The 1688 Revolution matters here less as a narrated sequence of events than as a turning point in political argument. The Convention Parliament’s charge that James II had broken the original contract between king and people made the Revolution a conspicuous example of resistance grounded in a claimed constitutional obligation; John Locke, in turn, used it to argue that government depends on the consent of the governed and that tyrannical rulers may be displaced.

The Revolution in the history of contract theory

The book distinguishes two broad forms of social-contract theory. In one, the people and government contract with each other; in the other, the individuals who compose the State contract among themselves. The first form, of medieval origin and often supported by biblical references, was taken up by major political writers of the sixteenth century and persisted into the seventeenth. The Convention Parliament’s accusation against James II gave that older model a sharp constitutional application: his conduct was described as a breach of the original agreement between ruler and people.

The charge places the Revolution within a tradition that treats political authority as bound by obligations, rather than as an unconditional power. In this version of the theory, a people’s appeal against a ruler could be expressed as a demand that he observe the terms of the compact. The Revolution thus serves as more than a change of government in the book’s account: it supplies a historical and political occasion for defending the people’s right to resist a ruler who violates the basis of his authority.

Locke, consent, and the limits of resistance

The account associates the Revolution of 1688 with Locke’s effort to justify the displacement of James II. Locke makes government depend on the consent of the governed not only at its founding but throughout its existence, and he regards rulers as liable to removal if they govern tyrannically. The Revolution therefore helps clarify the political force of consent: it can authorize resistance, rather than merely explain how government began.

But the book also identifies a weakness in Locke’s position. Locke provides no constitutional machinery, short of revolution, through which popular opinion can be expressed; consent consequently remains largely tacit and assumed. His theory places the State’s main purpose in protecting life and property, while his cautious account of popular rights nearly reduces them to nothing. The Revolution marks a powerful justification for resistance, but it does not, in this analysis, solve the problem of how the people can exercise consent continuously and institutionally.

Contrast with Hobbes and Rousseau

Thomas Hobbes represents a different contract tradition: individuals contract with one another, leaving the government outside the agreement. That move, as the book explains, allows Hobbes to make the government sovereign without subjecting it to contractual obligations. The contrast makes the Convention Parliament’s accusation especially significant. A compact between people and ruler can furnish grounds for holding the ruler to account; Hobbes’s arrangement avoids that mutual obligation and instead supports absolute authority.

Rousseau’s response to the problem of consent goes beyond Locke’s largely tacit model. He substitutes an active agreement, periodically renewed, and insists that popular consent needs constitutional means of expression if it is to be more than a name. The book presents the 1688 Revolution as an important landmark in the older, people-and-government form of contract theory, while Rousseau’s later formulation presses toward a recurring act of popular self-government. Its central significance is therefore conceptual: the Revolution helps expose the difference between consent asserted against a ruler and consent made an ongoing practice of political life.