Revision summary
Locke treats government as a trust to protect life, liberty, and estate under standing law. When the trust is destroyed by arbitrary rule, the government is dissolved and power returns to the community. Revolution is this resumption of original right, not every private act of force against a lawful magistrate. The argument rejects Filmer and answers Hobbes by making a last appeal against tyranny. 1688 and the American Declaration used this grammar of consent and the right to alter destructive government.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
John Locke in the Two Treatises of Government treats government as a trust created by consent to protect life, liberty, and estate. Revolution is not a taste for disorder. It is the residual right of the people when that trust is dissolved by arbitrary power.
Body
The trust and its breach
In the state of nature people have natural law but lack an impartial judge. They form political society and set a legislature that must rule by standing law. The executive is a fiduciary power. If the prince or the legislature acts contrary to the trust — by arbitrary taxation, by destroying the legislature, by placing the people under a foreign power, or by a long train of abuses — government is dissolved. Power returns to the community.
Locke insists that this is not a licence for every discontent. Private force against a lawful magistrate is not the same as the people acting when the constitution is already broken. The appeal is to heaven only when no earthly judge remains. Filmer’s patriarchal kingship is rejected because no one is born the property of a ruler.
Political meaning
The argument armed 1688 and later Jefferson’s 1776 claim that a people may alter a government destructive of rights. It also limits revolution: the end is the restoration of law and property, not a war of all against all. Hobbes feared that right; Locke made it the last check on tyranny. Later constitutional democracy regularises the same idea as elections, higher law, and removable rulers.
Flow diagram
Conclusion
Locke’s view of revolution is the people’s right to resume original power when rulers destroy the trust of consent, law, and rights. It is a constitutional last resort, not a theory of permanent insurrection. Western bills of rights still speak in that language.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Decline of Liberalism.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2024 · Q1(d)). View answer →
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Did Locke encourage frequent revolution?
No. He argued that people endure much before they rise, and that the right is triggered by a dissolved constitution, not by ordinary policy disagreement.
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How does this differ from Hobbes?
Hobbes made sovereign power nearly unlimited once authorised, because the alternative is the state of war. Locke kept a residual popular right against a trustee who becomes a tyrant.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2022 · Q1(c) · PSIR GS 1 · 10 marks
"Revolution in Permanence". -
2022 · Q8(b) · PSIR GS 1 · 15 marks
The making of the Indian Constitution is described as an attempt towards a 'social revolution'. Comment
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