A Essay Concerning the
true original, extent, and end of Civil Government by John
Locke
- The Contents of Book
2
- Chapter 1. Of Political Power
- Chapter 2. Of the State of Nature
- Chapter 3. Of the State of War
- Chapter 4. Of Slavery
- Chapter 5. Of Property
- Chapter 6. Of Paternal Power
- Chapter 7. Of Political or Civil Society
- Chapter 8. Of the Beginning of Political Societies
- Chapter 9. Of the Ends of Political Society and Government
- Chapter 10. Of the Forms of a Commonwealth
- Chapter 11. Of the Extent of the Legislative Power
- Chapter 12. The Legislative, Executive, and Federative Power of the Commonwealth
- Chapter 13. Of the Subordination of the Powers of the Commonwealth
- Chapter 14. Of Prerogative
- Chapter 15. Of Paternal, Political and Despotical Power
- Chapter 16. Of Conquest
- Chapter 17. Of Usurpation
- Chapter 18. Of Tyranny
- Chapter 19. Of the Dissolution of Government
- Chapter 1. Of Political Power
Firstly. That
Adam had not, either by natural right of fatherhood or by positive
donation from God, any such authority over his children, nor dominion
over the world, as is pretended. Secondly. That
if he had, his heirs yet had no right to it. Thirdly. That
if his heirs had, there being no law of Nature nor positive law of
God that determines which is the right heir in all cases that may
arise, the right of succession, and consequently of bearing rule,
could not have been certainly determined. Fourthly. That
if even that had been determined, yet the knowledge of which is the
eldest line of Adam's posterity being so long since utterly lost,
that in the races of mankind and families of the world, there remains
not to one above another the least pretence to be the eldest house,
and to have the right of inheritance. All these promises having, as I think, been
clearly made out, it is impossible that the rulers now on earth
should make any benefit, or derive any
the least shadow of authority from that which is held to be the
fountain of all power, "Adam's private
dominion and paternal jurisdiction"; so that he that will not give
just occasion to think that all government in the world is the
product only of force and violence, and that men live together by no
other rules but that of beasts, where
the strongest carries it, and so lay a foundation for perpetual disorder
and mischief, tumult, sedition, and rebellion (things that the
followers of that hypothesis so loudly cry out against), must of necessity find out another
rise of government, another original of political
power, and another way of designing and knowing the persons that have
it than what Sir Robert Filmer hath taught us. 2. To this purpose, I think it may not be amiss
to set down what I take to be political power. That the power of a
magistrate over a subject may be distinguished from that of a father
over his children, a master over his servant, a husband over his
wife, and a lord over his slave. All which distinct powers happening
sometimes together in the same man, if he be considered under these
different relations, it may help us to distinguish these powers one
from another, and show the difference betwixt a
ruler of a commonwealth, a father of a family, and a captain of a galley. 3. Political power, then, I take to be a right
of making laws, with penalties of death, and consequently all less
penalties for the regulating and preserving of property, and of
employing the force of the community in the execution of such laws,
and in the defence of the commonwealth from foreign injury, and all
this only for the public good. A state also of equality, wherein all the power
and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another,
there being nothing more evident
than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages
of Nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another,
without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them
all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above
another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear
appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.
5. This equality of men by Nature, the
judicious Hooker looks upon as so evident in itself,
(We hold these truths to be
self-evident) and beyond all question, that
he makes it the foundation of that obligation to mutual love amongst
men on which he builds the duties they owe one another, and from
whence he derives the great maxims of justice and charity. His words
are: "The like natural inducement hath brought men
to know that it is no less their duty to
love others than themselves, for seeing
those things which are equal, must needs all have one measure; if I
cannot but wish to receive good, even as much at every man's hands,
as any man can wish unto his own soul, how should I look to have any
part of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to
satisfy the like desire, which is undoubtedly in other men weak,
being of one and the same nature: to have anything offered them
repugnant to this desire must needs, in all respects, grieve them as
much as me; so that if I do harm, I must look to suffer, there being
no reason that others should show greater measure of love to me than
they have by me showed unto them; my desire, therefore, to be loved
of my equals in Nature, as much as possible may be, imposeth upon me
a natural duty of bearing to themward fully the like affection. From
which relation of equality between ourselves and them that are as
ourselves, what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn
for direction of life no man is ignorant." (Eccl. Pol.
i.)2 6. But though this
be a state of liberty, yet it is not a
state of licence; though man in that state have an uncontrollable
liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to
destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but
where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The
state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every
one, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but
consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to
harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions; for men
being all the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely
wise Maker; all the servants of one sovereign Master, sent into the
world by His order and about His business; they are His property,
whose workmanship they are made to last during His, not one another's
pleasure. And, being furnished with like faculties,
sharing all in one community of Nature, there cannot be supposed any
such subordination among us that may authorise us to destroy one
another, as if we were made for one another's uses, as the inferior
ranks of creatures are for ours. Every one as he is bound to preserve
himself, and not to quit his station wilfully, so by the like reason,
when his own preservation comes not in competition, ought he as much
as he can to preserve the rest of mankind, and not unless it be to do
justice on an offender, take away or impair the life, or what tends
to the preservation of the life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods
of another. 7. And that all men may be restrained from
invading others' rights, and from doing hurt to one another, and the law of
Nature be observed, which willeth the peace and preservation of all
mankind, the execution of the law of Nature is in that state put into
every man's hands, whereby every one has a right to punish the
transgressors of that law to such a degree as may hinder its
violation. For the law of Nature would, as all other laws that
concern men in this world, be in vain if there were nobody that in
the state of Nature had a power to execute that law, and thereby
preserve the innocent and restrain offenders; and if any one in the
state of Nature may punish another for any evil he has done, every
one may do so. For in that state of perfect equality, where naturally
there is no superiority or jurisdiction of one over another, what any
may do in prosecution of that law, every one must needs have a right
to do. 8. And thus, in the state of Nature, one man
comes by a power over another, but yet no absolute or arbitrary power
to use a criminal, when he has got him in his hands, according to the
passionate heats or boundless extravagancy of his own will, but only
to retribute to him so far as calm reason and conscience dictate,
what is proportionate to his transgression, which is so much as may
serve for reparation and restraint. For these two are the only
reasons why one man may lawfully do harm to another, which is that we
call punishment. In transgressing the law of Nature, the offender
declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and
common equity, which is that measure God has set to the actions of
men for their mutual security, and so he becomes dangerous to
mankind; the tie which is to secure them from injury and violence
being slighted and broken by him, which being a trespass against the
whole species, and the peace and safety of it, provided for by the
law of Nature, every man upon this score, by the right he hath to
preserve mankind in general, may restrain, or where it is necessary,
destroy things noxious to them, and so may bring such evil on any one
who hath transgressed that law, as may make him repent the doing of
it, and thereby deter him, and, by his example, others from doing the
like mischief. And in this case, and upon this ground, every man hath
a right to punish the offender, and be executioner of the law of
Nature. 9. I doubt not but this will seem a very
strange doctrine to some men; but before they condemn it, I desire
them to resolve me by what right any prince or state can put to death
or punish an alien for any crime he commits in their country? It is
certain their laws, by virtue of any sanction they receive from the
promulgated will of the legislature, reach not a stranger. They speak
not to him, nor, if they did, is he bound to hearken to them. The
legislative authority by which they are in force over the subjects of
that commonwealth hath no power over him. Those who have the supreme
power of making laws in England, France, or Holland are, to an
Indian, but like the rest of the world -- men without authority. And
therefore, if by the law of Nature every man hath not a power to
punish offences against it, as he soberly judges the case to require,
I see not how the magistrates of any community can punish an alien of
another country, since, in reference to him, they can have no more
power than what every man naturally may have over another.
10. Besides the crime which consists in
violating the laws, and varying from the right rule of reason,
whereby a man so far becomes degenerate, and declares himself to quit
the principles of human nature and to be a noxious creature, there is
commonly injury done, and some person or other, some other man,
receives damage by his transgression; in which case, he who hath
received any damage has (besides the right of punishment common to
him, with other men) a particular right to seek reparation from him
that hath done it. And any other person who finds it just may also
join with him that is injured, and assist him in recovering from the
offender so much as may make satisfaction for the harm he hath
suffered. 11. From these two distinct rights (the one of
punishing the crime, for restraint and preventing the like offence,
which right of punishing is in everybody, the other of taking
reparation, which belongs only to the injured party) comes it to pass
that the magistrate, who by being magistrate hath the common right of
punishing put into his hands, can often, where the public good
demands not the execution of the law, remit the punishment of
criminal offences by his own authority, but yet cannot remit the
satisfaction due to any private man for the damage he has received.
That he who hath suffered the damage has a right to demand in his own
name, and he alone can remit. The damnified person has this power of
appropriating to himself the goods or service of the offender by
right of self-preservation, as every man has a power to punish the
crime to prevent its being committed again, by the right he has of
preserving all mankind, and doing all reasonable things he can in
order to that end. And thus it is that every man in the state of
Nature has a power to kill a murderer, both to deter others from
doing the like injury (which no reparation can compensate) by the
example of the punishment that attends it from everybody, and also to
secure men from the attempts of a criminal who, having renounced
reason, the common rule and measure God hath given to mankind, hath,
by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one,
declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a
lion or a tiger, one of those wild savage beasts with whom men can
have no society nor security. And upon this is grounded that great
law of nature, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be
shed." And Cain was so fully convinced that every one had a right to
destroy such a criminal, that, after the murder of his brother, he
cries out, "Every one that findeth me shall slay me," so plain was it
writ in the hearts of all mankind. 12. By the same reason may a man in the state
of Nature punish the lesser breaches of that law, it will, perhaps,
be demanded, with death? I answer: Each transgression may be punished
to that degree, and with so much severity, as will suffice to make it
an ill bargain to the offender, give him cause to repent, and terrify
others from doing the like. Every offence that can be committed in
the state of Nature may, in the state of Nature, be also punished
equally, and as far forth, as it may, in a commonwealth. For though
it would be beside my present purpose to enter here into the
particulars of the law of Nature, or its measures of punishment, yet
it is certain there is such a law, and that too as intelligible and
plain to a rational creature and a studier of that law as the
positive laws of commonwealths, nay, possibly plainer; as much as
reason is easier to be understood than the fancies and intricate
contrivances of men, following contrary and hidden interests put into
words; for truly so are a great part of the municipal laws of
countries, which are only so far right as they are founded on the law
of Nature, by which they are to be regulated and interpreted.
13. To this strange doctrine -- viz., That in
the state of Nature every one has the executive power of the law of
Nature -- I doubt not but it will be objected that it is unreasonable
for men to be judges in their own cases, that self-love will make men
partial to themselves and their friends; and, on the other side,
ill-nature, passion, and revenge will carry them too far in punishing
others, and hence nothing but confusion and disorder will follow, and
that therefore God hath certainly appointed government to restrain
the partiality and violence of men. I easily grant that civil
government is the proper remedy for the inconveniences of the state
of Nature, which must certainly be great where men may be judges in
their own case, since it is easy to be imagined that he who was so
unjust as to do his brother an injury will scarce be so just as to
condemn himself for it. But I shall desire those who make this
objection to remember that absolute monarchs are but men; and if
government is to be the remedy of those evils which necessarily
follow from men being judges in their own cases, and the state of
Nature is therefore not to be endured, I desire to know what kind of
government that is, and how much better it is than the state of
Nature, where one man commanding a multitude has the liberty to be
judge in his own case, and may do to all his subjects whatever he
pleases without the least question or control of those who execute
his pleasure? and in whatsoever he doth, whether led by reason,
mistake, or passion, must be submitted to? which men in the state of
Nature are not bound to do one to another. And if he that judges,
judges amiss in his own or any other case, he is answerable for it to
the rest of mankind. 14. It is often asked as a mighty objection,
where are, or ever were, there any men in such a state of Nature? To
which it may suffice as an answer at present, that since all princes
and rulers of "independent" governments all through the world are in
a state of Nature, it is plain the world never was, nor never will
be, without numbers of men in that state. I have named all governors
of "independent" communities, whether they are, or are not, in league
with others; for it is not every compact that puts an end to the
state of Nature between men, but only this one of agreeing together
mutually to enter into one community, and make one body politic;
other promises and compacts men may make one with another, and yet
still be in the state of Nature. The promises and bargains for truck,
etc., between the two men in Soldania, in or between a Swiss and an
Indian, in the woods of America, are binding to them, though they are
perfectly in a state of Nature in reference to one another for truth,
and keeping of faith belongs to men as men, and not as members of
society. 15. To those that say there were never any men
in the state of Nature, I will not oppose the authority of the
judicious Hooker (Eccl. Pol. i. 10), where he says, "the laws which
have been hitherto mentioned" -- i.e., the laws of Nature -- "do bind
men absolutely, even as they are men, although they have never any
settled fellowship, never any solemn agreement amongst themselves
what to do or not to do; but for as much as we are not by ourselves
sufficient to furnish ourselves with competent store of things
needful for such a life as our Nature doth desire, a life fit for the
dignity of man, therefore to supply those defects and imperfections
which are in us, as living single and solely by ourselves, we are
naturally induced to seek communion and fellowship with others; this
was the cause of men uniting themselves as first in politic
societies." But I, moreover, affirm that all men are naturally in
that state, and remain so till, by their own consents, they make
themselves members of some politic society, and I doubt not, in the
sequel of this discourse, to make it very clear.
17. And hence it is that he who attempts to get
another man into his absolute power does thereby put himself into a
state of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration of
a design upon his life. For I have reason to conclude that he who
would get me into his power without my consent would use me as he
pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a
fancy to it; for nobody can desire to have me in his absolute power
unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right
of my freedom -- i.e. make me a slave. To be free from such force is
the only security of my preservation, and reason bids me look on him
as an enemy to my preservation who would take away that freedom which
is the fence to it; so that he who makes an attempt to enslave me
thereby puts himself into a state of war with me. He that in the
state of Nature would take away the freedom that belongs to any one
in that state must necessarily be supposed to have a design to take
away everything else, that freedom being the foundation of all the
rest; as he that in the state of society would take away the freedom
belonging to those of that society or commonwealth must be supposed
to design to take away from them everything else, and so be looked on
as in a state of war. 18. This makes it lawful for a man to kill a
thief who has not in the least hurt him, nor declared any design upon
his life, any farther than by the use of force, so to get him in his
power as to take away his money, or what he pleases, from him;
because using force, where he has no right to get me into his power,
let his pretence be what it will, I have no reason to suppose that he
who would take away my liberty would not, when he had me in his
power, take away everything else. And, therefore, it is lawful for me
to treat him as one who has put himself into a state of war with me
-- i.e., kill him if I can; for to that hazard does he justly expose
himself whoever introduces a state of war, and is aggressor in
it. 19. And here we have the plain difference
between the state of Nature and the state of war, which however some
men have confounded, are as far distant as a state of peace,
goodwill, mutual assistance, and preservation; and a state of enmity,
malice, violence and mutual destruction are one from another. Men
living together according to reason without a common superior on
earth, with authority to judge between them, is properly the state of
Nature. But force, or a declared design of force upon the person of
another, where there is no common superior on earth to appeal to for
relief, is the state of war; and it is the want of such an appeal
gives a man the right of war even against an aggressor, though he be
in society and a fellow-subject. Thus, a thief whom I cannot harm,
but by appeal to the law, for having stolen all that I am worth, I
may kill when he sets on me to rob me but of my horse or coat,
because the law, which was made for my preservation, where it cannot
interpose to secure my life from present force, which if lost is
capable of no reparation, permits me my own defence and the right of
war, a liberty to kill the aggressor, because the aggressor allows
not time to appeal to our common judge, nor the decision of the law,
for remedy in a case where the mischief may be irreparable. Want of a
common judge with authority puts all men in a state of Nature; force
without right upon a man's person makes a state of war both where
there is, and is not, a common judge. 20. But when the actual force is over, the
state of war ceases between those that are in society and are equally
on both sides subject to the judge; and, therefore, in such
controversies, where the question is put, "Who shall be judge?" it
cannot be meant who shall decide the controversy; every one knows
what Jephtha here tells us, that "the Lord the Judge" shall judge.
Where there is no judge on earth the appeal lies to God in Heaven.
That question then cannot mean who shall judge, whether another hath
put himself in a state of war with me, and whether I may, as Jephtha
did, appeal to Heaven in it? Of that I myself can only judge in my
own conscience, as I will answer it at the great day to the Supreme
Judge of all men.
22. This freedom from absolute, arbitrary power
is so necessary to, and closely joined with, a man's preservation,
that he cannot part with it but by what forfeits his preservation and
life together. For a man, not having the power of his own life,
cannot by compact or his own consent enslave himself to any one, nor
put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another to take
away his life when he pleases. Nobody can give more power than he has
himself, and he that cannot take away his own life cannot give
another power over it. Indeed, having by his fault forfeited his own
life by some act that deserves death, he to whom he has forfeited it
may, when he has him in his power, delay to take it, and make use of
him to his own service; and he does him no injury by it. For,
whenever he finds the hardship of his slavery outweigh the value of
his life, it is in his power, by resisting the will of his master, to
draw on himself the death he desires. 23. This is the perfect condition of slavery,
which is nothing else but the state of war continued between a lawful
conqueror and a captive, for if once compact enter between them, and
make an agreement for a limited power on the one side, and obedience
on the other, the state of war and slavery ceases as long as the
compact endures; for, as has been said, no man can by agreement pass
over to another that which he hath not in himself -- a power over his
own life. I confess, we find among the Jews, as well as
other nations, that men did sell themselves; but it is plain this was
only to drudgery, not to slavery; for it is evident the person sold
was not under an absolute, arbitrary, despotical power, for the
master could not have power to kill him at any time, whom at a
certain time he was obliged to let go free out of his service; and
the master of such a servant was so far from having an arbitrary
power over his life that he could not at pleasure so much as maim
him, but the loss of an eye or tooth set him free (Exod. 21.).
25. God, who hath given the world to men in
common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best
advantage of life and convenience. The earth and all that is therein
is given to men for the support and comfort of their being. And
though all the fruits it naturally produces, and beasts it feeds,
belong to mankind in common, as they are produced by the spontaneous
hand of Nature, and nobody has originally a private dominion
exclusive of the rest of mankind in any of them, as they are thus in
their natural state, yet being given for the use of men, there must
of necessity be a means to appropriate them some way or other before
they can be of any use, or at all beneficial, to any particular men.
The fruit or venison which nourishes the wild Indian, who knows no
enclosure, and is still a tenant in common, must be his, and so his
-- i.e., a part of him, that another can no longer have any right to
it before it can do him any good for the support of his life.
