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is “Supream” not only because its creation signifies “the first and fundamental positive Law of
all Commonwealths” (II: 134), but also due to the quasi-natural law of “greater force” by which
the majority may be held to act for the whole in regards to matters of general societal concern (II:
96). Locke’s endorsement of legislative supremacy means that only the legislature or possibly a
supreme executive (II: 151-2) with a share of the legislative power can be in any meaningful way
sovereign. Civil government and the sovereign powers it possesses can only be dissolved by
two means. First, the people have a natural right to revolt against oppressive or tyrannical rule
and thereby dissolve the government and reconstitute a new one as they see fit (II: 212-17).
Second, the legislature may be destroyed and civil government de facto dissolved by the external
force of conquest (II: 178-83). Civil governments are the primary victims of lawful conquest,
and thus the majority as establishers of legitimate governments are always at least indirectly held
responsible for aggressive war.
On one level Locke’s idea of society is simply the seedbed of civil government, a form
of association produced “by the consent of every individual” in the community (II: 96). In
theory the unanimous consent grounding society informs and in essence authorizes the majority
to act for the whole in determining the form of government for a community. Herein lies the
radically democratic foundation of every “lawful government” whether the particular form of
civil government established by the majority of society be democratic or most likely not (II: 99,
132; Tarcov 1981: 205). However, on a deeper level society reflects the flesh and blood social
reality of common life for which the cold abstractions of contractual legalism are always in some
sense an impoverished metaphor (Rabkin 1997: 306-9; Walzer 1977: 53-4). In the normal
course of events, civil government and society are practically inseparable. As independent
commonwealths interact with others internationally and govern themselves by general standing
Convention