We have thus the State, though the method of its organization is not yet outlined.  For Locke there is a difference, though he did not explicitly describe its nature, between State and Government.  Indeed he sometimes approximates, without ever formally adopting, the attitude of Pufendorf, his great German contemporary, where government is derived from a secondary contract dependent upon the original institution of civil society.  The distinction is made in the light of what is to follow.  For Locke was above all anxious to leave supreme power in a community whose single will, as manifested by majority-verdict, could not be challenged by any lesser organ than itself.  Government there must be if political society is to endure; but its form and substance are dependent upon popular institution.

Locke follows in the great Aristotelian tradition of dividing the types of government into three.  Where the power of making laws is in a single hand we have a monarchy; where it is exercised by a few or all we have alternatively oligarchy and democracy.  The disposition of the legislative power is the fundamental test of type; for executive and judiciary are clearly dependent on it.  Nor, as Hobbes argued, is the form of government permanent in character; the supreme community is as capable of making temporary as of registering irrevocable decisions.  And though Locke admits that monarchy, from its likeness to the family, is the most primitive type of government, he denies Hobbes’ assertion that it is the best.  It seems, in his view, always to degenerate into the hands of lesser men who betray the contract they were appointed to observe.  Nor is oligarchy much better off since it emphasizes the interest of a group against the superior interest of the community as a whole.  Democracy alone proffers adequate safeguards of an enduring good rule; a democracy, that is to say, which is in the hands of delegates controlled by popular election.  Not that Locke is anxious for the abolition of kingship.  His letters show that he disliked the Cromwellian system and the republicanism which Harrington and Milton had based upon it.  He was content to have a kingship divested of legislative power so long as hereditary succession was acknowledged to be dependent upon popular consent.  The main thing was to be rid of the Divine Right of kings.

We have thus an organ for the interpretation of natural law free from the shifting variety of individual judgment.  We have a means for securing impartial justice between members of civil society, and to that means the force of men has been surrendered.  The formulation of the rules by which life, liberty and property are to be secured is legislation and this, from the terms of the original contract, is the supreme function of the State.  But, in Locke’s view, two other functions still remain.  Law has not only to be declared.  It must be enforced; and the business of the executive is to secure obedience to