We have thus the State, though the method of its organization is not
yet outlined. For Locke there is a difference, though he did not
explicitly describe its nature, between State and Government. Indeed he
sometimes approximates, without ever formally adopting, the attitude of
Pufendorf, his great German contemporary, where government is derived
from a secondary contract dependent upon the original institution of
civil society. The distinction is made in the light of what is to
follow. For Locke was above all anxious to leave supreme power in a
community whose single will, as manifested by majority-verdict, could
not be challenged by any lesser organ than itself. Government there must
be if political society is to endure; but its form and substance are
dependent upon popular institution.

Locke follows in the great Aristotelian tradition of dividing the types
of government into three. Where the power of making laws is in a single
hand we have a monarchy; where it is exercised by a few or all we have
alternatively oligarchy and democracy. The disposition of the
legislative power is the fundamental test of type; for executive and
judiciary are clearly dependent on it. Nor, as Hobbes argued, is the
form of government permanent in character; the supreme community is as
capable of making temporary as of registering irrevocable decisions. And
though Locke admits that monarchy, from its likeness to the family, is
the most primitive type of government, he denies Hobbes' assertion that
it is the best. It seems, in his view, always to degenerate into the
hands of lesser men who betray the contract they were appointed to
observe. Nor is oligarchy much better off since it emphasizes the
interest of a group against the superior interest of the community as a
whole. Democracy alone proffers adequate safeguards of an enduring good
rule; a democracy, that is to say, which is in the hands of delegates
controlled by popular election. Not that Locke is anxious for the