Locke sees government as a remedy for the unavoidable disorder attaching to the state of nature in which every man is judge of every other's transgressions. It is not, as Hobbes thought, that government is absolutely necessary in order to stop us from following the law of nature which, in the absence of government, bids each man to treat every other with extreme prejudice and preemptive violence. For the natural law bids us to respect the liberties of others insofar as they do not impinge upon our own, all men being equal and independent, and all being the property of God. Rather, it is only the confusion of having as many judges as members of a society and the proneness to bias which a victim has in judging his assailant that makes the institution of government appropriate. The government having this basis, it is answerable to the citizens of a commonwealth for its miscarriages of justice (a view which Hobbes would likewise have disagreed.) The people of a commonwealth may even get laws defining the role of the government. These are not arrogant encroachments upon the prerogative of a ruler, as if the people were irrational and benighted beings who ought to submit to their superiors without reservation. Rather, they are stipulations on the way in which the government is to fulfill its purpose, which is precisely the good of the rational beings who will submit to it.
The basis of government is that it is reasonable for member of a society to have an institution which protects their liberty and property. Anyone in the region of a society with a government and who enjoys that government's protections, tacitly submits to its jurisdiction over his property. If, and only if, he explicitly consents to subject himself to this government, he becomes, irrevocably, a full member of this society.
