Some uncontroversial limits to supreme power must exist

Text by professor Timo Airaksinen

PO says we must be loyal to a prince and supreme power, but if his laws are unjust we have a permanent reason not to obey, which is to say we do not tolerate a bad prince. This is a source of unrest: people resist, and the prince punishes them. Of course, some uncontroversial limits to supreme power must exist:

[W]e have shewn negative duties not to admit of limitation. Having premised this remark, I make the following answer to the objection. Namely, that by virtue of the duty of non-resistance we are not obliged to submit the disposal of our lives and fortunes to the discretion either of madmen, or of all those who by craft or violence invade the supreme power; because the object of the submission enjoined subjects by the law of nature is, from the reason of the thing, manifestly limited so as to exclude both the one and the other. Which I shall not go about to prove, because I believe nobody has denied it. Nor doth the annexing such limits to the object of our obedience at all limit the duty itself, in the sense we except against. (PO 52).

Berkeley says here that the principle of passive obedience does not apply in two distinct cases and annexes two sources of limits to passive disobedience, the cases of the mad prince as the ultimate development of the extreme tyrant and the usurper. (PO 52). The rest of bad princes one must obey. Princes are often wicked, and they lack virtue, for instance justice and moderation when, for instance, they start wars or tax people. Berkeley does not openly consider such problems.