peace. But if it is neither of these, the problem remains: can I revolt on someone else’s behalf in a civil society? It makes sense that in the state of nature, a witness can choose to punish a criminal. But if the criminal, the victim, and the witness are all part of the same civil society, it is unclear whether the witness is put into the state of war, put into the state of nature, or still stuck in the state of society. If the offense puts the witness into a state of war, he can kill the offender; if it puts him into the state of nature, he can choose to whether he wants to enter the state of war; and if it leaves him in the state of civil society, he can do neither of these because he is still bound by the government’s positive law.
The question comes down to whether the witness has a common judge with the offender. If the ruler oppresses my neighbor and deprives him of a common judge, the ruler and my neighbor are now in a state of war with one another. But even though my neighbor is denied a common judge, I, the witness, might still be allowed one. If my neighbor is oppressed without appeal, while I am in principle allowed one (should I ever need it), am I roped into the state of nature along with my neighbor, or do I, still having a common judge, remain in the state of civil society with the abusive ruler?
The confusion rests on a false premise, namely that the witness to tyranny is outside the tyrant’s reach. Any act of tyranny is an act against all people. For, anyone who
lays the foundation for overturning the constitution and frame of any just government, is highly guilty of the greatest crime I think a man is capable of ... And he who does it is justly to be esteemed the common enemy and pest of mankind, and is to be treated accordingly. (230)
The tyrant, daring to claim arbitrary power over another, becomes the enemy not just of his victim or victims, but of “the rest of mankind that will join with [them]” (172). It is not any faction, but the whole human race, that can have “neither society nor security” with him (172). Thus, a tyrant doesn’t have to attack my body or seize my estate in order for him to harm me—his very existence is the harm. This is a harm the majority doesn’t always feel because it is one that requires reason to perceive.
This harm renders me justified in fighting the tyrant, so it is now up to me to decide whether I will revolt or stay put. Say I choose to revolt. When I first entered society, I gave up two powers that I had while I was in the state of nature. The tyrant returns me to this state, and it is only by reclaiming my natural powers that I can wage a war with him. But by what right do I take these powers back?
The first power I gave up is the power to do what I choose in order to preserve my property. I forsake this power only “so far forth as the preservation of [myself] and the rest of that society shall require” (129). This qualification means that I still retain some of this power when I’m bound by positive law. For example, even though the government can regulate a shared fence at the edge of my property, it cannot regulate the furniture in my house. Once the ruler uses his power without regard for—or contrary to—mine and society’s preservation, I can take back this natural power and use my property how I will.
But free use of property is not enough to take down a tyrant. For that, I need my second natural power: the power to punish an offender. Since my right to kill or oust a tyrant is based on this power, it is worrying that Locke says it is one that every man “wholly gives up” upon leaving the state of nature (130). How hard is it to take this power back once I have relinquished it?
For any one man, taking the second power is as easy or as hard as he makes it. Everyone reserves the “ultimate determination ... to judge whether they have just cause to make their appeal to heaven,” and this determination is secured “by a law antecedent and paramount to all positive laws of men” (168). A citizen can decide when to take back his second power, and this ability to choose endures beneath all the scaffolding of positive law. I never gave these powers up when I left the state of nature; I just made them dormant. I forsook them “wholly” because I can never use it while remaining in the state of civil society. When I revive this powers, I return to the state of nature, and when a tyrant returns me to the state of nature, I revive these powers. They are what allow me to punish the tyrant myself.
Now that we better understand how and by what right we enter the state of war with a tyrant, let us consider what happens if we choose not to. Suppose a government imprisons a man, knowing him innocent, and deprives him of an appeal. It is up to the injured party to decide whether he will declare war (176). Say that this man does, and he asks the people to carry out his revolution. Should I help the man? Locke does not answer this question. He merely says that it is up to each person to decide whether to help him, that most people will not bother to, and that this is ultimately what’s best for the stability of the state.
Perhaps I decide to stay quiet alongside the majority. Maybe this is because I concluded that the violence of a civil war would be worse than the injustice it was meant to correct; maybe I feared the possibility of losing my life in battle; maybe I simply did not care about the man. But for whatever reason, I saw the injustice and did nothing about it.