26. Though the earth and all inferior creatures
be common to all men, yet every man has a "property" in his own
"person." This nobody has any right to but himself. The "labour" of
his body and the "work" of his hands, we may say, are properly his.
Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that Nature hath
provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined
to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.
It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, it
hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common
right of other men. For this "labour" being the unquestionable
property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that
is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good left
in common for others. 27. He that is nourished by the acorns he
picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in
the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself. Nobody can deny
but the nourishment is his. I ask, then, when did they begin to be
his? when he digested? or when he ate? or when he boiled? or when he
brought them home? or when he picked them up? And it is plain, if the
first gathering made them not his, nothing else could. That labour
put a distinction between them and common. That added something to
them more than Nature, the common mother of all, had done, and so
they became his private right. And will any one say he had no right
to those acorns or apples he thus appropriated because he had not the
consent of all mankind to make them his? Was it a robbery thus to
assume to himself what belonged to all in common? If such a consent
as that was necessary, man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty
God had given him. We see in commons, which remain so by compact,
that it is the taking any part of what is common, and removing it out
of the state Nature leaves it in, which begins the property, without
which the common is of no use. And the taking of this or that part
does not depend on the express consent of all the commoners. Thus,
the grass my horse has bit, the turfs my servant has cut, and the ore
I have digged in any place, where I have a right to them in common
with others, become my property without the assignation or consent of
anybody. The labour that was mine, removing them out of that common
state they were in, hath fixed my property in them. 28. By making an explicit consent of every
commoner necessary to any one's appropriating to himself any part of
what is given in common. Children or servants could not cut the meat
which their father or master had provided for them in common without
assigning to every one his peculiar part. Though the water running in
the fountain be every one's, yet who can doubt but that in the
pitcher is his only who drew it out? His labour hath taken it out of
the hands of Nature where it was common, and belonged equally to all
her children, and hath thereby appropriated it to himself.
29. Thus this law of reason makes the deer that
Indian's who hath killed it; it is allowed to be his goods who hath
bestowed his labour upon it, though, before, it was the common right
of every one. And amongst those who are counted the civilised part of
mankind, who have made and multiplied positive laws to determine
property, this original law of Nature for the beginning of property,
in what was before common, still takes place, and by virtue thereof,
what fish any one catches in the ocean, that great and still
remaining common of mankind; or what amber-gris any one takes up here
is by the labour that removes it out of that common state Nature left
it in, made his property who takes that pains about it. And even
amongst us, the hare that any one is hunting is thought his who
pursues her during the chase. For being a beast that is still looked
upon as common, and no man's private possession, whoever has employed
so much labour about any of that kind as to find and pursue her has
thereby removed her from the state of Nature wherein she was common,
and hath begun a property. 30. It will, perhaps, be objected to this, that
if gathering the acorns or other fruits of the earth, etc., makes a
right to them, then any one may engross as much as he will. To which
I answer, Not so. The same law of Nature that does by this means give
us property, does also bound that property too. "God has given us all
things richly." Is the voice of reason confirmed by inspiration? But
how far has He given it us -- "to enjoy"? As much as any one can make
use of to any advantage of life before it spoils, so much he may by
his labour fix a property in. Whatever is beyond this is more than
his share, and belongs to others. Nothing was made by God for man to
spoil or destroy. And thus considering the plenty of natural
provisions there was a long time in the world, and the few spenders,
and to how small a part of that provision the industry of one man
could extend itself and engross it to the prejudice of others,
especially keeping within the bounds set by reason of what might
serve for his use, there could be then little room for quarrels or
contentions about property so established. 31. But the chief matter of property being now
not the fruits of the earth and the beasts that subsist on it, but
the earth itself, as that which takes in and carries with it all the
rest, I think it is plain that property in that too is acquired as
the former. As much land as a man tills, plants, improves,
cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He
by his labour does, as it were, enclose it from the common. Nor will
it invalidate his right to say everybody else has an equal title to
it, and therefore he cannot appropriate, he cannot enclose, without
the consent of all his fellow-commoners, all mankind. God, when He
gave the world in common to all mankind, commanded man also to
labour, and the penury of his condition required it of him. God and
his reason commanded him to subdue the earth -- i.e., improve it for
the benefit of life and therein lay out something upon it that was
his own, his labour. He that, in obedience to this command of God,
subdued, tilled, and sowed any part of it, thereby annexed to it
something that was his property, which another had no title to, nor
could without injury take from him. 32. Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of
land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there
was still enough and as good left, and more than the yet unprovided
could use. So that, in effect, there was never the less left for
others because of his enclosure for himself. For he that leaves as
much as another can make use of does as good as take nothing at all.
Nobody could think himself injured by the drinking of another man,
though he took a good draught, who had a whole river of the same
water left him to quench his thirst. And the case of land and water,
where there is enough of both, is perfectly the same. 33. God gave the world to men in common, but
since He gave it them for their benefit and the greatest
conveniencies of life they were capable to draw from it, it cannot be
supposed He meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He
gave it to the use of the industrious and rational (and labour was to
be his title to it); not to the fancy or covetousness of the
quarrelsome and contentious. He that had as good left for his
improvement as was already taken up needed not complain, ought not to
meddle with what was already improved by another's labour; if he did
it is plain he desired the benefit of another's pains, which he had
no right to, and not the ground which God had given him, in common
with others, to labour on, and whereof there was as good left as that
already possessed, and more than he knew what to do with, or his
industry could reach to. 34. It is true, in land that is common in
England or any other country, where there are plenty of people under
government who have money and commerce, no one can enclose or
appropriate any part without the consent of all his fellow-commoners;
because this is left common by compact -- i.e., by the law of the
land, which is not to be violated. And, though it be common in
respect of some men, it is not so to all mankind, but is the joint
propriety of this country, or this parish. Besides, the remainder,
after such enclosure, would not be as good to the rest of the
commoners as the whole was, when they could all make use of the
whole; whereas in the beginning and first peopling of the great
common of the world it was quite otherwise. The law man was under was
rather for appropriating. God commanded, and his wants forced him to
labour. That was his property, which could not be taken from him
wherever he had fixed it. And hence subduing or cultivating the earth
and having dominion, we see, are joined together. The one gave title
to the other. So that God, by commanding to subdue, gave authority so
far to appropriate. And the condition of human life, which requires
labour and materials to work on, necessarily introduce private
possessions. 35. The measure of property Nature well set, by
the extent of men's labour and the conveniency of life. No man's
labour could subdue or appropriate all, nor could his enjoyment
consume more than a small part; so that it was impossible for any
man, this way, to entrench upon the right of another or acquire to
himself a property to the prejudice of his neighbour, who would still
have room for as good and as large a possession (after the other had
taken out his) as before it was appropriated. Which measure did
confine every man's possession to a very moderate proportion, and
such as he might appropriate to himself without injury to anybody in
the first ages of the world, when men were more in danger to be lost,
by wandering from their company, in the then vast wilderness of the
earth than to be straitened for want of room to plant in. 36. The same measure may be allowed still,
without prejudice to anybody, full as the world seems. For, supposing
a man or family, in the state they were at first, peopling of the
world by the children of Adam or Noah, let him plant in some inland
vacant places of America. We shall find that the possessions he could
make himself, upon the measures we have given, would not be very
large, nor, even to this day, prejudice the rest of mankind or give
them reason to complain or think themselves injured by this man's
encroachment, though the race of men have now spread themselves to
all the corners of the world, and do infinitely exceed the small
number was at the beginning. Nay, the extent of ground is of so
little value without labour that I have heard it affirmed that in
Spain itself a man may be permitted to plough, sow, and reap, without
being disturbed, upon land he has no other title to, but only his
making use of it. But, on the contrary, the inhabitants think
themselves beholden to him who, by his industry on neglected, and
consequently waste land, has increased the stock of corn, which they
wanted. But be this as it will, which I lay no stress on, this I dare
boldly affirm, that the same rule of propriety -- viz., that every
man should have as much as he could make use of, would hold still in
the world, without straitening anybody, since there is land enough in
the world to suffice double the inhabitants, had not the invention of
money, and the tacit agreement of men to put a value on it,
introduced (by consent) larger possessions and a right to them;
which, how it has done, I shall by and by show more at large.
37. This is certain, that in the beginning,
before the desire of having more than men needed had altered the
intrinsic value of things, which depends only on their usefulness to
the life of man, or had agreed that a little piece of yellow metal,
which would keep without wasting or decay, should be worth a great
piece of flesh or a whole heap of corn, though men had a right to
appropriate by their labour, each one to himself, as much of the
things of Nature as he could use, yet this could not be much, nor to
the prejudice of others, where the same plenty was still left, to
those who would use the same industry. Before the appropriation of land, he who
gathered as much of the wild fruit, killed, caught, or tamed as many
of the beasts as he could -- he that so employed his pains about any
of the spontaneous products of Nature as any way to alter them from
the state Nature put them in, by placing any of his labour on them,
did thereby acquire a propriety in them; but if they perished in his
possession without their due use -- if the fruits rotted or the
venison putrefied before he could spend it, he offended against the
common law of Nature, and was liable to be punished: he invaded his
neighbour's share, for he had no right farther than his use called
for any of them, and they might serve to afford him conveniencies of
life. 38. The same measures governed the possession
of land, too. Whatsoever he tilled and reaped, laid up and made use
of before it spoiled, that was his peculiar right; whatsoever he
enclosed, and could feed and make use of, the cattle and product was
also his. But if either the grass of his enclosure rotted on the
ground, or the fruit of his planting perished without gathering and
laying up, this part of the earth, notwithstanding his enclosure, was
still to be looked on as waste, and might be the possession of any
other. Thus, at the beginning, Cain might take as much ground as he
could till and make it his own land, and yet leave enough to Abel's
sheep to feed on: a few acres would serve for both their possessions.
But as families increased and industry enlarged their stocks, their
possessions enlarged with the need of them; but yet it was commonly
without any fixed property in the ground they made use of till they
incorporated, settled themselves together, and built cities, and
then, by consent, they came in time to set out the bounds of their
distinct territories and agree on limits between them and their
neighbours, and by laws within themselves settled the properties of
those of the same society. For we see that in that part of the world
which was first inhabited, and therefore like to be best peopled,
even as low down as Abraham's time, they wandered with their flocks
and their herds, which was their substance, freely up and down -- and
this Abraham did in a country where he was a stranger; whence it is
plain that, at least, a great part of the land lay in common, that
the inhabitants valued it not, nor claimed property in any more than
they made use of; but when there was not room enough in the same
place for their herds to feed together, they, by consent, as Abraham
and Lot did (Gen. xiii. 5), separated and enlarged their pasture
where it best liked them. And for the same reason, Esau went from his
father and his brother, and planted in Mount Seir (Gen. 36.
6). 39. And thus, without supposing any private
dominion and property in Adam over all the world, exclusive of all
other men, which can no way be proved, nor any one's property be made
out from it, but supposing the world, given as it was to the children
of men in common, we see how labour could make men distinct titles to
several parcels of it for their private uses, wherein there could be
no doubt of right, no room for quarrel. 40. Nor is it so strange as, perhaps, before
consideration, it may appear, that the property of labour should be
able to overbalance the community of land, for it is labour indeed
that puts the difference of value on everything; and let any one
consider what the difference is between an acre of land planted with
tobacco or sugar, sown with wheat or barley, and an acre of the same
land lying in common without any husbandry upon it, and he will find
that the improvement of labour makes the far greater part of the
value. I think it will be but a very modest computation to say, that
of the products of the earth useful to the life of man, nine-tenths
are the effects of labour. Nay, if we will rightly estimate things as
they come to our use, and cast up the several expenses about them --
what in them is purely owing to Nature and what to labour -- we shall
find that in most of them ninety-nine hundredths are wholly to be put
on the account of labour. 41. There cannot be a clearer demonstration of
anything than several nations of the Americans are of this, who are
rich in land and poor in all the comforts of life; whom Nature,
having furnished as liberally as any other people with the materials
of plenty -- i.e., a fruitful soil, apt to produce in abundance what
might serve for food, raiment, and delight; yet, for want of
improving it by labour, have not one hundredth part of the
conveniencies we enjoy, and a king of a large and fruitful territory
there feeds, lodges, and is clad worse than a day labourer in
England. 42. To make this a little clearer, let us but
trace some of the ordinary provisions of life, through their several
progresses, before they come to our use, and see how much they
receive of their value from human industry. Bread, wine, and cloth
are things of daily use and great plenty; yet notwithstanding acorns,
water, and leaves, or skins must be our bread, drink and clothing,
did not labour furnish us with these more useful commodities. For
whatever bread is more worth than acorns, wine than water, and cloth
or silk than leaves, skins or moss, that is wholly owing to labour
and industry. The one of these being the food and raiment which
unassisted Nature furnishes us with; the other provisions which our
industry and pains prepare for us, which how much they exceed the
other in value, when any one hath computed, he will then see how much
labour makes the far greatest part of the value of things we enjoy in
this world; and the ground which produces the materials is scarce to
be reckoned in as any, or at most, but a very small part of it; so
little, that even amongst us, land that is left wholly to nature,
that hath no improvement of pasturage, tillage, or planting, is
called, as indeed it is, waste; and we shall find the benefit of it
amount to little more than nothing. 43. An acre of land that bears here twenty
bushels of wheat, and another in America, which, with the same
husbandry, would do the like, are, without doubt, of the same
natural, intrinsic value. But yet the benefit mankind receives from
one in a year is worth five pounds, and the other possibly not worth
a penny; if all the profit an Indian received from it were to be
valued and sold here, at least I may truly say, not one thousandth.
It is labour, then, which puts the greatest part of value upon land,
without which it would scarcely be worth anything; it is to that we
owe the greatest part of all its useful products; for all that the
straw, bran, bread, of that acre of wheat, is more worth than the
product of an acre of as good land which lies waste is all the effect
of labour. For it is not barely the ploughman's pains, the reaper's
and thresher's toil, and the baker's sweat, is to be counted into the
bread we eat; the labour of those who broke the oxen, who digged and
wrought the iron and stones, who felled and framed the timber
employed about the plough, mill, oven, or any other utensils, which
are a vast number, requisite to this corn, from its sowing to its
being made bread, must all be charged on the account of labour, and
received as an effect of that; Nature and the earth furnished only
the almost worthless materials as in themselves. It would be a
strange catalogue of things that industry provided and made use of
about every loaf of bread before it came to our use if we could trace
them; iron, wood, leather, bark, timber, stone, bricks, coals, lime,
cloth, dyeing-drugs, pitch, tar, masts, ropes, and all the materials
made use of in the ship that brought any of the commodities made use
of by any of the workmen, to any part of the work, all which it would
be almost impossible, at least too long, to reckon up. 44. From all which it is evident, that though
the things of Nature are given in common, man (by being master of
himself, and proprietor of his own person, and the actions or labour
of it) had still in himself the great foundation of property; and
that which made up the great part of what he applied to the support
or comfort of his being, when invention and arts had improved the
conveniences of life, was perfectly his own, and did not belong in
common to others. 45. Thus labour, in the beginning, gave a right
of property, wherever any one was pleased to employ it, upon what was
common, which remained a long while, the far greater part, and is yet
more than mankind makes use of Men at first, for the most part,
contented themselves with what unassisted Nature offered to their
necessities; and though afterwards, in some parts of the world, where
the increase of people and stock, with the use of money, had made
land scarce, and so of some value, the several communities settled
the bounds of their distinct territories, and, by laws, within
themselves, regulated the properties of the private men of their
society, and so, by compact and agreement, settled the property which
labour and industry began. And the leagues that have been made
between several states and kingdoms, either expressly or tacitly
disowning all claim and right to the land in the other's possession,
have, by common consent, given up their pretences to their natural
common right, which originally they had to those countries; and so
have, by positive agreement, settled a property amongst themselves,
in distinct parts of the world; yet there are still great tracts of
ground to be found, which the inhabitants thereof, not having joined
with the rest of mankind in the consent of the use of their common
money, lie waste, and are more than the people who dwell on it, do,
or can make use of, and so still lie in common; though this can
scarce happen amongst that part of mankind that have consented to the
use of money. 46. The greatest part of things really useful
to the life of man, and such as the necessity of subsisting made the
first commoners of the world look after -- as it doth the Americans
now -- are generally things of short duration, such as -- if they are
not consumed by use -- will decay and perish of themselves. Gold,
silver, and diamonds are things that fancy or agreement hath put the
value on, more than real use and the necessary support of life. Now
of those good things which Nature hath provided in common, every one
hath a right (as hath been said) to as much as he could use; and had
a property in all he could effect with his labour; all that his
industry could extend to, to alter from the state Nature had put it
in, was his. He that gathered a hundred bushels of acorns or apples
had thereby a property in them; they were his goods as soon as
gathered. He was only to look that he used them before they spoiled,
else he took more than his share, and robbed others. And, indeed, it
was a foolish thing, as well as dishonest, to hoard up more than he
could make use of If he gave away a part to anybody else, so that it
perished not uselessly in his possession, these he also made use of
And if he also bartered away plums that would have rotted in a week,
for nuts that would last good for his eating a whole year, he did no
injury; he wasted not the common stock; destroyed no part of the
portion of goods that belonged to others, so long as nothing perished
uselessly in his hands. Again, if he would give his nuts for a piece
of metal, pleased with its colour, or exchange his sheep for shells,
or wool for a sparkling pebble or a diamond, and keep those by him
all his life, he invaded not the right of others; he might heap up as
much of these durable things as he pleased; the exceeding of the
bounds of his just property not lying in the largeness of his
possession, but the perishing of anything uselessly in it.
47. And thus came in the use of money; some
lasting thing that men might keep without spoiling, and that, by
mutual consent, men would take in exchange for the truly useful but
perishable supports of life. 48. And as different degrees of industry were
apt to give men possessions in different proportions, so this
invention of money gave them the opportunity to continue and enlarge
them. For supposing an island, separate from all possible commerce
with the rest of the world, wherein there were but a hundred
families, but there were sheep, horses, and cows, with other useful
animals, wholesome fruits, and land enough for corn for a hundred
thousand times as many, but nothing in the island, either because of
its commonness or perishableness, fit to supply the place of money.
What reason could any one have there to enlarge his possessions
beyond the use of his family, and a plentiful supply to its
consumption, either in what their own industry produced, or they
could barter for like perishable, useful commodities with others?
