Benevolent rulers’ precedents endanger liberty when successors claim them as rights

Evidence

Such god-like princes indeed had some title to arbitrary power by that argument, that would prove absolute monarchy the best government, as that which God himself governs the universe by; because such kings partake of his wisdom and goodness. Upon this is founded that saying, That the reigns of good princes have been always most dangerous to the liberties of their people: for when their successors, managing the government with different thoughts, would draw the actions of those good rulers into precedent, and make them the standard of their prerogative, as if what had been done only for the good of the people was a right in them to do, for the harm of the people, if they so pleased; it has often occasioned contest, and sometimes public disorders, before the people could recover their original right, and get that to be declared not to be prerogative, which truly was never so; since it is impossible that any body in the society should ever have a right to do the people harm; though it be very possible, and reasonable, that the people should not go about to set any bounds to the prerogative of those kings, or rulers, who themselves transgressed not the bounds of the public good: for prerogative is nothing but the power of doing public good without a rule. — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 203

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Locke’s paradox — that the best princes’ good acts become the most dangerous precedents — is a dense insight about how benign discretion becomes bad constitutional precedent.
• XREF: The good-prince precedent argument speaks directly to how judges’ virtuous exercises of power can harden into doctrine against their original good. — connects to: The historical contraction of discretionary prerogative into written law followed princely abuse — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 199; Past support for a tyrant undermines later moral authority to oppose him; Liberties lose their critical force once institutionalized — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 106 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Past support for a tyrant undermines later moral authority to oppose him #expands (0.80)
• Liberties lose their critical force once institutionalized #complicates (0.78) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 106