"What he was really concerned about," said T.H.Green, "was to dispute 'the right divine of kings to govern wrong.'" The method, as he conceived, by which this could be accomplished was the limitation of power.

This he effected by two distinct methods, the one external, the other internal, in character.
[Footnote 4: Cf.

my _Authority in the Modern State_, p.64., and the references there cited.] The external method has, at bottom, two sides.

It is, in the first place, achieved by a narrow definition of the purpose of the state.

To Locke the State is little more than a negative institution, a kind of gigantic limited liability company; and if we are inclined to cavil at such restraint, we may perhaps remember that even to neo-Hegelians like Green and Bosanquet this negative sense is rarely absent, in the interest of individual exertion.