Where there is not something both lasting and scarce, and so valuable
to be hoarded up, there men will not be apt to enlarge their
possessions of land, were it never so rich, never so free for them to
take. For I ask, what would a man value ten thousand or an hundred
thousand acres of excellent land, ready cultivated and well stocked,
too, with cattle, in the middle of the inland parts of America, where
he had no hopes of commerce with other parts of the world, to draw
money to him by the sale of the product? It would not be worth the
enclosing, and we should see him give up again to the wild common of
Nature whatever was more than would supply the conveniences of life,
to be had there for him and his family. 49. Thus, in the beginning, all the world was
America, and more so than that is now; for no such thing as money was
anywhere known. Find out something that hath the use and value of
money amongst his neighbours, you shall see the same man will begin
presently to enlarge his possessions. 50. But, since gold and silver, being little
useful to the life of man, in proportion to food, raiment, and
carriage, has its value only from the consent of men -- whereof
labour yet makes in great part the measure -- it is plain that the
consent of men have agreed to a disproportionate and unequal
possession of the earth -- I mean out of the bounds of society and
compact; for in governments the laws regulate it; they having, by
consent, found out and agreed in a way how a man may, rightfully and
without injury, possess more than he himself can make use of by
receiving gold and silver, which may continue long in a man's
possession without decaying for the overplus, and agreeing those
metals should have a value. 51. And thus, I think, it is very easy to
conceive, without any difficulty, how labour could at first begin a
title of property in the common things of Nature, and how the
spending it upon our uses bounded it; so that there could then be no
reason of quarrelling about title, nor any doubt about the largeness
of possession it gave. Right and conveniency went together. For as a
man had a right to all he could employ his labour upon, so he had no
temptation to labour for more than he could make use of. This left no
room for controversy about the title, nor for encroachment on the
right of others. What portion a man carved to himself was easily
seen; and it was useless, as well as dishonest, to carve himself too
much, or take more than he needed.
53. Had but this one thing been well considered
without looking any deeper into the matter, it might perhaps have
kept men from running into those gross mistakes they have made about
this power of parents, which however it might without any great
harshness bear the name of absolute dominion and regal authority,
when under the title of "paternal" power, it seemed appropriated to
the father; would yet have sounded but oddly, and in the very name
shown the absurdity, if this supposed absolute power over children
had been called parental, and thereby discovered that it belonged to
the mother too. For it will but very ill serve the turn of those men
who contend so much for the absolute power and authority of the
fatherhood, as they call it, that the mother should have any share in
it. And it would have but ill supported the monarchy they contend
for, when by the very name it appeared that that fundamental
authority from whence they would derive their government of a single
person only was not placed in one, but two persons jointly. But to
let this of names pass. 54. Though I have said above (2) "That all men
by nature are equal," I cannot be supposed to understand all sorts of
"equality." Age or virtue may give men a just precedency. Excellency
of parts and merit may place others above the common level. Birth may
subject some, and alliance or benefits others, to pay an observance
to those to whom Nature, gratitude, or other respects, may have made
it due; and yet all this consists with the equality which all men are
in respect of jurisdiction or dominion one over another, which was
the equality I there spoke of as proper to the business in hand,
being that equal right that every man hath to his natural freedom,
without being subjected to the will or authority of any other
man. 55. Children, I confess, are not born in this
full state of equality, though they are born to it. Their parents
have a sort of rule and jurisdiction over them when they come into
the world, and for some time after, but it is but a temporary one.
The bonds of this subjection are like the swaddling clothes they are
wrapt up in and supported by in the weakness of their infancy. Age
and reason as they grow up loosen them, till at length they drop
quite off, and leave a man at his own free disposal. 56. Adam was created a perfect man, his body
and mind in full possession of their strength and reason, and so was
capable from the first instance of his being to provide for his own
support and preservation, and govern his actions according to the
dictates of the law of reason God had implanted in him. From him the
world is peopled with his descendants, who are all born infants, weak
and helpless, without knowledge or understanding. But to supply the
defects of this imperfect state till the improvement of growth and
age had removed them, Adam and Eve, and after them all parents were,
by the law of Nature, under an obligation to preserve, nourish and
educate the children they had begotten, not as their own workmanship,
but the workmanship of their own Maker, the Almighty, to whom they
were to be accountable for them. 57. The law that was to govern Adam was the
same that was to govern all his posterity, the law of reason. But his
offspring having another way of entrance into the world, different
from him, by a natural birth, that produced them ignorant, and
without the use of reason, they were not presently under that law.
For nobody can be under a law that is not promulgated to him; and
this law being promulgated or made known by reason only, he that is
not come to the use of his reason cannot be said to be under this
law; and Adam's children being not presently as soon as born under
this law of reason, were not presently free. For law, in its true
notion, is not so much the limitation as the direction of a free and
intelligent agent to his proper interest, and prescribes no farther
than is for the general good of those under that law. Could they be
happier without it, the law, as a useless thing, would of itself
vanish; and that ill deserves the name of confinement which hedges us
in only from bogs and precipices. So that however it may be mistaken,
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. For liberty is to be
free from restraint and violence from others, which cannot be where
there is no law; and is not, as we are told, "a liberty for every man
to do what he lists." For who could be free, when every other man's
humour might domineer over him? But a liberty to dispose and order
freely as he lists his person, actions, possessions, and his whole
property within the allowance of those laws under which he is, and
therein not to be subject to the arbitrary will of another, but
freely follow his own. 58. The power, then, that parents have over
their children arises from that duty which is incumbent on them, to
take care of their offspring during the imperfect state of childhood.
To inform the mind, and govern the actions of their yet ignorant
nonage, till reason shall take its place and ease them of that
trouble, is what the children want, and the parents are bound to. For
God having given man an understanding to direct his actions, has
allowed him a freedom of will and liberty of acting, as properly
belonging thereunto within the bounds of that law he is under. But
whilst he is in an estate wherein he has no understanding of his own
to direct his will, he is not to have any will of his own to follow.
He that understands for him must will for him too; he must prescribe
to his will, and regulate his actions, but when he comes to the
estate that made his father a free man, the son is a free man
too. 59. This holds in all the laws a man is under,
whether natural or civil. Is a man under the law of Nature? What made
him free of that law? what gave him a free disposing of his property,
according to his own will, within the compass of that law? I answer,
an estate wherein he might be supposed capable to know that law, that
so he might keep his actions within the bounds of it. When he has
acquired that state, he is presumed to know how far that law is to be
his guide, and how far he may make use of his freedom, and so comes
to have it; till then, somebody else must guide him, who is presumed
to know how far the law allows a liberty. If such a state of reason,
such an age of discretion made him free, the same shall make his son
free too. Is a man under the law of England? what made him free of
that law -- that is, to have the liberty to dispose of his actions
and possessions, according to his own will, within the permission of
that law? a capacity of knowing that law. Which is supposed, by that
law, at the age of twenty-one, and in some cases sooner. If this made
the father free, it shall make the son free too. Till then, we see
the law allows the son to have no will, but he is to be guided by the
will of his father or guardian, who is to understand for him. And if
the father die and fail to substitute a deputy in this trust, if he
hath not provided a tutor to govern his son during his minority,
during his want of understanding, the law takes care to do it: some
other must govern him and be a will to him till he hath attained to a
state of freedom, and his understanding be fit to take the government
of his will. But after that the father and son are equally free, as
much as tutor and pupil, after nonage, equally subjects of the same
law together, without any dominion left in the father over the life,
liberty, or estate of his son, whether they be only in the state and
under the law of Nature, or under the positive laws of an established
government. 60. But if through defects that may happen out
of the ordinary course of Nature, any one comes not to such a degree
of reason wherein he might be supposed capable of knowing the law,
and so living within the rules of it, he is never capable of being a
free man, he is never let loose to the disposure of his own will;
because he knows no bounds to it, has not understanding, its proper
guide, but is continued under the tuition and government of others
all the time his own understanding is incapable of that charge. And
so lunatics and idiots are never set free from the government of
their parents: "Children who are not as yet come unto those years
whereat they may have, and innocents, which are excluded by a natural
defect from ever having." Thirdly: "Madmen, which, for the present,
cannot possibly have the use of right reason to guide themselves,
have, for their guide, the reason that guideth other men which are
tutors over them, to seek and procure their good for them," says
Hooker (Eccl. Pol., lib. i., s. 7). All which seems no more than that
duty which God and Nature has laid on man, as well as other
creatures, to preserve their offspring till they can be able to shift
for themselves, and will scarce amount to an instance or proof of
parents' regal authority. 61. Thus we are born free as we are born
rational; not that we have actually the exercise of either: age that
brings one, brings with it the other too. And thus we see how natural
freedom and subjection to parents may consist together, and are both
founded on the same principle. A child is free by his father's title,
by his father's understanding, which is to govern him till he hath it
of his own. The freedom of a man at years of discretion, and the
subjection of a child to his parents, whilst yet short of it, are so
consistent and so distinguishable that the most blinded contenders
for monarchy, "by right of fatherhood," cannot miss of it; the most
obstinate cannot but allow of it. For were their doctrine all true,
were the right heir of Adam now known, and, by that title, settled a
monarch in his throne, invested with all the absolute unlimited power
Sir Robert Filmer talks of, if he should die as soon as his heir were
born, must not the child, notwithstanding he were never so free,
never so much sovereign, be in subjection to his mother and nurse, to
tutors and governors, till age and education brought him reason and
ability to govern himself and others? The necessities of his life,
the health of his body, and the information of his mind would require
him to be directed by the will of others and not his own; and yet
will any one think that this restraint and subjection were
inconsistent with, or spoiled him of, that liberty or sovereignty he
had a right to, or gave away his empire to those who had the
government of his nonage? This government over him only prepared him
the better and sooner for it. If anybody should ask me when my son is
of age to be free, I shall answer, just when his monarch is of age to
govern. "But at what time," says the judicious Hooker (Eccl. Pol.,
lib. i., s. 6), "a man may be said to have attained so far forth the
use of reason as sufficeth to make him capable of those laws whereby
he is then bound to guide his actions; this is a great deal more easy
for sense to discern than for any one, by skill and learning, to
determine." 62. Commonwealths themselves take notice of,
and allow that there is a time when men are to begin to act like free
men, and therefore, till that time, require not oaths of fealty or
allegiance, or other public owning of, or submission to, the
government of their countries. 63. The freedom then of man, and liberty of
acting according to his own will, is grounded on his having reason,
which is able to instruct him in that law he is to govern himself by,
and make him know how far he is left to the freedom of his own will.
To turn him loose to an unrestrained liberty, before he has reason to
guide him, is not the allowing him the privilege of his nature to be
free, but to thrust him out amongst brutes, and abandon him to a
state as wretched and as much beneath that of a man as theirs. This
is that which puts the authority into the parents' hands to govern
the minority of their children. God hath made it their business to
employ this care on their offspring, and hath placed in them suitable
inclinations of tenderness and concern to temper this power, to apply
it as His wisdom designed it, to the children's good as long as they
should need to be under it. 64. But what reason can hence advance this care
of the parents due to their offspring into an absolute, arbitrary
dominion of the father, whose power reaches no farther than by such a
discipline as he finds most effectual to give such strength and
health to their bodies, such vigour and rectitude to their minds, as
may best fit his children to be most useful to themselves and others,
and, if it be necessary to his condition, to make them work when they
are able for their own subsistence; but in this power the mother,
too, has her share with the father. 65. Nay, this power so little belongs to the
father by any peculiar right of Nature, but only as he is guardian of
his children, that when he quits his care of them he loses his power
over them, which goes along with their nourishment and education, to
which it is inseparably annexed, and belongs as much to the
foster-father of an exposed child as to the natural father of
another. So little power does the bare act of begetting give a man
over his issue, if all his care ends there, and this be all the title
he hath to the name and authority of a father. And what will become
of this paternal power in that part of the world where one woman hath
more than one husband at a time? or in those parts of America where,
when the husband and wife part, which happens frequently, the
children are all left to the mother, follow her, and are wholly under
her care and provision? And if the father die whilst the children are
young, do they not naturally everywhere owe the same obedience to
their mother, during their minority, as to their father, were he
alive? And will any one say that the mother hath a legislative power
over her children that she can make standing rules which shall be of
perpetual obligation, by which they ought to regulate all the
concerns of their property, and bound their liberty all the course of
their lives, and enforce the observation of them with capital
punishments? For this is the proper power of the magistrate, of which
the father hath not so much as the shadow. His command over his
children is but temporary, and reaches not their life or property. It
is but a help to the weakness and imperfection of their nonage, a
discipline necessary to their education. And though a father may
dispose of his own possessions as he pleases when his children are
out of danger of perishing for want, yet his power extends not to the
lives or goods which either their own industry, or another's bounty,
has made theirs, nor to their liberty neither when they are once
arrived to the enfranchisement of the years of discretion. The
father's empire then ceases, and he can from thenceforward no more
dispose of the liberty of his son than that of any other man. And it
must be far from an absolute or perpetual jurisdiction from which a
man may withdraw himself, having licence from Divine authority to
"leave father and mother and cleave to his wife." 66. But though there be a time when a child
comes to be as free from subjection to the will and command of his
father as he himself is free from subjection to the will of anybody
else, and they are both under no other restraint but that which is
common to them both, whether it be the law of Nature or municipal law
of their country, yet this freedom exempts not a son from that honour
which he ought, by the law of God and Nature, to pay his parents, God
having made the parents instruments in His great design of continuing
the race of mankind and the occasions of life to their children. As
He hath laid on them an obligation to nourish, preserve, and bring up
their offspring, so He has laid on the children a perpetual
obligation of honouring their parents, which, containing in it an
inward esteem and reverence to be shown by all outward expressions,
ties up the child from anything that may ever injure or affront,
disturb or endanger the happiness or life of those from whom he
received his, and engages him in all actions of defence, relief,
assistance, and comfort of those by whose means he entered into being
and has been made capable of any enjoyments of life. From this
obligation no state, no freedom, can absolve children. But this is
very far from giving parents a power of command over their children,
or an authority to make laws and dispose as they please of their
lives or liberties. It is one thing to owe honour, respect,
gratitude, and assistance; another to require an absolute obedience
and submission. The honour due to parents a monarch on his throne
owes his mother, and yet this lessens not his authority nor subjects
him to her government. 67. The subjection of a minor places in the
father a temporary government which terminates with the minority of
the child; and the honour due from a child places in the parents a
perpetual right to respect, reverence, support, and compliance, to
more or less, as the father's care, cost, and kindness in his
education has been more or less, and this ends not with minority, but
holds in all parts and conditions of a man's life. The want of
distinguishing these two powers which the father hath, in the right
of tuition, during minority, and the right of honour all his life,
may perhaps have caused a great part of the mistakes about this
matter. For, to speak properly of them, the first of these is rather
the privilege of children and duty of parents than any prerogative of
paternal power. The nourishment and education of their children is a
charge so incumbent on parents for their children's good, that
nothing can absolve them from taking care of it. And though the power
of commanding and chastising them go along with it, yet God hath
woven into the principles of human nature such a tenderness for their
offspring, that there is little fear that parents should use their
power with too much rigour; the excess is seldom on the severe side,
the strong bias of nature drawing the other way. And therefore God
Almighty, when He would express His gentle dealing with the
Israelites, He tells them that though He chastened them, "He
chastened them as a man chastens his son" (Deut. 8. 5) -- i.e., with
tenderness and affection, and kept them under no severer discipline
than what was absolutely best for them, and had been less kindness,
to have slackened. This is that power to which children are commanded
obedience, that the pains and care of their parents may not be
increased or ill-rewarded. 68. On the other side, honour and support all
that which gratitude requires to return; for the benefits received by
and from them is the indispensable duty of the child and the proper
privilege of the parents. This is intended for the parents'
advantage, as the other is for the child's; though education, the
parents' duty, seems to have most power, because the ignorance and
infirmities of childhood stand in need of restraint and correction,
which is a visible exercise of rule and a kind of dominion. And that
duty which is comprehended in the word "honour" requires less
obedience, though the obligation be stronger on grown than younger
children. For who can think the command, "Children, obey your
parents," requires in a man that has children of his own the same
submission to his father as it does in his yet young children to him,
and that by this precept he were bound to obey all his father's
commands, if, out of a conceit of authority, he should have the
indiscretion to treat him still as a boy? 69. The first part, then, of paternal power, or
rather duty, which is education, belongs so to the father that it
terminates at a certain season. When the business of education is
over it ceases of itself, and is also alienable before. For a man may
put the tuition of his son in other hands; and he that has made his
son an apprentice to another has discharged him, during that time, of
a great part of his obedience, both to himself and to his mother. But
all the duty of honour, the other part, remains nevertheless entire
to them; nothing can cancel that. It is so inseparable from them
both, that the father's authority cannot dispossess the mother of
this right, nor can any man discharge his son from honouring her that
bore him. But both these are very far from a power to make laws, and
enforcing them with penalties that may reach estate, liberty, limbs,
and life. The power of commanding ends with nonage, and though after
that honour and respect, support and defence, and whatsoever
gratitude can oblige a man to, for the highest benefits he is
naturally capable of be always due from a son to his parents, yet all
this puts no sceptre into the father's hand, no sovereign power of
commanding. He has no dominion over his son's property or actions,
nor any right that his will should prescribe to his son's in all
things; however, it may become his son in many things, not very
inconvenient to him and his family, to pay a deference to it.
70. A man may owe honour and respect to an
ancient or wise man, defence to his child or friend, relief and
support to the distressed, and gratitude to a benefactor, to such a
degree that all he has, all he can do, cannot sufficiently pay it.
