an act of the whole people governed--is one which, anywhere except in a Swiss canton, it would be impossible to fulfil. For practical purposes, Locke comes to a right result by ignoring this impossibility. Having supposed the reality of one impossible event,--the establishment of government by compact or by the act of a society founded on compact,--he cancels this error in the result by supposing the possibility of another transaction equally impossible, viz, the collective act of a people dissolving its government. [1] [Greek παρέκβασις (parekbasis) = a government without a proper basis Tr] 63. It is evident from the chapter (XIX.) on the 'dissolution of government' that he did not seriously contemplate the conditions under which such an act could be exercised. What he was really concerned about was to dispute 'the right divine to govern wrong' on the part of a legislative as much as on the part of an executive power; to maintain the principle that government is only justified by being for the good of the people, and to point out the difference between holding that some government is necessarily for the good of the people, and holding that any particular government is for their good, a difference which Hobbes had ignored. In order to do this, starting with the supposition of an actual deed on the part of a community establishing a government, he had to suppose a reserved right on the part of the community by a like deed to dissolve it. But in the only particular case in which he contemplates a loss by the legislature of its representative character, he does not suggest the establishment of another by an act of the whole people. He saw that the English Parliament in his time could not claim to be such as it could be supposed that the covenanting community originally intended it to be. 'It often comes to pass,' he says, 'in governments where part of the legislative consists of representatives chosen by the people, that in tract of time this representation becomes very unequal and disproportionate to the reasons it was first established upon.... The bare name of a town, of which there remains not so much as the ruins, where scarce so much housing as a sheepcote, or more inhabitants than a shepherd is to be found, sends as many representatives to the grand assembly of law-makers, as a whole county, numerous in people, and powerful in riches. This strangers stand amazed at, and everyone must confess needs a remedy; though most think it hard to find one, because the constitution of the legislative being the original and supreme act of the society antecedent to all positive laws in it, and depending wholly on the people, no inferior power can alter it. And therefore the people, when the legislative is once constituted, having, in such a government as we have been speaking of, no power to act as long as the government stands, this inconvenience is thought incapable of a remedy' (Chapter XIII. Sect. 157). The only remedy which he suggests