Relationship between the sovereign and the subjects in More's Utopia, Machiavelli's Speeches and Hobbes's LeviathanThomas More, Niccolo Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes provides models for the relationship between the ruler and the people in his works Utopia, The Discourses and Leviathan. Each maintains that ensuring the common good of the people should be the sovereign's primary objective. However, they differ in the details of their descriptions of this relationship and in their explanations of the ruler's motivation to value the prosperity of the people. An examination of the passages specified in each of these works will clarify the comparison of their models for this relationship. More's discussion of the sovereign takes place in the context of the discussion of a monarch as the trustee of the welfare of the people. The king is an ordinary citizen invested with the authority or “majesty” of sovereignty. He then distinguishes himself from the rest of the population by the responsibilities he has towards them and the powers that are inherent to these responsibilities. It is required to discharge these responsibilities and not abuse its privileges by the threat of a rebellion of the poor and, therefore, the disaffected which would result from an incompetent or misused sovereignty. He is also constrained by his own natural desire for prestige and his prestige depends on the wealth and well-being of his subjects. To desire this kind of prestige, one must be a virtuous man. Without this virtue, his vices of pride and laziness risk reducing him to seizing the property of his subjects to serve his greed and attempt to pacify them by reducing them to abject poverty. If one's own pride...... middle of paper...... largely influenced by the level of incompetence or corruption of the monarch. The three sovereigns rely on “virtu”, that is to say efficiency, to ensure the common good of their country. subjects; however, all three have different definitions of what constitutes "virtu". Under More's sovereignty, he controls human nature and channels it toward promoting general prosperity. For Machiavelli, sovereignty is the result of the pursuit of self-interested objectives, both on the part of the ruler and on the part of the governed. In Hobbes's sovereignty, this is the logical result of fear and human nature seeking peace. Works Cited Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994. More, Thomas. Utopia. Trans. Clarence H. Miller. 2nd ed. Yale University Press. 2001 Walker, Leslie J. The Speeches of Niccolo Machiavelli Routledge, 2013