But all these give no authority, no right of making laws to any one
over him from whom they are owing. And it is plain all this is due,
not to the bare title of father, not only because as has been said,
it is owing to the mother too, but because these obligations to
parents, and the degrees of what is required of children, may be
varied by the different care and kindness trouble and expense, is
often employed upon one child more than another. 71. This shows the reason how it comes to pass
that parents in societies, where they themselves are subjects, retain
a power over their children and have as much right to their
subjection as those who are in the state of Nature, which could not
possibly be if all political power were only paternal, and that, in
truth, they were one and the same thing; for then, all paternal power
being in the prince, the subject could naturally have none of it. But
these two powers, political and paternal, are so perfectly distinct
and separate, and built upon so different foundations, and given to
so different ends, that every subject that is a father has as much a
paternal power over his children as the prince has over his. And
every prince that has parents owes them as much filial duty and
obedience as the meanest of his subjects do to theirs, and can
therefore contain not any part or degree of that kind of dominion
which a prince or magistrate has over his subject. 72. Though the obligation on the parents to
bring up their children, and the obligation on children to honour
their parents, contain all the power, on the one hand, and submission
on the other, which are proper to this relation, yet there is another
power ordinarily in the father, whereby he has a tie on the obedience
of his children, which, though it be common to him with other men,
yet the occasions of showing it, almost constantly happening to
fathers in their private families and in instances of it elsewhere
being rare, and less taken notice of, it passes in the world for a
part of "paternal jurisdiction." And this is the power men generally
have to bestow their estates on those who please them best. The
possession of the father being the expectation and inheritance of the
children ordinarily, in certain proportions, according to the law and
custom of each country, yet it is commonly in the father's power to
bestow it with a more sparing or liberal hand, according as the
behaviour of this or that child hath comported with his will and
humour. 73. This is no small tie to the obedience of
children; and there being always annexed to the enjoyment of land a
submission to the government of the country of which that land is a
part, it has been commonly supposed that a father could oblige his
posterity to that government of which he himself was a subject, that
his compact held them; whereas, it being only a necessary condition
annexed to the land which is under that government, reaches only
those who will take it on that condition, and so is no natural tie or
engagement, but a voluntary submission; for every man's children
being, by Nature, as free as himself or any of his ancestors ever
were, may, whilst they are in that freedom, choose what society they
will join themselves to, what commonwealth they will put themselves
under. But if they will enjoy the inheritance of their ancestors,
they must take it on the same terms their ancestors had it, and
submit to all the conditions annexed to such a possession. By this
power, indeed, fathers oblige their children to obedience to
themselves even when they are past minority, and most commonly, too,
subject them to this or that political power. But neither of these by
any peculiar right of fatherhood, but by the reward they have in
their hands to enforce and recompense such a compliance, and is no
more power than what a Frenchman has over an Englishman, who, by the
hopes of an estate he will leave him, will certainly have a strong
tie on his obedience; and if when it is left him, he will enjoy it,
he must certainly take it upon the conditions annexed to the
possession of land in that country where it lies, whether it be
France or England. 74. To conclude, then, though the father's
power of commanding extends no farther than the minority of his
children, and to a degree only fit for the discipline and government
of that age; and though that honour and respect, and all that which
the Latins called piety, which they indispensably owe to their
parents all their lifetime, and in all estates, with all that support
and defence, is due to them, gives the father no power of governing
-- i.e., making laws and exacting penalties on his children; though
by this he has no dominion over the property or actions of his son,
yet it is obvious to conceive how easy it was, in the first ages of
the world, and in places still where the thinness of people gives
families leave to separate into unpossessed quarters, and they have
room to remove and plant themselves in yet vacant habitations, for
the father of the family to become the prince of it;3 he had
been a ruler from the beginning of the infancy of his children; and
when they were grown up, since without some government it would be
hard for them to live together, it was likeliest it should, by the
express or tacit consent of the children, be in the father, where it
seemed, without any change, barely to continue. And when, indeed,
nothing more was required to it than the permitting the father to
exercise alone in his family that executive power of the law of
Nature which every free man naturally hath, and by that permission
resigning up to him a monarchical power whilst they remained in it.
But that this was not by any paternal right, but only by the consent
of his children, is evident from hence, that nobody doubts but if a
stranger, whom chance or business had brought to his family, had
there killed any of his children, or committed any other act, he
might condemn and put him to death, or otherwise have punished him as
well as any of his children. which was impossible he should do by
virtue of any paternal authority over one who was not his child, but
by virtue of that executive power of the law of Nature which, as a
man, he had a right to; and he alone could punish him in his family
where the respect of his children had laid by the exercise of such a
power, to give way to the dignity and authority they were willing
should remain in him above the rest of his family. 75. Thus it was easy and almost natural for
children, by a tacit and almost natural consent, to make way for the
father's authority and government. They had been accustomed in their
childhood to follow his direction, and to refer their little
differences to him; and when they were men, who was fitter to rule
them? Their little properties and less covetousness seldom afforded
greater controversies; and when any should arise, where could they
have a fitter umpire than he, by whose care they had every one been
sustained and brought up. and who had a tenderness for them all? It
is no wonder that they made no distinction betwixt minority and full
age, nor looked after one-and-twenty, or any other age, that might
make them the free disposers of themselves and fortunes, when they
could have no desire to be out of their pupilage. The government they
had been under during it continued still to be more their protection
than restraint; and they could nowhere find a greater security to
their peace, liberties, and fortunes than in the rule of a
father. 76. Thus the natural fathers of families, by an
insensible change, became the politic monarchs of them too; and as
they chanced to live long, and leave able and worthy heirs for
several successions or otherwise, so they laid the foundations of
hereditary or elective kingdoms under several constitutions and
manors, according as chance, contrivance, or occasions happened to
mould them. But if princes have their titles in the father's right,
and it be a sufficient proof of the natural right of fathers to
political authority, because they commonly were those in whose hands
we find, de facto, the exercise of government, I say, if this
argument be good, it will as strongly prove that all princes, nay,
princes only, ought to be priests, since it is as certain that in the
beginning "the father of the family was priest, as that he was ruler
in his own household."
78. Conjugal society is made by a voluntary
compact between man and woman, and though it consist chiefly in such
a communion and right in one another's bodies as is necessary to its
chief end, procreation, yet it draws with it mutual support and
assistance, and a communion of interests too, as necessary not only
to unite their care and affection, but also necessary to their common
offspring, who have a right to be nourished and maintained by them
till they are able to provide for themselves. 79. For the end of conjunction between male and
female being not barely procreation, but the continuation of the
species, this conjunction betwixt male and female ought to last, even
after procreation, so long as is necessary to the nourishment and
support of the young ones, who are to be sustained by those that got
them till they are able to shift and provide for themselves. This
rule, which the infinite wise Maker hath set to the works of His
hands, we find the inferior creatures steadily obey. In those
vivaporous animals which feed on grass the conjunction between male
and female lasts no longer than the very act of copulation, because
the teat of the dam being sufficient to nourish the young till it be
able to feed on grass. the male only begets, but concerns not himself
for the female or young, to whose sustenance he can contribute
nothing. But in beasts of prey the conjunction lasts longer because
the dam, not being able well to subsist herself and nourish her
numerous offspring by her own prey alone (a more laborious as well as
more dangerous way of living than by feeding on grass), the
assistance of the male is necessary to the maintenance of their
common family, which cannot subsist till they are able to prey for
themselves, but by the joint care of male and female. The same is
observed in all birds (except some domestic ones, where plenty of
food excuses the cock from feeding and taking care of the young
brood), whose young, needing food in the nest, the cock and hen
continue mates till the young are able to use their wings and provide
for themselves. 80. And herein, I think, lies the chief, if not
the only reason, why the male and female in mankind are tied to a
longer conjunction than other creatures -- viz., because the female
is capable of conceiving, and, de facto, is commonly with child
again, and brings forth too a new birth, long before the former is
out of a dependency for support on his parents' help and able to
shift for himself and has all the assistance due to him from his
parents, whereby the father, who is bound to take care for those he
hath begot, is under an obligation to continue in conjugal society
with the same woman longer than other creatures, whose young, being
able to subsist of themselves before the time of procreation returns
again, the conjugal bond dissolves of itself, and they are at liberty
till Hymen, at his usual anniversary season, summons them again to
choose new mates. Wherein one cannot but admire the wisdom of the
great Creator, who, having given to man an ability to lay up for the
future as well as supply the present necessity, hath made it
necessary that society of man and wife should be more lasting than of
male and female amongst other creatures, that so their industry might
be encouraged, and their interest better united, to make provision
and lay up goods for their common issue, which uncertain mixture, or
easy and frequent solutions of conjugal society, would mightily
disturb. 81. But though these are ties upon mankind
which make the conjugal bonds more firm and lasting in a man than the
other species of animals, yet it would give one reason to inquire why
this compact, where procreation and education are secured and
inheritance taken care for, may not be made determinable, either by
consent, or at a certain time, or upon certain conditions, as well as
any other voluntary compacts, there being no necessity, in the nature
of the thing, nor to the ends of it, that it should always be for
life -- I mean, to such as are under no restraint of any positive law
which ordains all such contracts to be perpetual. 82. But the husband and wife, though they have
but one common concern, yet having different understandings, will
unavoidably sometimes have different wills too. It therefore being
necessary that the last determination (i.e., the rule) should be
placed somewhere, it naturally falls to the man's share as the abler
and the stronger. But this, reaching but to the things of their
common interest and property, leaves the wife in the full and true
possession of what by contract is her peculiar right, and at least
gives the husband no more power over her than she has over his life;
the power of the husband being so far from that of an absolute
monarch that the wife has, in many cases, a liberty to separate from
him where natural right or their contract allows it, whether that
contract be made by themselves in the state of Nature or by the
customs or laws of the country they live in, and the children, upon
such separation, fall to the father or mother's lot as such contract
does determine. 83. For all the ends of marriage being to be
obtained under politic government, as well as in the state of Nature,
the civil magistrate doth not abridge the right or power of either,
naturally necessary to those ends -- viz., procreation and mutual
support and assistance whilst they are together, but only decides any
controversy that may arise between man and wife about them. If it
were otherwise, and that absolute sovereignty and power of life and
death naturally belonged to the husband, and were necessary to the
society between man and wife, there could be no matrimony in any of
these countries where the husband is allowed no such absolute
authority. But the ends of matrimony requiring no such power in the
husband, it was not at all necessary to it. The condition of conjugal
society put it not in him; but whatsoever might consist with
procreation and support of the children till they could shift for
themselves -- mutual assistance, comfort, and maintenance -- might be
varied and regulated by that contract which first united them in that
society, nothing being necessary to any society that is not necessary
to the ends for which it is made. 84. The society betwixt parents and children,
and the distinct rights and powers belonging respectively to them, I
have treated of so largely in the foregoing chapter that I shall not
here need to say anything of it; and I think it is plain that it is
far different from a politic society. 85. Master and servant are names as old as
history, but given to those of far different condition; for a free
man makes himself a servant to another by selling him for a certain
time the service he undertakes to do in exchange for wages he is to
receive; and though this commonly puts him into the family of his
master, and under the ordinary discipline thereof, yet it gives the
master but a temporary power over him, and no greater than what is
contained in the contract between them. But there is another sort of
servant which by a peculiar name we call slaves, who being captives
taken in a just war are, by the right of Nature, subjected to the
absolute dominion and arbitrary power of their masters. These men
having, as I say, forfeited their lives and, with it, their
liberties, and lost their estates, and being in the state of slavery,
not capable of any property, cannot in that state be considered as
any part of civil society, the chief end whereof is the preservation
of property. 86. Let us therefore consider a master of a
family with all these subordinate relations of wife, children,
servants and slaves, united under the domestic rule of a family, with
what resemblance soever it may have in its order, offices, and number
too, with a little commonwealth, yet is very far from it both in its
constitution, power, and end; or if it must be thought a monarchy,
and the paterfamilias the absolute monarch in it, absolute monarchy
will have but a very shattered and short power, when it is plain by
what has been said before, that the master of the family has a very
distinct and differently limited power both as to time and extent
over those several persons that are in it; for excepting the slave
(and the family is as much a family, and his power as paterfamilias
as great, whether there be any slaves in his family or no) he has no
legislative power of life and death over any of them, and none too
but what a mistress of a family may have as well as he. And he
certainly can have no absolute power over the whole family who has
but a very limited one over every individual in it. But how a family,
or any other society of men, differ from that which is properly
political society, we shall best see by considering wherein political
society itself consists. 87. Man being born, as has been proved, with a
title to perfect freedom and an uncontrolled enjoyment of all the
rights and privileges of the law of Nature, equally with any other
man, or number of men in the world, hath by nature a power not only
to preserve his property -- that is, his life, liberty, and estate,
against the injuries and attempts of other men, but to judge of and
punish the breaches of that law in others, as he is persuaded the
offence deserves, even with death itself, in crimes where the
heinousness of the fact, in his opinion, requires it. But because no
political society can be, nor subsist, without having in itself the
power to preserve the property, and in order thereunto punish the
offences of all those of that society, there, and there only, is
political society where every one of the members hath quitted this
natural power, resigned it up into the hands of the community in all
cases that exclude him not from appealing for protection to the law
established by it. And thus all private judgment of every particular
member being excluded, the community comes to be umpire, and by
understanding indifferent rules and men authorised by the community
for their execution, decides all the differences that may happen
between any members of that society concerning any matter of right,
and punishes those offences which any member hath committed against
the society with such penalties as the law has established; whereby
it is easy to discern who are, and are not, in political society
together. Those who are united into one body, and have a common
established law and judicature to appeal to, with authority to decide
controversies between them and punish offenders, are in civil society
one with another; but those who have no such common appeal, I mean on
earth, are still in the state of Nature, each being where there is no
other, judge for himself and executioner; which is, as I have before
showed it, the perfect state of Nature. 88. And thus the commonwealth comes by a power
to set down what punishment shall belong to the several
transgressions they think worthy of it, committed amongst the members
of that society (which is the power of making laws), as well as it
has the power to punish any injury done unto any of its members by
any one that is not of it (which is the power of war and peace); and
all this for the preservation of the property of all the members of
that society, as far as is possible. But though every man entered
into society has quitted his power to punish offences against the law
of Nature in prosecution of his own private judgment, yet with the
judgment of offences which he has given up to the legislative, in all
cases where he can appeal to the magistrate, he has given up a right
to the commonwealth to employ his force for the execution of the
judgments of the commonwealth whenever he shall be called to it,
which, indeed, are his own judgements, they being made by himself or
his representative. And herein we have the original of the
legislative and executive power of civil society, which is to judge
by standing laws how far offences are to be punished when committed
within the commonwealth; and also by occasional judgments founded on
the present circumstances of the fact, how far injuries from without
are to be vindicated, and in both these to employ all the force of
all the members when there shall be need. 89. Wherever, therefore, any number of men so
unite into one society as to quit every one his executive power of
the law of Nature, and to resign it to the public, there and there
only is a political or civil society. And this is done wherever any
number of men, in the state of Nature, enter into society to make one
people one body politic under one supreme government: or else when
any one joins himself to, and incorporates with any government
already made. For hereby he authorises the society, or which is all
one, the legislative thereof, to make laws for him as the public good
of the society shall require, to the execution whereof his own
assistance (as to his own decrees) is due. And this puts men out of a
state of Nature into that of a commonwealth, by setting up a judge on
earth with authority to determine all the controversies and redress
the injuries that may happen to any member of the commonwealth, which
judge is the legislative or magistrates appointed by it. And wherever
there are any number of men, however associated, that have no such
decisive power to appeal to, there they are still in the state of
Nature. 90. And hence it is evident that absolute
monarchy, which by some men is counted for the only government in the
world, is indeed inconsistent with civil society, and so can be not
form of civil government at all. For the end of civil society being
to avoid and remedy those inconveniences of the state of Nature which
necessarily follow from every man's being judge in his own case, by
setting up a known authority to which every one of that society may
appeal upon any injury received, or controversy that may arise, and
which every one of the society ought to obey.4 Wherever
any persons are who have not such an authority to appeal to, and
decide any difference between them there, those persons are still in
the state of Nature. And so is every absolute prince in respect of
those who are under his dominion. 91. For he being supposed to have all, both
legislative and executive, power in himself alone, there is no judge
to be found, no appeal lies open to any one, who may fairly and
indifferently, and with authority decide, and from whence relief and
redress may be expected of any injury or inconveniency that may be
suffered from him, or by his order. So that such a man, however
entitled, Czar, or Grand Signior, or how you please, is as much in
the state of Nature, with all under his dominion, as he is with the
rest of mankind. For wherever any two men are, who have no standing
rule and common judge to appeal to on earth, for the determination of
controversies of right betwixt them, there they are still in the
state of Nature, and under all the inconveniencies of it, with only
this woeful difference to the subject, or rather slave of an absolute
prince.5 That whereas, in the ordinary state of Nature, he has a
liberty to judge of his right, according to the best of his power to
maintain it; but whenever his property is invaded by the will and
order of his monarch, he has not only no appeal, as those in society
ought to have, but, as if he were degraded from the common state of
rational creatures, is denied a liberty to judge of, or defend his
right, and so is exposed to all the misery and inconveniencies that a
man can fear from one, who being in the unrestrained state of Nature,
is yet corrupted with flattery and armed with power. 92. For he that thinks absolute power purifies
men's blood, and corrects the baseness of human nature, need read but
the history of this, or any other age, to be convinced to the
contrary. He that would have been insolent and injurious in the woods
of America would not probably be much better on a throne, where
perhaps learning and religion shall be found
out to justify all that he shall do to his subjects, and the sword
presently silence all those that dare question it. For what the
protection of absolute monarchy is, what kind of fathers of their
countries it makes princes to be, and to what a degree of happiness
and security it carries civil society, where this sort of government
is grown to perfection, he that will look into the late relation of
Ceylon may easily see. 93. In absolute monarchies, indeed, as well as
other governments of the world, the subjects have an appeal to the
law, and judges to decide any controversies, and restrain any
violence that may happen betwixt the subjects themselves, one amongst
another. This every one thinks necessary, and believes; he deserves
to be thought a declared enemy to society and mankind who should go
about to take it away. But whether this be from a true love of
mankind and society, and such a charity as we owe all one to another,
there is reason to doubt. For this is no more than what every man,
who loves his own power, profit, or greatness, may, and naturally
must do, keep those animals from hurting or destroying one another
who labour and drudge only for his pleasure and advantage; and so are
taken care of, not out of any love the master has for them, but love
of himself, and the profit they bring him. For if it be asked what
security, what fence is there in such a state against the violence
and oppression of this absolute ruler, the very question can scarce
be borne. They are ready to tell you that it deserves death only to
ask after safety. Betwixt subject and subject, they will grant, there
must be measures, laws, and judges for their mutual peace and
security. But as for the ruler, he ought to be absolute, and is above
all such circumstances; because he has a power to do more hurt and
wrong, it is right when he does it. To ask how you may be guarded
from or injury on that side, where the strongest hand is to do it, is
presently the voice of faction and rebellion. As if when men,
quitting the state of Nature, entered into society, they agreed that
all of them but one should be under the restraint of laws; but that
he should still retain all the liberty of the state of Nature,
increased with power, and made licentious by impunity. This is to
think that men are so foolish that they take care to avoid what
mischiefs may be done them by polecats or foxes, but are content,
nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions. 94. But, whatever flatterers may talk to amuse
people's understandings, it never hinders men from feeling; and when
they perceive that any man, in what station soever, is out of the
bounds of the civil society they are of, and that they have no
appeal, on earth, against any harm they may receive from him, they
are apt to think themselves in the state of Nature, in respect of him
whom they find to be so; and to take care, as soon as they can, to
have that safety and security, in civil society, for which it was
first instituted, and for which only they entered into it. And
therefore, though perhaps at first, as shall be showed more at large
hereafter, in the following part of this discourse, some one good and
excellent man having got a pre-eminency amongst the rest, had this
deference paid to his goodness and virtue, as to a kind of natural
authority, that the chief rule, with arbitration of their
differences, by a tacit consent devolved into his hands, without any
other caution but the assurance they had of his uprightness and
wisdom; yet when time giving authority, and, as some men would
persuade us, sacredness to customs, which the negligent and
unforeseeing innocence of the first ages began, had brought in
successors of another stamp, the people finding their properties not
secure under the government as then it was6 (whereas
government has no other end but the preservation of property), could
never be safe, nor at rest, nor think themselves in civil society,
till the legislative was so placed in collective bodies of men, call
them senate, parliament, or what you please, by which means every
single person became subject equally with other the meanest men, to
those laws, which he himself, as part of the legislative, had
established; nor could any one, by his own authority, avoid the force
of the law, when once made, nor by any pretence of superiority plead
exemption, thereby to license his own, or the miscarriages of any of
his dependants. No man in civil society can be exempted from the laws
of it. For if any man may do what he thinks fit and there be no
appeal on earth for redress or security against any harm he shall do,
I ask whether he be not perfectly still in the state of Nature, and
so can be no part or member of that civil society, unless any one
will say the state of Nature and civil society are one and the same
thing, which I have never yet found any one so great a patron of
anarchy as to affirm.7
96. For, when any number of men have, by the
consent of every individual, made a community, they have thereby made
that community one body, with a power to act as one body, which is
only by the will and determination of the majority. For that which
acts any community, being only the consent of the individuals of it,
and it being one body, must move one way, it is necessary the body
should move that way whither the greater force carries it, which is
the consent of the majority, or else it is impossible it should act
or continue one body, one community, which the consent of every
individual that united into it agreed that it should; and so every
one is bound by that consent to be concluded by the majority. And
therefore we see that in assemblies empowered to act by positive laws
where no number is set by that positive law which empowers them, the
act of the majority passes for the act of the whole, and of course
determines as having, by the law of Nature and reason, the power of
the whole. 97. And thus every man, by consenting with
others to make one body politic under one government, puts himself
under an obligation to every one of that society to submit to the
determination of the majority, and to be concluded by it; or else
this original compact, whereby he with others incorporates into one
society, would signify nothing, and be no compact if he be left free
and under no other ties than he was in before in the state of Nature.
