1. While a (branch of ) government is granted the legislative power, there are four limits on how this power can legitimately be exercised
1. No government can legitimately enact laws that violate the law of nature.
1. The law of nature always remains in effect. Governmental legislation applies out the implications makes of the law of nature to particular kinds of cases and takes other actions that serves the public good.
2. Governments may not enact laws that contradict the law of nature.
3. Thus governments may not violate our right to life or liberty.
2. Governments must follow the rule of law.
1. Government action is not legitimate unless a law empowering such action has been put in place.
2. Laws must be general.
1. They must apply to everyone.
2. Or, where they treat various groups in a different way, that differential treatment must have some rational grounds.
1. Differential treatment, benefits or burdens must be rationally connected with some legitimate government purpose.
3. The requirement of generality has usually  been thought to apply only to those laws that place burdens on people.
1. It does not prohibit governments from giving individuals special benefits or exemptions from general laws.
2. Such benefits or exemptions, however, are usually thought to be legitimate only when they make up for the inequities that arise from the application of general laws to particular cases.
3. Governments may not take the property of people without their consent.
1. This claim is based upon Locke's conception of the ends of government.
 
1. Since governments exist for the sake of protecting the property of the people, Locke argues that it would irrational for people to empower a government to take their money whenever it so chooses.
2. But we cannot require individual consent to taxation.
1. Governments need revenues in order to carry out their tasks.
2. Thus everyone who wants a government to function—presumably everyone who consents to government—would want the government to tax people.
3. But they might not consent to their own property being taxed.
1. If a government receives tax money from anyone else, its effectiveness would not be diminished much, while we would retain our money.
2. But if everyone did this, government would not function.
4. This is called a collective action problem.
3. So Locke requires collective consent by a majority of the people or of their representatives.
1. If there are to be civil societies which a large population, then we must allow the collective consent of the representatives of the people to stand for the collective consent of the people as a whole.
2. So, as we shall see in Forms of Government, one branch of any government must be more or less democratic nature.
2. Locke argues that governments may draft people and military commanders may take actions that threaten the lives of people
1. For these restrictions on the liberty of those drafted are necessary if government is to protect the lives of the other members of a political society.
2. Debates in recent years have arisen about whether a draft is legitimate when military action is not clearly necessary to protect the territorial integrity of a civil society or the lives of its members.
1. This question was raised during the Vietnam war (and would undoubtedly be raised today if draftees were being sent to fight again in the Persian gulf.)
3. One might wonder whether Locke is being wholly consistent here. If collective consent is necessary for taxation, why not require such consent for drafting people?
4. Governments may not transfer the legislative power from one branch of government to another or create new branches of government to exercise the legislative power.
1. Such a transfer of power would change the form of government.
2. This sort of change in the form of government would violate the right of people to consent to one form of government rather than another.