The answer to those questions lies in each text itself, and careful review will produce discourses on those questions and many others. The focus of this discourse is to examine the treatment of "the people" by both authors, to discover what Machiavelli and Locke write about the people's role in their different structures of government. In particular, this paper seeks to understand that role in regards to the political power each author yields to, or withholds from, the people. In addition, these treatments of power and the people will be compared to the writings of another timeless political philosopher, Plato. By juxtaposing Two Treatises on Government, Discourses on Livy, The Prince, and The Republic against one another, this paper wi

Machiavelli, the most pessimistic of the three writers in regards to humans and human nature, writes that all men can be accused of "that defect" which Livy calls vanity and inconsistency (The Discourses on Livy, 115). He continues by writing: "...people [are] nothing other than a brute animal that, although of a ferocious and feral nature, has always been nourished in prison and in servitude" (Discourses on Livy, 44). Animals, that are by their nature ferocious, become scared and confused when released from captivity. Without the shelter and food they had come to expect when "domesticated," they are more susceptible to future attempts at captivity. Man also becomes scared and confused in freedom after living under the government of others. Machiavelli writes that these men lack understanding of "public defense or public offense," and quickly return "beneath the yoke that is most often heavier than the one it had removed from its neck a little before" (Discourses on Livy, 44). Men are docile like domesticated dogs or cattle, according to this description, and have a role in government of little political power.

Machiavelli echoes this answer, albeit in a subtler manner, in his writings of the Civil Principality, Chapter IX, in The Prince by stating that the people exert an influence over the formation of a principality. According to Machiavelli, "...the people neither desire to be commanded nor oppressed by the great" (The Prince, 39). In this sense, the people constitute a "humor" of the city, the opposing "humor" being the desire of the "great" to command and oppress the people. A man should be wary of becoming prince with the support of the great instead of the support of the people. Without their support, the prince is doomed to govern either a territory filled with an unmanageable "great" or a large body of unruly people. Indeed, Machiavelli echoes this in a later chapter by stating "... a prince should have two fears: one within, on account of his subjects; the other outside, on account of external powers" (The Prince, 72). In both this text and Locke's Two Treatises, the authors yield an incredible amount of power to the people: the power to both influence the creation of and bring about the destruction of governments. For Machiavelli, the people are a large body of people, viewed as more formidable, and, therefore, more influential, than the great aristocrats in principality building. For Locke, the people exert a similar influence over the building of a commonwealth, since it is from the people that the power of the prince or legislature originates. Moreover, the people can decide to bring about the end of a particular regime of government if they feel that it no longer adheres to its responsibilities. Thus, the people, in both Machiavelli and Locke, appear to share a similar amount of power both in the formation of government and in its oversight: namely, that of adjudication.

Turning to Plato, it is essential remember that

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