For what appearance would there be of any compact? What new
engagement if he were no farther tied by any decrees of the society
than he himself thought fit and did actually consent to? This would
be still as great a liberty as he himself had before his compact, or
any one else in the state of Nature, who may submit himself and
consent to any acts of it if he thinks fit. 98. For if the consent of the majority shall
not in reason be received as the act of the whole, and conclude every
individual, nothing but the consent of every individual can make
anything to be the act of the whole, which, considering the
infirmities of health and avocations of business, which in a number
though much less than that of a commonwealth, will necessarily keep
many away from the public assembly; and the variety of opinions and
contrariety of interests which unavoidably happen in all collections
of men, it is next impossible ever to be had. And, therefore, if
coming into society be upon such terms, it will be only like Cato's
coming into the theatre, tantum ut exiret. Such a constitution as
this would make the mighty leviathan of a shorter duration than the
feeblest creatures, and not let it outlast the day it was born in,
which cannot be supposed till we can think that rational creatures
should desire and constitute societies only to be dissolved. For
where the majority cannot conclude the rest, there they cannot act as
one body, and consequently will be immediately dissolved
again. 99. Whosoever, therefore, out of a state of
Nature unite into a community, must be understood to give up all the
power necessary to the ends for which they unite into society to the
majority of the community, unless they expressly agreed in any number
greater than the majority. And this is done by barely agreeing to
unite into one political society, which is all the compact that is,
or needs be, between the individuals that enter into or make up a
commonwealth. And thus, that which begins and actually constitutes
any political society is nothing but the consent of any number of
freemen capable of majority, to unite and incorporate into such a
society. And this is that, and that only, which did or could give
beginning to any lawful government in the world. 100. To this I find two objections made: 1.
That there are no instances to be found in story of a company of men,
independent and equal one amongst another, that met together, and in
this way began and set up a government. 2. It is impossible of right
that men should do so, because all men, being born under government,
they are to submit to that, and are not at liberty to begin a new
one. 101. To the first there is this to answer: That
it is not at all to be wondered that history gives us but a very
little account of men that lived together in the state of Nature. The
inconveniencies of that condition, and the love and want of society,
no sooner brought any number of them together, but they presently
united and in corporated if they designed to continue together. And
if we may not suppose men ever to have been in the state of Nature,
because we hear not much of them in such a state, we may as well
suppose the armies of Salmanasser or Xerxes were never children,
because we hear little of them till they were men and embodied in
armies. Government is everywhere antecedent to records, and letters
seldom come in amongst a people till a long continuation of civil
society has, by other more necessary arts, provided for their safety,
ease, and plenty. And then they begin to look after the history of
their founders, and search into their original when they have
outlived the memory of it. For it is with commonwealths as with
particular persons, they are commonly ignorant of their own births
and infancies; and if they know anything of it, they are beholding
for it to the accidental records that others have kept of it. And
those that we have of the beginning of any polities in the world,
excepting that of the Jews, where God Himself immediately interposed,
and which favours not at all paternal dominion, are all either plain
instances of such a beginning as I have mentioned, or at least have
manifest footsteps of it. 102. He must show a strange inclination to deny
evident matter of fact, when it agrees not with his hypothesis, who
will not allow that the beginning of Rome and Venice were by the
uniting together of several men, free and independent one of another,
amongst whom there was no natural superiority or subjection. And if
Josephus Acosta's word may be taken, he tells us that in many parts
of America there was no government at all. "There are great and
apparent conjectures," says he, "that these men [speaking of those of
Peru] for a long time had neither kings nor commonwealths, but lived
in troops, as they do this day in Florida -- the Cheriquanas, those
of Brazil, and many other nations, which have no certain kings, but,
as occasion is offered in peace or war, they choose their captains as
they please" (lib. i. cap. 25). If it be said, that every man there
was born subject to his father, or the head of his family. that the
subjection due from a child to a father took away not his freedom of
uniting into what political society he thought fit, has been already
proved; but be that as it will, these men, it is evident, were
actually free; and whatever superiority some politicians now would
place in any of them, they themselves claimed it not; but, by
consent, were all equal, till, by the same consent, they set rulers
over themselves. So that their politic societies all began from a
voluntary union, and the mutual agreement of men freely acting in the
choice of their governors and forms of government. 103. And I hope those who went away from
Sparta, with Palantus, mentioned by Justin, will be allowed to have
been freemen independent one of another, and to have set up a
government over themselves by their own consent. Thus I have given
several examples out of history of people, free and in the state of
Nature, that, being met together, incorporated and began a
commonwealth. And if the want of such instances be an argument to
prove that government were not nor could not be so begun, I suppose
the contenders for paternal empire were better let it alone than urge
it against natural liberty; for if they can give so many instances
out of history of governments begun upon paternal right, I think
(though at least an argument from what has been to what should of
right be of no great force) one might, without any great danger,
yield them the cause. But if I might advise them in the case, they
would do well not to search too much into the original of governments
as they have begun de facto, lest they should find at the foundation
of most of them something very little favourable to the design they
promote, and such a power as they contend for. 104. But, to conclude: reason being plain on
our side that men are naturally free; and the examples of history
showing that the governments of the world, that were begun in peace,
had their beginning laid on that foundation, and were made by the
consent of the people; there can be little room for doubt, either
where the right is, or what has been the opinion or practice of
mankind about the first erecting of governments. 105. I will not deny that if we look back, as
far as history will direct us, towards the original of commonwealths,
we shall generally find them under the government and administration
of one man. And I am also apt to believe that where a family was
numerous enough to subsist by itself, and continued entire together,
without mixing with others, as it often happens, where there is much
land and few people, the government commonly began in the father. For
the father having, by the law of Nature, the same power, with every
man else, to punish, as he thought fit, any offences against that
law, might thereby punish his transgressing children, even when they
were men, and out of their pupilage; and they were very likely to
submit to his punishment, and all join with him against the offender
in their turns, giving him thereby power to execute his sentence
against any transgression, and so, in effect, make him the law-maker
and governor over all that remained in conjunction with his family.
He was fittest to be trusted; paternal affection secured their
property and interest under his care, and the custom of obeying him
in their childhood made it easier to submit to him rather than any
other. If, therefore, they must have one to rule them, as government
is hardly to be avoided amongst men that live together, who so likely
to be the man as he that was their common father, unless negligence,
cruelty, or any other defect of mind or body, made him unfit for it?
But when either the father died. and left his next heir -- for want
of age, wisdom, courage, or any other qualities -- less fit for rule,
or where several families met and consented to continue together,
there, it is not to be doubted, but they used their natural freedom
to set up him whom they judged the ablest and most likely to rule
well over them. Conformable hereunto we find the people of America,
who -- living out of the reach of the conquering swords and spreading
domination of the two great empires of Peru and Mexico -- enjoyed
their own natural freedom, though, caeteris paribus, they commonly
prefer the heir of their deceased king; yet, if they find him any way
weak or incapable, they pass him by, and set up the stoutest and
bravest man for their ruler. 106. Thus, though looking back as far as
records give us any account of peopling the world, and the history of
nations, we commonly find the government to be in one hand, yet it
destroys not that which I affirm -- viz., that the beginning of
politic society depends upon the consent of the individuals to join
into and make one society, who, when they are thus incorporated,
might set up what form of government they thought fit. But this
having given occasion to men to mistake and think that, by Nature,
government was monarchical, and belonged to the father, it may not be
amiss here to consider why people, in the beginning, generally
pitched upon this form, which, though perhaps the father's
pre-eminency might, in the first institution of some commonwealths,
give a rise to and place in the beginning the power in one hand, yet
it is plain that the reason that continued the form of government in
a single person was not any regard or respect to paternal authority,
since all petty monarchies -- that is, almost all monarchies, near
their original, have been commonly, at least upon occasion,
elective. 107. First, then, in the beginning of things,
the father's government of the childhood of those sprung from him
having accustomed them to the rule of one man, and taught them that
where it was exercised with care and skill, with affection and love
to those under it, it was sufficient to procure and preserve men (all
the political happiness they sought for in society), it was no wonder
that they should pitch upon and naturally run into that form of
government which, from their infancy, they had been all accustomed
to, and which, by experience, they had found both easy and safe. To
which if we add, that monarchy being simple and most obvious to men,
whom neither experience had instructed in forms of government, nor
the ambition or insolence of empire had taught to beware of the
encroachments of prerogative or the inconveniencies of absolute
power, which monarchy, in succession, was apt to lay claim to and
bring upon them; it was not at all strange that they should not much
trouble themselves to think of methods of restraining any
exorbitances of those to whom they had given the authority over them,
and of balancing the power of government by placing several parts of
it in different hands. They had neither felt the oppression of
tyrannical dominion, nor did the fashion of the age, nor their
possessions or way of living, which afforded little matter for
covetousness or ambition, give them any reason to apprehend or
provide against it; and, therefore, it is no wonder they put
themselves into such a frame of government as was not only, as I
said, most obvious and simple, but also best suited to their present
state and condition, which stood more in need of defence against
foreign invasions and injuries than of multiplicity of laws where
there was but very little property, and wanted not variety of rulers
and abundance of officers to direct and look after their execution
where there were but few trespassers and few offenders. Since, then,
those who liked one another so well as to join into society cannot
but be supposed to have some acquaintance and friendship together,
and some trust one in another, they could not but have greater
apprehensions of others than of one another; and, therefore, their
first care and thought cannot but be supposed to be, how to secure
themselves against foreign force. It was natural for them to put
themselves under a frame of government which might best serve to that
end, and choose the wisest and bravest man to conduct them in their
wars and lead them out against their enemies, and in this chiefly be
their ruler. 108. Thus we see that the kings of the Indians,
in America, which is still a pattern of the first ages in Asia and
Europe, whilst the inhabitants were too few for the country, and want
of people and money gave men no temptation to enlarge their
possessions of land or contest for wider extent of ground, are little
more than generals of their armies; and though they command
absolutely in war, yet at home, and in time of peace, they exercise
very little dominion, and have but a very moderate sovereignty, the
resolutions of peace and war being ordinarily either in the people or
in a council, though the war itself, which admits not of pluralities
of governors, naturally evolves the command into the king's sole
authority. 109. And thus, in Israel itself, the chief
business of their judges and first kings seems to have been to be
captains in war and leaders of their armies, which (besides what is
signified by "going out and in before the people," which was, to
march forth to war and home again at the heads of their forces)
appears plainly in the story of Jephtha. The Ammonites making war
upon Israel, the Gileadites, in fear, send to Jephtha, a bastard of
their family, whom they had cast off, and article with him, if he
will assist them against the Ammonites, to make him their ruler,
which they do in these words: "And the people made him head and
captain over them" (Judges 11. 11), which was, as it seems, all one
as to be judge. "And he judged Israel" (Judges 12. 7) -- that is, was
their captain-general -- "six years." So when Jotham upbraids the
Shechemites with the obligation they had to Gideon, who had been
their judge and ruler, he tells them: "He fought for you, and
adventured his life for, and delivered you out of the hands of
Midian" (Judges 9. 17). Nothing mentioned of him but what he did as a
general, and, indeed, that is all is found in his history, or in any
of the rest of the judges. And Abimelech particularly is called king,
though at most he was but their general. And when, being weary of the
ill-conduct of Samuel's sons, the children of Israel desired a king,
"like all the nations, to judge them, and to go out before them, and
to fight their battles" (1 Sam. 8. 20), God, granting their desire,
says to Samuel, "I will send thee a man, and thou shalt anoint him to
be captain over my people Israel, that he may save my people out of
the hands of the Philistines" (ch. 9. 16). As if the only business of
a king had been to lead out their armies and fight in their defence;
and, accordingly, at his inauguration, pouring a vial of oil upon
him, declares to Saul that "the Lord had anointed him to be captain
over his inheritance" (ch. 10. 1). And therefore those who, after
Saul being solemnly chosen and saluted king by the tribes at Mispah,
were unwilling to have him their king, make no other objection but
this, "How shall this man save us?" (ch. 10. 27), as if they should
have said: "This man is unfit to be our king, not having skill and
conduct enough in war to be able to defend us." And when God resolved
to transfer the government to David, it is in these words: "But now
thy kingdom shall not continue: the Lord hath sought Him a man after
His own heart, and the Lord hath commanded him to be captain over His
people" (ch. 13. 14.). As if the whole kingly authority were nothing
else but to be their general; and therefore the tribes who had stuck
to Saul's family, and opposed David's reign, when they came to Hebron
with terms of submission to him, they tell him, amongst other
arguments, they had to submit to him as to their king, that he was,
in effect, their king in Saul's time, and therefore they had no
reason but to receive him as their king now. "Also," say they, "in
time past, when Saul was king over us, thou wast he that leddest out
and broughtest in Israel, and the Lord said unto thee, Thou shalt
feed my people Israel, and thou shalt be a captain over
Israel." 110. Thus, whether a family, by degrees, grew
up into a commonwealth, and the fatherly authority being continued on
to the elder son, every one in his turn growing up under it tacitly
submitted to it, and the easiness and equality of it not offending
any one, every one acquiesced till time seemed to have confirmed it
and settled a right of succession by prescription; or whether several
families, or the descendants of several families, whom chance,
neighbourhood, or business brought together, united into society; the
need of a general whose conduct might defend them against their
enemies in war, and the great confidence the innocence and sincerity
of that poor but virtuous age, such as are almost all those which
begin governments that ever come to last in the world, gave men one
of another, made the first beginners of commonwealths generally put
the rule into one man's hand, without any other express limitation or
restraint but what the nature of the thing and the end of government
required. It was given them for the public good and safety, and to
those ends, in the infancies of commonwealths, they commonly used it;
and unless they had done so, young societies could not have
subsisted. Without such nursing fathers, without this care of the
governors, all governments would have sunk under the weakness and
infirmities of their infancy, the prince and the people had soon
perished together. 111. But the golden age (though before vain
ambition, and amor sceleratus habendi, evil concupiscence had
corrupted men's minds into a mistake of true power and honour) had
more virtue, and consequently better governors, as well as less
vicious subjects; and there was then no stretching prerogative on the
one side to oppress the people, nor, consequently, on the other, any
dispute about privilege, to lessen or restrain the power of the
magistrate; and so no contest betwixt rulers and people about
governors or government.8 Yet, when
ambition and luxury, in future ages, would retain and increase the
power, without doing the business for which it was given, and aided
by flattery, taught princes to have distinct and separate interests
from their people, men found it necessary to examine more carefully
the original and rights of government, and to find out ways to
restrain the exorbitances and prevent the abuses of that power, which
they having entrusted in another's hands, only for their own good,
they found was made use of to hurt them. 112. Thus we may see how probable it is that
people that were naturally free, and, by their own consent, either
submitted to the government of their father, or united together, out
of different families, to make a government, should generally put the
rule into one man's hands, and choose to be under the conduct of a
single person, without so much, as by express conditions, limiting or
regulating his power, which they thought safe enough in his honesty
and prudence; though they never dreamed of monarchy being jure
Divino, which we never heard of among mankind till it was revealed to
us by the divinity of this last age, nor ever allowed paternal power
to have a right to dominion or to be the foundation of all
government. And thus much may suffice to show that, as far as we have
any light from history, we have reason to conclude that all peaceful
beginnings of government have been laid in the consent of the people.
I say "peaceful," because I shall have occasion, in another place, to
speak of conquest, which some esteem a way of beginning of
governments. The other objection, I find, urged against the
beginning of polities, in the way I have mentioned, is this,
viz.: 113. "That all men being born under government,
some or other, it is impossible any of them should ever be free and
at liberty to unite together and begin a new one, or ever be able to
erect a lawful government." If this argument be good, I ask, How came
so many lawful monarchies into the world? For if anybody, upon this
supposition, can show me any one man, in any age of the world, free
to begin a lawful monarchy, I will be bound to show him ten other
free men at liberty, at the same time, to unite and begin a new
government under a regal or any other form. It being demonstration
that if any one born under the dominion of another may be so free as
to have a right to command others in a new and distinct empire, every
one that is born under the dominion of another may be so free too,
and may become a ruler or subject of a distinct separate government.
