Gershom Carmichael on the idea that civil power is founded on the consent of those against whom it is exercised (1724)

Found in The Writings of Gershom Carmichael

Gershom Carmichael (1672-1729) argued that the legitimacy of the government lay in the consent the people gave the civil authority when they transferred the rights they had in the state of nature to it:

When civil power defends the rights of citizens against their fellow citizens or against foreigners, it acts with the consent of those for whose benefit it is exercised. For civil power is in fact nothing but the right which belonged to individuals in the state of nature to claim what was their own or what was due to them, and which has been conferred upon the same ruler for the sake of civil peace.

The Scottish moral philosopher Gershom Carmichael (1672-1729) taught natural law to among others Adam Smith and thus played a very important role in the Scottish Enlightenment. One of his key ideas was that individuals in the state of nature had the “right of disposing of his actions and therefore of his property” (known as “liberty”), which they later “transferred” with their full consent and not “surrendered” to the government (known as Imperium). This government could not exercise unlimited power as it was bound by the divine law and by the specific agreement made with the people when they “transferred” their rights to it. However, when “clear signs” emerged that a sovereign had broken these divine laws and the agreements with the people, the people were entitled to resist that civil authority, and transfer their rights to another person “by curtailing the resources of the sovereign ruler or by entrusting the government to someone else.” The example Carmichael had in mind was “the happy Revolution of these Kingdoms” of 1688 when the tyrannical Stuart monarchy was replaced by the Dutchman William, Prince of Orange and Stadtholder of Holland.