My silence here is tacit consent to the tyranny. No one can give to another more than he has a right to dispose of himself. This is why I cannot give a tyrant my own life or liberty, and by the same logic I cannot give him anyone else’s. But isn’t that just what I am doing when I consent to tyranny? Am I to blame for the abuses of the government that I consent to, or am I playing an indirect enough role that I am no longer responsible for them?
Considering the citizens of an enemy state, Locke concludes that a just conqueror may punish only those who actively helped their government carry out the war (179). All the rest are innocent. The same reasoning absolves me from my ruler’s actions if he makes war on the minority while I stay quiet. Thus, I am free to continue to live in a tyrannical society that does not oppress me if I do not advance any of its injustices myself. This is the difference between express and tacit consent. If I expressly consent to tyranny, I make myself a part of it, whereas if I tacitly consent to it, I can claim neutrality.
If I am absolved from the abuses of a tyrant I tacitly support, then why should I be culpable for the disorder that might follow if I oust a tyrant? As a rebel, I expressly consent to the revolution that I am carrying out, but I only tacitly consent to the evils that the revolution, and the precedent it sets, could bring. If my own revolution is just, I cannot be held liable for distant consequences like the chaos of a frequent uprooting of government, any more than a subject can be held liable for his tyrant’s abuses if he does not “actually abet” them (179).
It is true that Locke’s system grants us room in both directions to act without being considered blameworthy. The restless types are less obligated to keep society in place, and the idle types are less obligated to flip society around, than the other type might expect. But even though the people who rebel and the people who submit are equally absolved from the evils they tacitly accept, this does not mean that both choices are equally valid.
What makes rebellion the superior choice is outside the realm of political duty. Most people in civil society choose to either revolt or keep quiet out of an interest in their own preservation, an interest that is prior to politics. In the same way, if I take the judicious Hooker’s “obligation to mutual love amongst men” seriously, I can make it the basis for my political decisions (5). If I ever find myself obliged to the state, it will be only insofar as the state protects its people. Therefore, if the head of state makes war with any of the people—or, in other words, if he becomes a tyrant—then I am no longer obliged to preserve the state.
This obligation is unrelated to the social compact or positive law. I am duty-bound to the victims of tyranny as humans, not as countrymen. For once we are by force returned to the state of nature or of war, the men around me are not my compatriots anymore. They are simply men. This means that the same obligation that applies to members of a commonwealth also applies to the foreigners who reside there. More bluntly, the tyrant has as little a right to oppress foreigners as he does to oppress citizens. I can overthrow a government for its unjust treatment of either because my right to judge whether to make war is prior to my entry into society. For the same reason, regardless of whether he a ruler breaks the positive law, he is always a tyrant if he oppresses people without right.
So how do I respond when I see a ruler committing an injustice against one or some of the people? The first thing I must do is make sure that it is an injustice that I am permitted to revolt against. If the oppression is necessary for the function of the state, or if there is a common judge between the victim and the tyrant, I must stand down or choose a legal way to offer support. But if the injury is neither appealable nor necessary, then I am left with the choice to revolt, a choice I must make within myself. Locke is grateful that most people wait a long time before choosing to revolt. This would seem to suggest that an individual ought to do the same, holding their tongue if the injustice is small enough. If the ruler is truly a tyrant, then more and worse oppressions and injustices will follow, and a time will come when it will be obvious what one needs to do, if only for their own safety and the protection of their property.
But although Locke is grateful that the general will of the people is slow-moving, this does not mean that any one man ought to preemptively conform to the majority and become slow-moving as well. Still, on a practical level, there is at least one legitimate reason for the individual to be slow. When I witness tyranny, I should wait until a successful revolution seems possible, because if it is not, I will die. Dying for a cause that no one else cares to support is not noble, but rather a sign of a turbulent spirit in want of prudence. If, however, the injustice is unnecessary, the appeal unavailable, and the revolution winnable, then disorder is a fair price for justice. It is a great evil for a people to be oppressed and discontented but stay silent because they fear the chaos that a civil war could bring. And if blood be shed, it is on the tyrant’s hands, not the rebels’.
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Work Cited
Locke, John. The Second Treatise of Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration. Mineola, N.Y., Dover, 2002.
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