And so, by this their own principle, either all men, however born,
are free, or else there is but one lawful prince, one lawful
government in the world; and then they have nothing to do but barely
to show us which that is, which, when they have done, I doubt not but
all mankind will easily agree to pay obedience to him. 114. Though it be a sufficient answer to their
objection to show that it involves them in the same difficulties that
it doth those they use it against, yet I shall endeavour to discover
the weakness of this argument a little farther. "All men," say they, "are born under
government, and therefore they cannot be at liberty to begin a new
one. Every one is born a subject to his father or his prince, and is
therefore under the perpetual tie of subjection and allegiance." It
is plain mankind never owned nor considered any such natural
subjection that they were born in, to one or to the other, that tied
them, without their own consents, to a subjection to them and their
heirs. 115. For there are no examples so frequent in
history, both sacred and profane, as those of men withdrawing
themselves and their obedience from the jurisdiction they were born
under, and the family or community they were bred up in, and setting
up new governments in other places, from whence sprang all that
number of petty commonwealths in the beginning of ages, and which
always multiplied as long as there was room enough, till the stronger
or more fortunate swallowed the weaker; and those great ones, again
breaking to pieces, dissolved into lesser dominions; all which are so
many testimonies against paternal sovereignty, and plainly prove that
it was not the natural right of the father descending to his heirs
that made governments in the beginning; since it was impossible, upon
that ground, there should have been so many little kingdoms but only
one universal monarchy if men had not been at liberty to separate
themselves from their families and their government, be it what it
will that was set up in it, and go and make distinct commonwealths
and other governments as they thought fit. 116. This has been the practice of the world
from its first beginning to this day; nor is it now any more
hindrance to the freedom of mankind, that they are born under
constituted and ancient polities that have established laws and set
forms of government, than if they were born in the woods amongst the
unconfined inhabitants that run loose in them. For those who would
persuade us that by being born under any government we are naturally
subjects to it, and have no more any title or pretence to the freedom
of the state of Nature, have no other reason (bating that of paternal
power, which we have already answered) to produce for it, but only
because our fathers or progenitors passed away their natural liberty,
and thereby bound up themselves and their posterity to a perpetual
subjection to the government which they themselves submitted to. It
is true that whatever engagements or promises any one made for
himself, he is under the obligation of them, but cannot by any
compact whatsoever bind his children or posterity. For his son, when
a man, being altogether as free as the father, any act of the father
can no more give away the liberty of the son than it can of anybody
else. He may, indeed, annex such conditions to the land he enjoyed,
as a subject of any commonwealth, as may oblige his son to be of that
community, if he will enjoy those possessions which were his
father's, because that estate being his father's property, he may
dispose or settle it as he pleases. 117. And this has generally given the occasion
to the mistake in this matter; because commonwealths not permitting
any part of their dominions to be dismembered, nor to be enjoyed by
any but those of their community, the son cannot ordinarily enjoy the
possessions of his father but under the same terms his father did, by
becoming a member of the society, whereby he puts himself presently
under the government he finds there established, as much as any other
subject of that commonweal. And thus the consent of free men, born
under government, which only makes them members of it, being given
separately in their turns, as each comes to be of age, and not in a
multitude together, people take no notice of it, and thinking it not
done at all, or not necessary, conclude they are naturally subjects
as they are men. 118. But it is plain governments themselves
understand it otherwise; they claim no power over the son because of
that they had over the father; nor look on children as being their
subjects, by their fathers being so. If a subject of England have a
child by an Englishwoman in France, whose subject is he? Not the King
of England's; for he must have leave to be admitted to the privileges
of it. Nor the King of France's, for how then has his father a
liberty to bring him away, and breed him as he pleases; and whoever
was judged as a traitor or deserter, if he left, or warred against a
country, for being barely born in it of parents that were aliens
there? It is plain, then, by the practice of governments themselves,
as well as by the law of right reason, that a child is born a subject
of no country nor government. He is under his father's tuition and
authority till he come to age of discretion, and then he is a free
man, at liberty what government he will put himself under, what body
politic he will unite himself to. For if an Englishman's son born in
France be at liberty, and may do so, it is evident there is no tie
upon him by his father being a subject of that kingdom, nor is he
bound up by any compact of his ancestors; and why then hath not his
son, by the same reason, the same liberty, though he be born anywhere
else? Since the power that a father hath naturally over his children
is the same wherever they be born, and the ties of natural
obligations are not bounded by the positive limits of kingdoms and
commonwealths. 119. Every man being, as has been showed,
naturally free, and nothing being able to put him into subjection to
any earthly power, but only his own consent, it is to be considered
what shall be understood to be a sufficient declaration of a man's
consent to make him subject to the laws of any government. There is a
common distinction of an express and a tacit consent, which will
concern our present case. Nobody doubts but an express consent of any
man, entering into any society, makes him a perfect member of that
society, a subject of that government. The difficulty is, what ought
to be looked upon as a tacit consent, and how far it binds -- i.e.,
how far any one shall be looked on to have consented, and thereby
submitted to any government, where he has made no expressions of it
at all. And to this I say, that every man that hath any possession or
enjoyment of any part of the dominions of any government doth hereby
give his tacit consent, and is as far forth obliged to obedience to
the laws of that government, during such enjoyment, as any one under
it, whether this his possession be of land to him and his heirs for
ever, or a lodging only for a week; or whether it be barely
travelling freely on the highway; and, in effect, it reaches as far
as the very being of any one within the territories of that
government. 120. To understand this the better, it is fit
to consider that every man when he at first incorporates himself into
any commonwealth, he, by his uniting himself thereunto, annexes also,
and submits to the community those possessions which he has, or shall
acquire, that do not already belong to any other government. For it
would be a direct contradiction for any one to enter into society
with others for the securing and regulating of property, and yet to
suppose his land, whose property is to be regulated by the laws of
the society, should be exempt from the jurisdiction of that
government to which he himself, and the property of the land, is a
subject. By the same act, therefore, whereby any one unites his
person, which was before free, to any commonwealth, by the same he
unites his possessions, which were before free, to it also; and they
become, both of them, person and possession, subject to the
government and dominion of that commonwealth as long as it hath a
being. Whoever therefore, from thenceforth, by inheritance, purchases
permission, or otherwise enjoys any part of the land so annexed to,
and under the government of that commonweal, must take it with the
condition it is under -- that is, of submitting to the government of
the commonwealth, under whose jurisdiction it is, as far forth as any
subject of it. 121. But since the government has a direct
jurisdiction only over the land and reaches the possessor of it
(before he has actually incorporated himself in the society) only as
he dwells upon and enjoys that, the obligation any one is under by
virtue of such enjoyment to submit to the government begins and ends
with the enjoyment; so that whenever the owner, who has given nothing
but such a tacit consent to the government will, by donation, sale or
otherwise, quit the said possession, he is at liberty to go and
incorporate himself into any other commonwealth, or agree with others
to begin a new one in vacuis locis, in any part of the world they can
find free and unpossessed; whereas he that has once, by actual
agreement and any express declaration, given his consent to be of any
commonweal, is perpetually and indispensably obliged to be, and
remain unalterably a subject to it, and can never be again in the
liberty of the state of Nature, unless by any calamity the government
he was under comes to be dissolved. 122. But submitting to the laws of any country,
living quietly and enjoying privileges and protection under them,
makes not a man a member of that society; it is only a local
protection and homage due to and from all those who, not being in a
state of war, come within the territories belonging to any
government, to all parts whereof the force of its law extends. But
this no more makes a man a member of that society, a perpetual
subject of that commonwealth, than it would make a man a subject to
another in whose family he found it convenient to abide for some
time, though, whilst he continued in it, he were obliged to comply
with the laws and submit to the government he found there. And thus
we see that foreigners, by living all their lives under another
government, and enjoying the privileges and protection of it, though
they are bound, even in conscience, to submit to its administration
as far forth as any denizen, yet do not thereby come to be subjects
or members of that commonwealth. Nothing can make any man so but his
actually entering into it by positive engagement and express promise
and compact. This is that which, I think, concerning the beginning of
political societies, and that consent which makes any one a member of
any commonwealth.
124. The great and chief end, therefore, of men
uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government,
is the preservation of their property; to which in the state of
Nature there are many things wanting. Firstly, there wants an established, settled,
known law, received and allowed by common consent to be the standard
of right and wrong, and the common measure to decide all
controversies between them. For though the law of Nature be plain and
intelligible to all rational creatures, yet men, being biased by
their interest, as well as ignorant for want of study of it, are not
apt to allow of it as a law binding to them in the application of it
to their particular cases. 125. Secondly, in the state of Nature there
wants a known and indifferent judge, with authority to determine all
differences according to the established law. For every one in that
state being both judge and executioner of the law of Nature, men
being partial to themselves, passion and revenge is very apt to carry
them too far, and with too much heat in their own cases, as well as
negligence and unconcernedness, make them too remiss in other
men's. 126. Thirdly, in the state of Nature there
often wants power to back and support the sentence when right, and to
give it due execution. They who by any injustice offended will seldom
fail where they are able by force to make good their injustice. Such
resistance many times makes the punishment dangerous, and frequently
destructive to those who attempt it. 127. Thus mankind, notwithstanding all the
privileges of the state of Nature, being but in an ill condition
while they remain in it are quickly driven into society. Hence it
comes to pass, that we seldom find any number of men live any time
together in this state. The inconveniencies that they are therein
exposed to by the irregular and uncertain exercise of the power every
man has of punishing the transgressions of others, make them take
sanctuary under the established laws of government, and therein seek
the preservation of their property. It is this that makes them so
willingly give up every one his single power of punishing to be
exercised by such alone as shall be appointed to it amongst them, and
by such rules as the community, or those authorised by them to that
purpose, shall agree on. And in this we have the original right and
rise of both the legislative and executive power as well as of the
governments and societies themselves. 128. For in the state of Nature to omit the
liberty he has of innocent delights, a man has two powers. The first
is to do whatsoever he thinks fit for the preservation of himself and
others within the permission of the law of Nature; by which law,
common to them all, he and all the rest of mankind are one community,
make up one society distinct from all other creatures, and were it
not for the corruption and viciousness of degenerate men, there would
be no need of any other, no necessity that men should separate from
this great and natural community, and associate into lesser
combinations. The other power a man has in the state of Nature is the
power to punish the crimes committed against that law. Both these he
gives up when he joins in a private, if I may so call it, or
particular political society, and incorporates into any commonwealth
separate from the rest of mankind. 129. The first power -- viz., of doing
whatsoever he thought fit for the preservation of himself and the
rest of mankind, he gives up to be regulated by laws made by the
society, so far forth as the preservation of himself and the rest of
that society shall require; which laws of the society in many things
confine the liberty he had by the law of Nature. 130. Secondly, the power of punishing he wholly
gives up, and engages his natural force, which he might before employ
in the execution of the law of Nature, by his own single authority,
as he thought fit, to assist the executive power of the society as
the law thereof shall require. For being now in a new state, wherein
he is to enjoy many conveniencies from the labour, assistance, and
society of others in the same community, as well as protection from
its whole strength, he is to part also with as much of his natural
liberty, in providing for himself, as the good, prosperity, and
safety of the society shall require, which is not only necessary but
just, since the other members of the society do the like. 131. But though men when they enter into
society give up the equality, liberty, and executive power they had
in the state of Nature into the hands of the society, to be so far
disposed of by the legislative as the good of the society shall
require, yet it being only with an intention in every one the better
to preserve himself, his liberty and property (for no rational
creature can be supposed to change his condition with an intention to
be worse), the power of the society or legislative constituted by
them can never be supposed to extend farther than the common good,
but is obliged to secure every one's property by providing against
those three defects above mentioned that made the state of Nature so
unsafe and uneasy. And so, whoever has the legislative or supreme
power of any commonwealth, is bound to govern by established standing
laws, promulgated and known to the people, and not by extemporary
decrees, by indifferent and upright judges, who are to decide
controversies by those laws; and to employ the force of the community
at home only in the execution of such laws, or abroad to prevent or
redress foreign injuries and secure the community from inroads and
invasion. And all this to be directed to no other end but the peace,
safety, and public good of the people.
133. By "commonwealth" I must be understood all
along to mean not a democracy, or any form of government, but any
independent community which the Latins signified by the word civitas,
to which the word which best answers in our language is
"commonwealth," and most properly expresses such a society of men
which "community" does not (for there may be subordinate communities
in a government), and "city" much less. And therefore, to avoid
ambiguity, I crave leave to use the word "commonwealth" in that
sense, in which sense I find the word used by King James himself,
which I think to be its genuine signification, which, if anybody
dislike, I consent with him to change it for a better.
134. THE great end of men's entering into
society being the enjoyment of their properties in peace and safety,
and the great instrument and means of that being the laws established
in that society, the first and fundamental positive law of all
commonwealths is the establishing of the legislative power, as the
first and fundamental natural law which is to govern even the
legislative. Itself is the preservation of the society and (as far as
will consist with the public good) of every person in it. This
legislative is not only the supreme power of the commonwealth, but
sacred and unalterable in the hands where the community have once
placed it. Nor can any edict of anybody else, in what form soever
conceived, or by what power soever backed, have the force and
obligation of a law which has not its sanction from that legislative
which the public has chosen and appointed; for without this the law
could not have that which is absolutely necessary to its being a law,
the consent of the society, over whom nobody can have a power to make
laws9 but by their own consent and by authority received from
them; and therefore all the obedience, which by the most solemn ties
any one can be obliged to pay, ultimately terminates in this supreme
power, and is directed by those laws which it enacts. Nor can any
oaths to any foreign power whatsoever, or any domestic subordinate
power, discharge any member of the society from his obedience to the
legislative, acting pursuant to their trust, nor oblige him to any
obedience contrary to the laws so enacted or farther than they do
allow, it being ridiculous to imagine one can be tied ultimately to
obey any power in the society which is not the supreme. 135. Though the legislative, whether placed in
one or more, whether it be always in being or only by intervals,
though it be the supreme power in every commonwealth, yet, first, it
is not, nor can possibly be, absolutely arbitrary over the lives and
fortunes of the people. For it being but the joint power of every
member of the society given up to that person or assembly which is
legislator, it can be no more than those persons had in a state of
Nature before they entered into society, and gave it up to the
community. For nobody can transfer to another more power than he has
in himself, and nobody has an absolute arbitrary power over himself,
or over any other, to destroy his own life, or take away the life or
property of another. A man, as has been proved, cannot subject
himself to the arbitrary power of another; and having, in the state
of Nature, no arbitrary power over the life, liberty, or possession
of another, but only so much as the law of Nature gave him for the
preservation of himself and the rest of mankind, this is all he doth,
or can give up to the commonwealth, and by it to the legislative
power, so that the legislative can have no more than this. Their
power in the utmost bounds of it is limited to the public good of the
society.10 It is a power that hath no other end but preservation,
and therefore can never have a right to destroy, enslave, or
designedly to impoverish the subjects; the obligations of the law of
Nature cease not in society, but only in many cases are drawn closer,
and have, by human laws, known penalties annexed to them to enforce
their observation. Thus the law of Nature stands as an eternal rule
to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make
for, other men's actions must, as well as their own and other men's
actions, be conformable to the law of Nature -- i.e., to the will of
God, of which that is a declaration, and the fundamental law of
Nature being the preservation of mankind, no human sanction can be
good or valid against it. 136. Secondly, the legislative or supreme
authority cannot assume to itself a power to rule by extemporary
arbitrary decrees, but is bound to dispense justice and decide the
rights of the subject by promulgated standing laws,11 and known
authorised judges. For the law of Nature being unwritten, and so
nowhere to be found but in the minds of men, they who, through
passion or interest, shall miscite or misapply it, cannot so easily
be convinced of their mistake where there is no established judge;
and so it serves not as it aught, to determine the rights and fence
the properties of those that live under it, especially where every
one is judge, interpreter, and executioner of it too, and that in his
own case; and he that has right on his side, having ordinarily but
his own single strength, hath not force enough to defend himself from
injuries or punish delinquents. To avoid these inconveniencies which
disorder men's properties in the state of Nature, men unite into
societies that they may have the united strength of the whole society
to secure and defend their properties, and may have standing rules to
bound it by which every one may know what is his. To this end it is
that men give up all their natural power to the society they enter
into, and the community put the legislative power into such hands as
they think fit, with this trust, that they shall be governed by
declared laws, or else their peace, quiet, and property will still be
at the same uncertainty as it was in the state of Nature. 137. Absolute arbitrary power, or governing
without settled standing laws, can neither of them consist with the
ends of society and government, which men would not quit the freedom
of the state of Nature for, and tie themselves up under, were it not
to preserve their lives, liberties, and fortunes, and by stated rules
of right and property to secure their peace and quiet. It cannot be
supposed that they should intend, had they a power so to do, to give
any one or more an absolute arbitrary power over their persons and
estates, and put a force into the magistrate's hand to execute his
unlimited will arbitrarily upon them; this were to put themselves
into a worse condition than the state of Nature, wherein they had a
liberty to defend their right against the injuries of others, and
were upon equal terms of force to maintain it, whether invaded by a
single man or many in combination. Whereas by supposing they have
given up themselves to the absolute arbitrary power and will of a
legislator, they have disarmed themselves, and armed him to make a
prey of them when he pleases; he being in a much worse condition that
is exposed to the arbitrary power of one man who has the command of a
hundred thousand than he that is exposed to the arbitrary power of a
hundred thousand single men, nobody being secure, that his will who
has such a command is better than that of other men, though his force
be a hundred thousand times stronger. And, therefore, whatever form
the commonwealth is under, the ruling power ought to govern by
declared and received laws, and not by extemporary dictates and
undetermined resolutions, for then mankind will be in a far worse
condition than in the state of Nature if they shall have armed one or
a few men with the joint power of a multitude, to force them to obey
at pleasure the exorbitant and unlimited decrees of their sudden
thoughts, or unrestrained, and till that moment, unknown wills,
without having any measures set down which may guide and justify
their actions. For all the power the government has, being only for
the good of the society, as it ought not to be arbitrary and at
pleasure, so it ought to be exercised by established and promulgated
laws, that both the people may know their duty, and be safe and
secure within the limits of the law, and the rulers, too, kept within
their due bounds, and not be tempted by the power they have in their
hands to employ it to purposes, and by such measures as they would
not have known, and own not willingly. 138. Thirdly, the supreme power cannot take
from any man any part of his property without his own consent. For
the preservation of property being the end of government, and that
for which men enter into society, it necessarily supposes and
requires that the people should have property, without which they
must be supposed to lose that by entering into society which was the
end for which they entered into it; too gross an absurdity for any
man to own. Men, therefore, in society having property, they have
such a right to the goods, which by the law of the community are
theirs, that nobody hath a right to take them, or any part of them,
from them without their own consent; without this they have no
property at all. For I have truly no property in that which another
can by right take from me when he pleases against my consent. Hence
it is a mistake to think that the supreme or legislative power of any
commonwealth can do what it will, and dispose of the estates of the
subject arbitrarily, or take any part of them at pleasure. This is
not much to be feared in governments where the legislative consists
wholly or in part in assemblies which are variable, whose members
upon the dissolution of the assembly are subjects under the common
laws of their country, equally with the rest. But in governments
where the legislative is in one lasting assembly, always in being, or
in one man as in absolute monarchies, there is danger still, that
they will think themselves to have a distinct interest from the rest
of the community, and so will be apt to increase their own riches and
power by taking what they think fit from the people. For a man's
property is not at all secure, though there be good and equitable
laws to set the bounds of it between him and his fellow-subjects, if
he who commands those subjects have power to take from any private
man what part he pleases of his property, and use and dispose of it
as he thinks good. 139. But government, into whosesoever hands it
is put, being as I have before shown, entrusted with this condition,
and for this end, that men might have and secure their properties,
the prince or senate, however it may have power to make laws for the
regulating of property between the subjects one amongst another, yet
can never have a power to take to themselves the whole, or any part
of the subjects' property, without their own consent; for this would
be in effect to leave them no property at all. And to let us see that
even absolute power, where it is necessary, is not arbitrary by being
absolute, but is still limited by that reason and confined to those
ends which required it in some cases to be absolute, we need look no
farther than the common practice of martial discipline. For the
preservation of the army, and in it of the whole commonwealth,
requires an absolute obedience to the command of every superior
officer, and it is justly death to disobey or dispute the most
dangerous or unreasonable of them; but yet we see that neither the
sergeant that could command a soldier to march up to the mouth of a
cannon, or stand in a breach where he is almost sure to perish, can
command that soldier to give him one penny of his money; nor the
general that can condemn him to death for deserting his post, or not
obeying the most desperate orders, cannot yet with all his absolute
power of life and death dispose of one farthing of that soldier's
estate, or seize one jot of his goods; whom yet he can command
anything, and hang for the least disobedience. Because such a blind
obedience is necessary to that end for which the commander has his
power -- viz., the preservation of the rest, but the disposing of his
goods has nothing to do with it. 140. It is true governments cannot be supported
without great charge, and it is fit every one who enjoys his share of
the protection should pay out of his estate his proportion for the
maintenance of it. But still it must be with his own consent -- i.e.,
the consent of the majority, giving it either by themselves or their
representatives chosen by them; for if any one shall claim a power to
lay and levy taxes on the people by his own authority, and without
such consent of the people, he thereby invades the fundamental law of
property, and subverts the end of government. For what property have
I in that which another may by right take when he pleases to
himself? 141. Fourthly. The legislative cannot transfer
the power of making laws to any other hands, for it being but a
delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over
to others. The people alone can appoint the form of the commonwealth,
which is by constituting the legislative, and appointing in whose
hands that shall be. And when the people have said, "We will submit,
and be governed by laws made by such men, and in such forms," nobody
else can say other men shall make laws for them; nor can they be
bound by any laws but such as are enacted by those whom they have
chosen and authorised to make laws for them. 142. These are the bounds which the trust that
is put in them by the society and the law of God and Nature have set
to the legislative power of every commonwealth, in all forms of
government. First: They are to govern by promulgated established
laws, not to be varied in particular cases, but to have one rule for
rich and poor, for the favourite at Court, and the countryman at
plough. Secondly: These laws also ought to be designed for no other
end ultimately but the good of the people. Thirdly: They must not
raise taxes on the property of the people without the consent of the
people given by themselves or their deputies. And this properly
concerns only such governments where the legislative is always in
being, or at least where the people have not reserved any part of the
legislative to deputies, to be from time to time chosen by
themselves. Fourthly: Legislative neither must nor can transfer the
power of making laws to anybody else, or place it anywhere but where
the people have.
