John Locke and Niccolу Machiavelli are political philosophers writing in
two different lands and two different times. Locke’s 17th century England was
on the verge of civil war and Machiavelli’s 15th century Italy was on the
verge of invasion. Yet, students and political philosophers still
enthusiastically read and debate their works today. What is it that draws
readers to these works? Why, after three hundred years, do we still read Two
Treatises on Government, Discourses on Livy, and The Prince? The answer to those
questions lies in each text itself, and careful review will produce discourses
on those questions and many others. The focus of this discourse is to examine
the treatment of “the people” by both authors, to discover what Machiavelli
and Locke write about the people’s role in their different structures of
government. In particular, this paper seeks to understand that role in regards
to the political power each author yields to, or withholds from, the people. In
addition, these treatments of power and the people will be compared to the
writings of another timeless political philosopher, Plato. By juxtaposing Two
Treatises on Government, Discourses on Livy, The Prince, and The Republic
against one another, this paper will show how writers from three very different
centuries all agreed upon an identical notion of the relationship between the
power of the people and their role in government. This theory is not readily
apparent upon initial reading of these authors. Indeed, most political
philosophers would argue that each author has a very distinct notion of what
role the people play in government. Therefore, an ideal place to start is in the
differences of each author’s portrayal of the people and the political power
they wield. Machiavelli, the most pessimistic of the three writers in regards to
humans and human nature, writes that all men can be accused of “that defect”
which Livy calls vanity and inconsistency (The Discourses on Livy, 115). He
continues by writing: “…people [are] nothing other than a brute animal that,
although of a ferocious and feral nature, has always been nourished in prison
and in servitude” (Discourses on Livy, 44). Animals, that are by their nature
ferocious, become scared and confused when released from captivity. Without the
shelter and food they had come to expect when “domesticated,” they are more
susceptible to future attempts at captivity. Man also becomes scared and
confused in freedom after living under the government of others. Machiavelli
writes that these men lack understanding of “public defense or public
offense,” and quickly return “beneath the yoke that is most often heavier
than the one it had removed from its neck a little before” (Discourses on Livy,
44). Men are docile like domesticated dogs or cattle, according to this
description, and have a role in government of little political power. With
Plato, there is a continuation of the same theme started by Machiavelli. The
people primarily play a subservient role in Plato’s structure of government
under the rule of monarchs, aristocrats, or philosopher-kings. When discussing
with Adeimantus the virtue and reason behind a regime instituted by
philosophers, Plato does not paint a picture of men much greater than
Machiavelli’s animalistic comparison above. Indeed, he portrays them as easily
swayed and ill-informed by those “from outside who don’t belong and have
burst in like drunken revelers, abusing one another and indulging a taste for
quarreling” (The Republic, 179). For Plato, the largest majority of men
constitute unknowledgeable masses that persecute the very group that can best
lead them, the philosophers. Even in a democratic regime, a regime based on the
will of the people, Plato does not give us a particularly optimistic view of
men. This regime is composed of three types of men according to Plato; the
multitude; the oligarchic; and the “men most orderly by nature” (The
Republic, 243). The oligarchic rule the city through the license of the
multitude, and the orderly rule in business through the disadvantage of the
multitude. Thus, Machiavelli sees the people as subjugated and Plato sees the
people as fatuous, both doomed to political ineptitude. With Locke, however, the
character of the people is redeemed. The people, for Locke, represent a
political power akin to force. Indeed, the people are the ultimate source of
power for Locke’s government, whether that government is a legislative body or
a prince. In the closing chapter of his second treatise, Locke details the ways
that government can dissipate when rulers misuse their power. The third way a
prince may dissolve the government is when he arbitrarily alters the electors or
the ways of election, “…without the consent, and contrary to the common
interest of the people” (Two Treatises, 409). Locke makes the actions and
behavior of the sovereign subordinate to the interests shared by all men, and
limits his actions within the confines of public consent. Locke frames the
essential question when he asks, “…who shall be judge whether the Prince or
Legislative act contrary to [the people’s] Trust?” The answer, according to
Locke, is that “The people shall be judge” (Two Treatises, 426). Machiavelli
echoes this answer, albeit in a subtler manner, in his writings of the Civil
Principality, Chapter IX, in The Prince by stating that the people exert an
influence over the formation of a principality. According to Machiavelli,
“…the people neither desire to be commanded nor oppressed by the great”
(The Prince, 39). In this sense, the people constitute a “humor” of the
city, the opposing “humor” being the desire of the “great” to command
and oppress the people. A man should be wary of becoming prince with the support
of the great instead of the support of the people. Without their support, the
prince is doomed to govern either a territory filled with an unmanageable
“great” or a large body of unruly people. Indeed, Machiavelli echoes this in
a later chapter by stating “… a prince should have two fears: one within, on
account of his subjects; the other outside, on account of external powers”
