Locke stated, “the end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom: for in all the states of created beings capable of laws, where there is no law, there is no freedom.”36 Freedom, not virtue, is the goal of government; virtue is the goal of individual men, pursuing right reason—a task itself that requires freedom. And should government violate either the consent of the people or their unalienable rights, Locke stated, it would lose its mandate utterly: “whenever the legislators endeavor to take away, and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to
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