144. But because the laws that are at once, and
in a short time made, have a constant and lasting force, and need a
perpetual execution, or an attendance thereunto, therefore it is
necessary there should be a power always in being which should see to
the execution of the laws that are made, and remain in force. And
thus the legislative and executive power come often to be
separated. 145. There is another power in every
commonwealth which one may call natural, because it is that which
answers to the power every man naturally had before he entered into
society. For though in a commonwealth the members of it are distinct
persons, still, in reference to one another, and, as such, are
governed by the laws of the society, yet, in reference to the rest of
mankind, they make one body, which is, as every member of it before
was, still in the state of Nature with the rest of mankind, so that
the controversies that happen between any man of the society with
those that are out of it are managed by the public, and an injury
done to a member of their body engages the whole in the reparation of
it. So that under this consideration the whole community is one body
in the state of Nature in respect of all other states or persons out
of its community. 146. This, therefore, contains the power of war
and peace, leagues and alliances, and all the transactions with all
persons and communities without the commonwealth, and may be called
federative if any one pleases. So the thing be understood, I am
indifferent as to the name. 147. These two powers, executive and
federative, though they be really distinct in themselves, yet one
comprehending the execution of the municipal laws of the society
within itself upon all that are parts of it, the other the management
of the security and interest of the public without with all those
that it may receive benefit or damage from, yet they are always
almost united. And though this federative power in the well or ill
management of it be of great moment to the commonwealth, yet it is
much less capable to be directed by antecedent, standing, positive
laws than the executive, and so must necessarily be left to the
prudence and wisdom of those whose hands it is in, to be managed for
the public good. For the laws that concern subjects one amongst
another, being to direct their actions, may well enough precede them.
But what is to be done in reference to foreigners depending much upon
their actions, and the variation of designs and interests, must be
left in great part to the prudence of those who have this power
committed to them, to be managed by the best of their skill for the
advantage of the commonwealth. 148. Though, as I said, the executive and
federative power of every community be really distinct in themselves,
yet they are hardly to be separated and placed at the same time in
the hands of distinct persons. For both of them requiring the force
of the society for their exercise, it is almost impracticable to
place the force of the commonwealth in distinct and not subordinate
hands, or that the executive and federative power should be placed in
persons that might act separately, whereby the force of the public
would be under different commands, which would be apt some time or
other to cause disorder and ruin.
150. In all cases whilst the government
subsists, the legislative is the supreme power. For what can give
laws to another must needs be superior to him, and since the
legislative is no otherwise legislative of the society but by the
right it has to make laws for all the parts, and every member of the
society prescribing rules to their actions, they are transgressed,
the legislative must needs be the supreme, and all other powers in
any members or parts of the society derived from and subordinate to
it. 151. In some commonwealths where the
legislative is not always in being, and the executive is vested in a
single person who has also a share in the legislative, there that
single person, in a very tolerable sense, may also be called supreme;
not that he has in himself all the supreme power, which is that of
law-making, but because he has in him the supreme execution from whom
all inferior magistrates derive all their several subordinate powers,
or, at least, the greatest part of them; having also no legislative
superior to him, there being no law to be made without his consent,
which cannot be expected should ever subject him to the other part of
the legislative, he is properly enough in this sense supreme. But yet
it is to be observed that though oaths of allegiance and fealty are
taken to him, it is not to him as supreme legislator, but as supreme
executor of the law made by a joint power of him with others,
allegiance being nothing but an obedience according to law, which,
when he violates, he has no right to obedience, nor can claim it
otherwise than as the public person vested with the power of the law,
and so is to be considered as the image, phantom, or representative
of the commonwealth, acted by the will of the society declared in its
laws, and thus he has no will, no power, but that of the law. But
when he quits this representation, this public will, and acts by his
own private will, he degrades himself, and is but a single private
person without power and without will; the members owing no obedience
but to the public will of the society. 152. The executive power placed anywhere but in
a person that has also a share in the legislative is visibly
subordinate and accountable to it, and may be at pleasure changed and
displaced; so that it is not the supreme executive power that is
exempt from subordination, but the supreme executive power vested in
one, who having a share in the legislative, has no distinct superior
legislative to be subordinate and accountable to, farther than he
himself shall join and consent, so that he is no more subordinate
than he himself shall think fit, which one may certainly conclude
will be but very little. Of other ministerial and subordinate powers
in a commonwealth we need not speak, they being so multiplied with
infinite variety in the different customs and constitutions of
distinct commonwealths, that it is impossible to give a particular
account of them all. Only thus much which is necessary to our present
purpose we may take notice of concerning them, that they have no
manner of authority, any of them, beyond what is by positive grant
and commission delegated to them, and are all of them accountable to
some other power in the commonwealth. 153. It is not necessary -- no, nor so much as
convenient -- that the legislative should be always in being; but
absolutely necessary that the executive power should, because there
is not always need of new laws to be made, but always need of
execution of the laws that are made. When the legislative hath put
the execution of the laws they make into other hands, they have a
power still to resume it out of those hands when they find cause, and
to punish for any mal-administration against the laws. The same holds
also in regard of the federative power, that and the executive being
both ministerial and subordinate to the legislative, which, as has
been shown, in a constituted commonwealth is the supreme, the
legislative also in this case being supposed to consist of several
persons; for if it be a single person it cannot but be always in
being, and so will, as supreme, naturally have the supreme executive
power, together with the legislative, may assemble and exercise their
legislative at the times that either their original constitution or
their own adjournment appoints, or when they please, if neither of
these hath appointed any time, or there be no other way prescribed to
convoke them. For the supreme power being placed in them by the
people, it is always in them, and they may exercise it when they
please, unless by their original constitution they are limited to
certain seasons, or by an act of their supreme power they have
adjourned to a certain time, and when that time comes they have a
right to assemble and act again. 154. If the legislative, or any part of it, be
of representatives, chosen for that time by the people, which
afterwards return into the ordinary state of subjects, and have no
share in the legislative but upon a new choice, this power of
choosing must also be exercised by the people, either at certain
appointed seasons, or else when they are summoned to it; and, in this
latter case, the power of convoking the legislative is ordinarily
placed in the executive, and has one of these two limitations in
respect of time: -- that either the original constitution requires
their assembling and acting at certain intervals; and then the
executive power does nothing but ministerially issue directions for
their electing and assembling according to due forms; or else it is
left to his prudence to call them by new elections when the occasions
or exigencies of the public require the amendment of old or making of
new laws, or the redress or prevention of any inconveniencies that
lie on or threaten the people. 155. It may be demanded here, what if the
executive power, being possessed of the force of the commonwealth,
shall make use of that force to hinder the meeting and acting of the
legislative, when the original constitution or the public exigencies
require it? I say, using force upon the people, without authority,
and contrary to the trust put in him that does so, is a state of war
with the people, who have a right to reinstate their legislative in
the exercise of their power. For having erected a legislative with an
intent they should exercise the power of making laws, either at
certain set times, or when there is need of it, when they are
hindered by any force from what is so necessary to the society, and
wherein the safety and preservation of the people consists, the
people have a right to remove it by force. In all states and
conditions the true remedy of force without authority is to oppose
force to it. The use of force without authority always puts him that
uses it into a state of war as the aggressor, and renders him liable
to be treated accordingly. 156. The power of assembling and dismissing the
legislative, placed in the executive, gives not the executive a
superiority over it, but is a fiduciary trust placed in him for the
safety of the people in a case where the uncertainty and variableness
of human affairs could not bear a steady fixed rule. For it not being
possible that the first framers of the government should by any
foresight be so much masters of future events as to be able to prefix
so just periods of return and duration to the assemblies of the
legislative, in all times to come, that might exactly answer all the
exigencies of the commonwealth, the best remedy could be found for
this defect was to trust this to the prudence of one who was always
to be present, and whose business it was to watch over the public
good. Constant, frequent meetings of the legislative, and long
continuations of their assemblies, without necessary occasion, could
not but be burdensome to the people, and must necessarily in time
produce more dangerous inconveniencies, and yet the quick turn of
affairs might be sometimes such as to need their present help; any
delay of their convening might endanger the public; and sometimes,
too, their business might be so great that the limited time of their
sitting might be too short for their work, and rob the public of that
benefit which could be had only from their mature deliberation. What,
then, could be done in this case to prevent the community from being
exposed some time or other to imminent hazard on one side or the
other, by fixed intervals and periods set to the meeting and acting
of the legislative, but to entrust it to the prudence of some who,
being present and acquainted with the state of public affairs, might
make use of this prerogative for the public good? And where else
could this be so well placed as in his hands who was entrusted with
the execution of the laws for the same end? Thus, supposing the
regulation of times for the assembling and sitting of the legislative
not settled by the original constitution, it naturally fell into the
hands of the executive; not as an arbitrary power depending on his
good pleasure, but with this trust always to have it exercised only
for the public weal, as the occurrences of times and change of
affairs might require. Whether settled periods of their convening, or
a liberty left to the prince for convoking the legislative, or
perhaps a mixture of both, hath the least inconvenience attending it,
it is not my business here to inquire, but only to show that, though
the executive power may have the prerogative of convoking and
dissolving such conventions of the legislative, yet it is not thereby
superior to it. 157. Things of this world are in so constant a
flux that nothing remains long in the same state. Thus people,
riches, trade, power, change their stations; flourishing mighty
cities come to ruin, and prove in time neglected desolate corners,
whilst other unfrequented places grow into populous countries filled
with wealth and inhabitants. But things not always changing equally,
and private interest often keeping up customs and privileges when the
reasons of them are ceased, it often comes to pass that in
governments where part of the legislative consists of representatives
chosen by the people, that in tract of time this representation
becomes very unequal and disproportionate to the reasons it was at
first established upon. To what gross absurdities the following of
custom when reason has left it may lead, we may be satisfied when we
see the bare name of a town, of which there remains not so much as
the ruins, where scarce so much housing as a sheepcote, or more
inhabitants than a shepherd is to be found, send as many
representatives to the grand assembly of law-makers as a whole county
numerous in people and powerful in riches. This strangers stand
amazed at, and every one must confess needs a remedy; though most
think it hard to find one, because the constitution of the
legislative being the original and supreme act of the society,
antecedent to all positive laws in it, and depending wholly on the
people, no inferior power can alter it. And, therefore, the people
when the legislative is once constituted, having in such a government
as we have been speaking of no power to act as long as the government
stands, this inconvenience is thought incapable of a remedy.
158. Salus populi suprema lex is certainly so
just and fundamental a rule, that he who sincerely follows it cannot
dangerously err. If, therefore, the executive who has the power of
convoking the legislative, observing rather the true proportion than
fashion of representation, regulates not by old custom, but true
reason, the number of members in all places, that have a right to be
distinctly represented, which no part of the people, however
incorporated, can pretend to, but in proportion to the assistance
which it affords to the public, it cannot be judged to have set up a
new legislative, but to have restored the old and true one, and to
have rectified the disorders which succession of time had insensibly
as well as inevitably introduced; for it being the interest as well
as intention of the people to have a fair and equal representative,
whoever brings it nearest to that is an undoubted friend to and
establisher of the government, and cannot miss the consent and
approbation of the community; prerogative being nothing but a power
in the hands of the prince to provide for the public good in such
cases which, depending upon unforeseen and uncertain occurrences,
certain and unalterable laws could not safely direct. Whatsoever
shall be done manifestly for the good of the people, and establishing
the government upon its true foundations is, and always will be, just
prerogative. The power of erecting new corporations, and therewith
new representatives, carries with it a supposition that in time the
measures of representation might vary, and those have a just right to
be represented which before had none; and by the same reason, those
cease to have a right, and be too inconsiderable for such a
privilege, which before had it. It is not a change from the present
state which, perhaps, corruption or decay has introduced, that makes
an inroad upon the government, but the tendency of it to injure or
oppress the people, and to set up one part or party with a
distinction from and an unequal subjection of the rest. Whatsoever
cannot but be acknowledged to be of advantage to the society and
people in general, upon just and lasting measures, will always, when
done, justify itself; and whenever the people shall choose their
representatives upon just and undeniably equal measures, suitable to
the original frame of the government, it cannot be doubted to be the
will and act of the society, whoever permitted or proposed to them so
to do.
160. This power to act according to discretion
for the public good, without the prescription of the law and
sometimes even against it, is that which is called prerogative; for
since in some governments the law-making power is not always in being
and is usually too numerous, and so too slow for the dispatch
requisite to execution, and because, also, it is impossible to
foresee and so by laws to provide for all accidents and necessities
that may concern the public, or make such laws as will do no harm, if
they are executed with an inflexible rigour on all occasions and upon
all persons that may come in their way, therefore there is a latitude
left to the executive power to do many things of choice which the
laws do not prescribe. 161. This power, whilst employed for the
benefit of the community and suitably to the trust and ends of the
government, is undoubted prerogative, and never is questioned. For
the people are very seldom or never scrupulous or nice in the point
or questioning of prerogative whilst it is in any tolerable degree
employed for the use it was meant -- that is, the good of the people,
and not manifestly against it. But if there comes to be a question
between the executive power and the people about a thing claimed as a
prerogative, the tendency of the exercise of such prerogative, to the
good or hurt of the people, will easily decide that question.
