 Over the last century scholars of political history have singled out chapters, particularly in Book 2, where Nicholas discusses consent as a prerequisite for legitimate law and government. Going beyond tradition and canon law, he argues on the basis of people’s natural freedom (“men are by nature equal in power and equally free”) that all governance comes from the consent of the subjects. This argument to explicitly institutionalize consent is Nicholas’ original contribution. He follows it with proposals on representation that move from representation as virtual impersonation to representation as delegation based on those represented selecting their representatives. This is one of the first explicit statements in the West of the institutional limits to be placed on rulers and of the idea that people must consent to their representative institutions.