(The Prince, 72). In both this text and Locke’s Two Treatises, the authors
yield an incredible amount of power to the people: the power to both influence
the creation of and bring about the destruction of governments. For Machiavelli,
the people are a large body of people, viewed as more formidable, and,
therefore, more influential, than the great aristocrats in principality
building. For Locke, the people exert a similar influence over the building of a
commonwealth, since it is from the people that the power of the prince or
legislature originates. Moreover, the people can decide to bring about the end
of a particular regime of government if they feel that it no longer adheres to
its responsibilities. Thus, the people, in both Machiavelli and Locke, appear to
share a similar amount of power both in the formation of government and in its
oversight: namely, that of adjudication. In the Discourses, Machiavelli writes
of a cyclical succession of governments, one after another, each one rising to
prominence only to fall to licentiousness. It is through this cycle that
Machiavelli demonstrates the power of the people to adjudicate, and he argues
that it is this adjudication that perpetuates the cycle. Kings rise to
prominence based upon character, until the monarchy becomes hereditary and
degenerates into “sumptuousness and lasciviousness” (Discourses on Livy,
12). The people then, with the guidance of a leader, overturn this form of
government and institute first an aristocracy, and then popular government. As
with the principality, these modes of government also become licentious. So the
cycle continues anew, with a principality following this popular form of
government. Likewise, the same reasons each form of government declines, namely
licentiousness, sumptuousness, and lasciviousness, also leads to the decline of
each the second time, and so on, and so on. The power of the people acts as
impetus for reform, and reiterates their role as adjudicators. In conflicts
between the prince or legislative and the people, Locke argues that the law
should hold the power of final and resolute arbiter. But in cases where “the
law is silent, or doubtful, and the thing be of great Consequence,” Locke
argues that the power of judgement falls to the people, and that they should be
the jury for the actions of the prince or legislature. For since the power of
the prince or legislature derives from the will and consent of the people, they
are the proper judges of the limits to which that power can extend. This should
not be understood, however, to indicate that more than this power exists in the
hands of the people, or that they may exercise this power arbitrarily. Locke
argues that it is incumbent upon the Legislative to govern the people, and that
this legislative power “can never revert to the people whilst that government
lasts” (Two Treatises, 428). Men in Locke’s commonwealth have given up their
rights to the political power that the legislative executes, and, therefore,
removed themselves wielding political power. Moreover, this accedence of power
to the legislative is binding due to the permanent nature of the contract. It is
important, however, to note that the one power which Locke never says the people
should give up is the power to judge the government and the power to revolt
should that government violate its contract. Turning to Plato, it is essential
remember that he wrote a democratic regime is composed of three types of men;
the multitude; the oligarchic; and the “men most orderly by nature” (The
Republic, 243). It is in his description of the multitude, however, that Plato
reveals the true role and political power of the people. His description from
section 565a reads: “And the people would be the third class, all those who do
their own work, don’t meddle in affairs, and don’t possess very much.
Whenever they assemble, they constitute the most numerous and most sovereign
class in a democracy” (The Republic, 243). Like Machiavelli, Plato apportions
a large amount of power to the people based on their numerous populaces. This
population, as Adeimantus points out, is not willing to assemble very frequently
unless they get “some share of the honey.” Plato replies by stating that the
leaders take care to assure that the people have enough to keep them from
becoming unruly, a tactic that implies the power of adjudication, once again, to
the people. If the body of people feel that the ruler is favoring the privileged
class too much, then they can mobilize their large numbers against the ruler.
Therefore, it appears that in Plato as well as in Machiavelli and Locke, the
power of sheer numbers is secondary to the chief role of the people; namely,
that of umpire and as judges of the behavior and actions of the ruler. Thus, it
appears that even among these three different writers, each of whom wrote the
texts analyzed above, there is an agreed upon notion of the role of people in
the various governments that each author describes. Moreover, each author
defines this role in the context of the power people are afforded. Plato and
John Locke may not have agreed with each other in regards to an ideal form of
government, and Machiavelli may not have agreed with himself from one text to
the next in regards to the same subject. Each author, though, dealt with that
unruly multitude, the people, in their works. And by juxtaposing Two Treatises
on Government, Discourses on Livy, The Prince, and The Republic against one
another, it appears that these writers from three very different centuries all
agreed upon an identical notion of the relationship between the power of the
people and their role in government.

BibliographyLocke, John. Two Treatises of Government. Peter Laslett, ed. Cambridge
University Press: Cambridge. 1997. Machiavelli, Niccolo. The Prince. Translated
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London. 1998. Machiavelli, Niccolo. Discourses on Livy. Translated by Harvey C.
Mansfield & Nathan Tarcov. University of Chicago Press: Chicago &
London. 1996. Plato. The Republic. Allan Bloom, ed.