Second Treatise of Government, John Locke, 1689 “So when the legislators try to take away and destroy the property of the people or to reduce them to slavery, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereby absolved from any further obedience and are left to the common escape that God has provided for all men against force and violence. So whenever the legislature breaks this fundamental rule of society and – whether through ambition, fear, folly or corruption – try to grasp for themselves or for anyone else an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people, by this breach of trust, they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite different purposes. And then the people have a right to resume their original-natural-liberty, and to set up a new legislature …to provide for their own safety and security…”
What does Locke say that the government does to their power when they “try to grasp for themselves…an absolute power”?