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of the people exercise absolute power or surrender its legitimate power to another. In either case, the people are free to replace the officials with others or disband the government altogether and form a new one. “Whensoever, therefore, the legislative shall … endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people, by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and by the establishment of a new legislative (such as they think fit) provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society” (19, 222). “In these, and the like cases, when the government is dissolved, the people are at liberty to provide for themselves by erecting a new legislative differing from the other by the change of persons, or form, or both as they shall find it most for their safety and good” (19, 220).

The Founders agreed. They proclaimed in the Declaration, “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

EXAMPLE 4

There should be no mistaking Locke’s position with that of an anarchist. “[S]uch revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in public affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all the slips of human frailty will be borne by the people without mutiny or murmur” (19, 225). Besides, he observes that “the people, who are more disposed to suffer than right themselves by resistance, are not apt to stir. People are not so easily got out of their old forms, as some are apt to suggest. They are hardly to be prevailed with to amend the acknowledged faults in the frame they have been accustomed to” (19, 223).

However, if the people are pushed too far by a tyrannical government, revolution is not only legitimate but possible. “But if a long train of abuses, prevarications, and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people, it is not to be wondered that they should then rouse themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was at first erected.…” (19, 225)

The Declaration not only captures the essence of Locke’s point in this regard, but it borrows certain of his phrases and words. “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. 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, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

EXAMPLE 5

Having set forth the philosophical foundation for the new nation in the Declaration, much of what remains of the proclamation is a bill of particulars—the “long train of abuses”—indicting the king for his tyrannical acts and justifying the dissolution of his rule and the advent of revolution. “The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.” Hence, in this the Founders, and Jefferson specifically, once again turn to Locke for guidance when reciting the twenty-seven allegations against George III.

In the Declaration