Consent and Legitimate Government

Locke distinguishes between express consent — the explicit agreement to join a political community, which creates full membership — and tacit consent, which arises from the enjoyment of the benefits that government provides. Anyone who travels on the roads, benefits from the security of property, or remains voluntarily within a territory tacitly consents to the government's authority while there. This distinction allows Locke to explain how individuals born into a political community are bound by its laws without ever having explicitly consented: by remaining and enjoying its benefits rather than leaving, they give their tacit consent. Critics have noted that this account makes consent very thin: if remaining constitutes consent, then consent loses much of its normative force as a ground of legitimate authority.

The relationship between the people and their government is, for Locke, a fiduciary trust: the people delegate authority to the government to act in their interest, but this delegation is conditional on the government actually fulfilling its purpose. The government holds power in trust — not as its own possession but as a power granted for specific purposes. When it acts against those purposes, it betrays the trust and forfeits its authority. This fiduciary model is importantly different from Hobbes's absolute transfer: Locke's people never surrender sovereignty, only delegate its exercise.

To prevent government from abusing its delegated power, Locke argues for a separation of legislative and executive authority. The legislature — which makes the laws — should be the supreme power but should not be permanently in session, to prevent it from coming to think of governing as its permanent occupation and interest. The executive — which enforces the laws — should be distinct and should not also possess legislative power. Locke adds a third power, the federative (managing foreign relations), which is in practice held by the executive but is conceptually distinct. This functional separation, though less systematic than Montesquieu's later tripartite division, was the direct ancestor of constitutional separation of powers doctrine.

The theory of consent and the fiduciary trust is developed in Chapters VIII–XI of the Second Treatise. Locke wrote the Two Treatises during the Exclusion Crisis (1679–1681) to justify the limitation of royal prerogative and the resistance to absolute monarchy, though he published it only in 1689 after the Glorious Revolution had made its arguments seem prophetic.