The substitution of arbitrary will for law, the corruption of Parliament by packing it with the prince's instruments, betrayal to a foreign prince, prevention of the due assemblage of Parliament--all these are a perversion of the trust imposed and operate to effect the dissolution of the contract.

The state of nature again supervenes, and a new contract may be made with one more fitted to observe it.

Here, also, Locke takes occasion to deny the central position of Hobbes' thesis.

Power, the latter had argued, must be absolute and there cannot, therefore, be usurpation.

But Locke retorts that an absolute government is no government at all since it proceeds by caprice instead of reason; and it is comparable only to a state of war since it implies the absence of judgment upon the character of power.