162. It is easy to conceive that in the infancy
of governments, when commonwealths differed little from families in
number of people, they differed from them too but little in number of
laws; and the governors being as the fathers of them, watching over
them for their good, the government was almost all prerogative. A few
established laws served the turn, and the discretion and care of the
ruler suppled the rest. But when mistake or flattery prevailed with
weak princes, to make use of this power for private ends of their own
and not for the public good, the people were fain, by express laws,
to get prerogative determined in those points wherein they found
disadvantage from it, and declared limitations of prerogative in
those cases which they and their ancestors had left in the utmost
latitude to the wisdom of those princes who made no other but a right
use of it -- that is, for the good of their people. 163. And therefore they have a very wrong
notion of government who say that the people have encroached upon the
prerogative when they have got any part of it to be defined by
positive laws. For in so doing they have not pulled from the prince
anything that of right belonged to him, but only declared that that
power which they indefinitely left in his or his ancestors' hands, to
be exercised for their good, was not a thing they intended him, when
he used it otherwise. For the end of government being the good of the
community, whatsoever alterations are made in it tending to that end
cannot be an encroachment upon anybody; since nobody in government
can have a right tending to any other end; and those only are
encroachments which prejudice or hinder the public good. Those who
say otherwise speak as if the prince had a distinct and separate
interest from the good of the community, and was not made for it; the
root and source from which spring almost all those evils and
disorders which happen in kingly governments. And indeed, if that be
so, the people under his government are not a society of rational
creatures, entered into a community for their mutual good, such as
have set rulers over themselves, to guard and promote that good; but
are to be looked on as a herd of inferior creatures under the
dominion of a master, who keeps them and works them for his own
pleasure or profit. If men were so void of reason and brutish as to
enter into society upon such terms, prerogative might indeed be, what
some men would have it, an arbitrary power to do things hurtful to
the people. 164. But since a rational creature cannot be
supposed, when free, to put himself into subjection to another for
his own harm (though where he finds a good and a wise ruler he may
not, perhaps, think it either necessary or useful to set precise
bounds to his power in all things), prerogative can be nothing but
the people's permitting their rulers to do several things of their
own free choice where the law was silent, and sometimes too against
the direct letter of the law, for the public good and their
acquiescing in it when so done. For as a good prince, who is mindful
of the trust put into his hands and careful of the good of his
people, cannot have too much prerogative -- that is, power to do
good, so a weak and ill prince, who would claim that power his
predecessors exercised, without the direction of the law, as a
prerogative belonging to him by right of his office, which he may
exercise at his pleasure to make or promote an interest distinct from
that of the public, gives the people an occasion to claim their right
and limit that power, which, whilst it was exercised for their good,
they were content should be tacitly allowed. 165. And therefore he that will look into the
history of England will find that prerogative was always largest in
the hands of our wisest and best princes, because the people
observing the whole tendency of their actions to be the public good,
or if any human frailty or mistake (for princes are but men, made as
others) appeared in some small declinations from that end, yet it was
visible the main of their conduct tended to nothing but the care of
the public. The people, therefore, finding reason to be satisfied
with these princes, whenever they acted without, or contrary to the
letter of the law, acquiesced in what they did, and without the least
complaint, let them enlarge their prerogative as they pleased,
judging rightly that they did nothing herein to the prejudice of
their laws, since they acted conformably to the foundation and end of
all laws -- the public good. 166. 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
anybody 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." 167. The power of calling parliaments in
England, as to precise time, place, and duration, is certainly a
prerogative of the king, but still with this trust, that it shall be
made use of for the good of the nation as the exigencies of the times
and variety of occasion shall require. For it being impossible to
foresee which should always be the fittest place for them to assemble
in, and what the best season, the choice of these was left with the
executive power, as might be best subservient to the public good and
best suit the ends of parliament. 168. The old question will be asked in this
matter of prerogative, "But who shall be judge when this power is
made a right use of?" I answer: Between an executive power in being,
with such a prerogative, and a legislative that depends upon his will
for their convening, there can be no judge on earth. As there can be
none between the legislative and the people, should either the
executive or the legislative, when they have got the power in their
hands, design, or go about to enslave or destroy them, the people
have no other remedy in this, as in all other cases where they have
no judge on earth, but to appeal to Heaven; for the rulers in such
attempts, exercising a power the people never put into their hands,
who can never be supposed to consent that anybody should rule over
them for their harm, do that which they have not a right to do. And
where the body of the people, or any single man, are deprived of
their right, or are under the exercise of a power without right,
having no appeal on earth they have a liberty to appeal to Heaven
whenever they judge the cause of sufficient moment. And therefore,
though the people cannot be judge, so as to have, by the constitution
of that society, any superior power to determine and give effective
sentence in the case, yet they have reserved that ultimate
determination to themselves which belongs to all mankind, where there
lies no appeal on earth, by a law antecedent and paramount to all
positive laws of men, whether they have just cause to make their
appeal to Heaven. And this judgement they cannot part with, it being
out of a man's power so to submit himself to another as to give him a
liberty to destroy him; God and Nature never allowing a man so to
abandon himself as to neglect his own preservation. And since he
cannot take away his own life, neither can he give another power to
take it. Nor let any one think this lays a perpetual foundation for
disorder; for this operates not till the inconvenience is so great
that the majority feel it, and are weary of it, and find a necessity
to have it amended. And this the executive power, or wise princes,
never need come in the danger of; and it is the thing of all others
they have most need to avoid, as, of all others, the most
perilous.
170. First, then, paternal or parental power is
nothing but that which parents have over their children to govern
them, for the children's good, till they come to the use of reason,
or a state of knowledge, wherein they may be supposed capable to
understand that rule, whether it be the law of Nature or the
municipal law of their country, they are to govern themselves by --
capable, I say, to know it, as well as several others, who live as
free men under that law. The affection and tenderness God hath
planted in the breasts of parents towards their children makes it
evident that this is not intended to be a severe arbitrary
government, but only for the help, instruction, and preservation of
their offspring. But happen as it will, there is, as I have proved,
no reason why it should be thought to extend to life and death, at
any time, over their children, more than over anybody else, or keep
the child in subjection to the will of his parents when grown to a
man and the perfect use of reason, any farther than as having
received life and education from his parents obliges him to respect,
honour, gratitude, assistance, and support, all his life, to both
father and mother. And thus, it is true, the paternal is a natural
government, but not at all extending itself to the ends and
jurisdictions of that which is political. The power of the father
doth not reach at all to the property of the child, which is only in
his own disposing. 171. Secondly, political power is that power
which every man having in the state of Nature has given up into the
hands of the society, and therein to the governors whom the society
hath set over itself, with this express or tacit trust, that it shall
be employed for their good and the preservation of their property.
Now this power, which every man has in the state of Nature, and which
he parts with to the society in all such cases where the society can
secure him, is to use such means for the preserving of his own
property as he thinks good and Nature allows him; and to punish the
breach of the law of Nature in others so as (according to the best of
his reason) may most conduce to the preservation of himself and the
rest of mankind; so that the end and measure of this power, when in
every man's hands, in the state of Nature, being the preservation of
all of his society -- that is, all mankind in general -- it can have
no other end or measure, when in the hands of the magistrate, but to
preserve the members of that society in their lives, liberties, and
possessions, and so cannot be an absolute, arbitrary power over their
lives and fortunes, which are as much as possible to be preserved;
but a power to make laws, and annex such penalties to them as may
tend to the preservation of the whole, by cutting off those parts,
and those only, which are so corrupt that they threaten the sound and
healthy, without which no severity is lawful. And this power has its
original only from compact and agreement and the mutual consent of
those who make up the community. 172. Thirdly, despotical power is an absolute,
arbitrary power one man has over another, to take away his life
whenever he pleases; and this is a power which neither Nature gives,
for it has made no such distinction between one man and another, nor
compact can convey. For man, not having such an arbitrary power over
his own life, cannot give another man such a power over it, but it is
the effect only of forfeiture which the aggressor makes of his own
life when he puts himself into the state of war with another. For
having quitted reason, which God hath given to be the rule betwixt
man and man, and the peaceable ways which that teaches, and made use
of force to compass his unjust ends upon another where he has no
right, he renders himself liable to be destroyed by his adversary
whenever he can, as any other noxious and brutish creature that is
destructive to his being. And thus captives, taken in a just and
lawful war, and such only, are subject to a despotical power, which,
as it arises not from compact, so neither is it capable of any, but
is the state of war continued. For what compact can be made with a
man that is not master of his own life? What condition can he
perform? And if he be once allowed to be master of his own life, the
despotical, arbitrary power of his master ceases. He that is master
of himself and his own life has a right, too, to the means of
preserving it; so that as soon as compact enters, slavery ceases, and
he so far quits his absolute power and puts an end to the state of
war who enters into conditions with his captive. 173. Nature gives the first of these -- viz.,
paternal power to parents for the benefit of their children during
their minority, to supply their want of ability and understanding how
to manage their property. (By property I must be understood here, as
in other places, to mean that property which men have in their
persons as well as goods.) Voluntary agreement gives the second --
viz., political power to governors, for the benefit of their
subjects, to secure them in the possession and use of their
properties. And forfeiture gives the third -- despotical power to
lords for their own benefit over those who are stripped of all
property. 174. He that shall consider the distinct rise
and extent, and the different ends of these several powers, will
plainly see that paternal power comes as far short of that of the
magistrate as despotical exceeds it; and that absolute dominion,
however placed, is so far from being one kind of civil society that
it is as inconsistent with it as slavery is with property. Paternal
power is only where minority makes the child incapable to manage his
property; political where men have property in their own disposal;
and despotical over such as have no property at all.
176. That the aggressor, who puts himself into
the state of war with another, and unjustly invades another man's
right, can, by such an unjust war, never come to have a right over
the conquered, will be easily agreed by all men, who will not think
that robbers and pirates have a right of empire over whomsoever they
have force enough to master, or that men are bound by promises which
unlawful force extorts from them. Should a robber break into my
house, and, with a dagger at my throat, make me seal deeds to convey
my estate to him, would this give him any title? Just such a title by
his sword has an unjust conqueror who forces me into submission. The
injury and the crime is equal, whether committed by the wearer of a
crown or some petty villain. The title of the offender and the number
of his followers make no difference in the offence, unless it be to
aggravate it. The only difference is, great robbers punish little
ones to keep them in their obedience; but the great ones are rewarded
with laurels and triumphs, because they are too big for the weak
hands of justice in this world, and have the power in their own
possession which should punish offenders. What is my remedy against a
robber that so broke into my house? Appeal to the law for justice.
But perhaps justice is denied, or I am crippled and cannot stir;
robbed, and have not the means to do it. If God has taken away all
means of seeking remedy, there is nothing left but patience. But my
son, when able, may seek the relief of the law, which I am denied; he
or his son may renew his appeal till he recover his right. But the
conquered, or their children, have no court -- no arbitrator on earth
to appeal to. Then they may appeal, as Jephtha did, to Heaven, and
repeat their appeal till they have recovered the native right of
their ancestors, which was to have such a legislative over them as
the majority should approve and freely acquiesce in. If it be
objected this would cause endless trouble, I answer, no more than
justice does, where she lies open to all that appeal to her. He that
troubles his neighbour without a cause is punished for it by the
justice of the court he appeals to. And he that appeals to Heaven
must be sure he has right on his side, and a right, too, that is
worth the trouble and cost of the appeal, as he will answer at a
tribunal that cannot be deceived, and will be sure to retribute to
every one according to the mischiefs he hath created to his
fellow-subjects -- that is, any part of mankind. From whence it is
plain that he that conquers in an unjust war can thereby have no
title to the subjection and obedience of the conquered. 177. But supposing victory favours the right
side, let us consider a conqueror in a lawful war, and see what power
he gets, and over whom. First, it is plain he gets no power by his
conquest over those that conquered with him. They that fought on his
side cannot suffer by the conquest, but must, at least, be as much
free men as they were before. And most commonly they serve upon
terms, and on condition to share with their leader, and enjoy a part
of the spoil and other advantages that attend the conquering sword,
or, at least, have a part of the subdued country bestowed upon them.
And the conquering people are not, I hope, to be slaves by conquest,
and wear their laurels only to show they are sacrifices to their
leader's triumph. They that found absolute monarchy upon the title of
the sword make their heroes, who are the founders of such monarchies,
arrant "draw-can-sirs," and forget they had any officers and soldiers
that fought on their side in the battles they won, or assisted them
in the subduing, or shared in possessing the countries they mastered.
We are told by some that the English monarchy is founded in the
Norman Conquest, and that our princes have thereby a title to
absolute dominion, which, if it were true (as by the history it
appears otherwise), and that William had a right to make war on this
island, yet his dominion by conquest could reach no farther than to
the Saxons and Britons that were then inhabitants of this country.
The Normans that came with him and helped to conquer, and all
descended from them, are free men and no subjects by conquest, let
that give what dominion it will. And if I or anybody else shall claim
freedom as derived from them, it will be very hard to prove the
contrary; and it is plain, the law that has made no distinction
between the one and the other intends not there should be any
difference in their freedom or privileges. 178. But supposing, which seldom happens, that
the conquerors and conquered never incorporate into one people under
the same laws and freedom; let us see next what power a lawful
conqueror has over the subdued, and that I say is purely despotical.
He has an absolute power over the lives of those who, by an unjust
war, have forfeited them, but not over the lives or fortunes of those
who engaged not in the war, nor over the possessions even of those
who were actually engaged in it. 179. Secondly, I say, then, the conqueror gets
no power but only over those who have actually assisted, concurred,
or consented to that unjust force that is used against him. For the
people having given to their governors no power to do an unjust
thing, such as is to make an unjust war (for they never had such a
power in themselves), they ought not to be charged as guilty of the
violence and injustice that is committed in an unjust war any farther
than they actually abet it, no more than they are to be thought
guilty of any violence or oppression their governors should use upon
the people themselves or any part of their fellow-subjects, they
having empowered them no more to the one than to the other.
Conquerors, it is true, seldom trouble themselves to make the
distinction, but they willingly permit the confusion of war to sweep
all together; but yet this alters not the right; for the conqueror's
power over the lives of the conquered being only because they have
used force to do or maintain an injustice, he can have that power
only over those who have concurred in that force; all the rest are
innocent, and he has no more title over the people of that country
who have done him no injury, and so have made no forfeiture of their
lives, than he has over any other who, without any injuries or
provocations, have lived upon fair terms with him. 180. Thirdly, the power a conqueror gets over
those he overcomes in a just war is perfectly despotical; he has an
absolute power over the lives of those who, by putting themselves in
a state of war, have forfeited them, but he has not thereby a right
and title to their possessions. This I doubt not but at first sight
will seem a strange doctrine, it being so quite contrary to the
practice of the world; there being nothing more familiar in speaking
of the dominion of countries than to say such an one conquered it, as
if conquest, without any more ado, conveyed a right of possession.
But when we consider that the practice of the strong and powerful,
how universal soever it may be, is seldom the rule of right, however
it be one part of the subjection of the conquered not to argue
against the conditions cut out to them by the conquering
swords. 181. Though in all war there be usually a
complication of force and damage, and the aggressor seldom fails to
harm the estate when he uses force against the persons of those he
makes war upon, yet it is the use of force only that puts a man into
the state of war. For whether by force he begins the injury, or else
having quietly and by fraud done the injury, he refuses to make
reparation, and by force maintains it, which is the same thing as at
first to have done it by force; it is the unjust use of force that
makes the war. For he that breaks open my house and violently turns
me out of doors, or having peaceably got in, by force keeps me out,
does, in effect, the same thing; supposing we are in such a state
that we have no common judge on earth whom I may appeal to, and to
whom we are both obliged to submit, for of such I am now speaking. It
is the unjust use of force, then, that puts a man into the state of
war with another, and thereby he that is guilty of it makes a
forfeiture of his life. For quitting reason, which is the rule given
between man and man, and using force, the way of beasts, he becomes
liable to be destroyed by him he uses force against, as any savage
ravenous beast that is dangerous to his being. 182. But because the miscarriages of the father
are no faults of the children, who may be rational and peaceable,
notwithstanding the brutishness and injustice of the father, the
father, by his miscarriages and violence, can forfeit but his own
life, and involves not his children in his guilt or destruction. His
goods which Nature, that willeth the preservation of all mankind as
much as is possible, hath made to belong to the children to keep them
from perishing, do still continue to belong to his children. For
supposing them not to have joined in the war either through infancy
or choice, they have done nothing to forfeit them, nor has the
conqueror any right to take them away by the bare right of having
subdued him that by force attempted his destruction, though, perhaps,
he may have some right to them to repair the damages he has sustained
by the war, and the defence of his own right, which how far it
reaches to the possessions of the conquered we shall see by-and-by;
so that he that by conquest has a right over a man's person, to
destroy him if he pleases, has not thereby a right over his estate to
possess and enjoy it. For it is the brutal force the aggressor has
used that gives his adversary a right to take away his life and
destroy him, if he pleases, as a noxious creature; but it is damage
sustained that alone gives him title to another man's goods; for
though I may kill a thief that sets on me in the highway, yet I may
not (which seems less) take away his money and let him go; this would
be robbery on my side. His force, and the state of war he put himself
in, made him forfeit his life, but gave me no title to his goods. The
right, then, of conquest extends only to the lives of those who
joined in the war, but not to their estates, but only in order to
make reparation for the damages received and the charges of the war,
and that, too, with reservation of the right of the innocent wife and
children. 183. Let the conqueror have as much justice on
his side as could be supposed, he has no right to seize more than the
vanquished could forfeit; his life is at the victor's mercy, and his
service and goods he may appropriate to make himself reparation; but
he cannot take the goods of his wife and children, they too had a
title to the goods he enjoyed, and their shares in the estate he
possessed. For example, I in the state of Nature (and all
commonwealths are in the state of Nature one with another) have
injured another man, and refusing to give satisfaction, it is come to
a state of war wherein my defending by force what I had gotten
unjustly makes me the aggressor. I am conquered; my life, it is true,
as forfeit, is at mercy, but not my wife's and children's. They made
not the war, nor assisted in it. I could not forfeit their lives,
they were not mine to forfeit. My wife had a share in my estate, that
neither could I forfeit. And my children also, being born of me, had
a right to be maintained out of my labour or substance. Here then is
the case: The conqueror has a title to reparation for damages
received, and the children have a title to their father's estate for
their subsistence. For as to the wife's share, whether her own labour
or compact gave her a title to it, it is plain her husband could not
forfeit what was hers. What must be done in the case? I answer: The
fundamental law of Nature being that all, as much as may be, should
be preserved, it follows that if there be not enough fully to satisfy
both -- viz., for the conqueror's losses and children's maintenance,
he that hath and to spare must remit something of his full
satisfaction, and give way to the pressing and preferable title of
those who are in danger to perish without it. 184. But supposing the charge and damages of
the war are to be made up to the conqueror to the utmost farthing,
and that the children of the vanquished, spoiled of all their
father's goods, are to be left to starve and perish, yet the
satisfying of what shall, on this score, be due to the conqueror will
scarce give him a title to any country he shall conquer. For the
damages of war can scarce amount to the value of any considerable
tract of land in any part of the world, where all the land is
possessed, and none lies waste. And if I have not taken away the
conqueror's land which, being vanquished, it is impossible I should,
scarce any other spoil I have done him can amount to the value of
mine, supposing it of an extent any way coming near what I had
overrun of his, and equally cultivated too. The destruction of a
year's product or two (for it seldom reaches four or five) is the
utmost spoil that usually can be done. For as to money, and such
riches and treasure taken away, these are none of Nature's goods,
they have but a phantastical imaginary value; Nature has put no such
upon them. They are of no more account by her standard than the
Wampompeke of the Americans to an European prince, or the silver
money of Europe would have been formerly to an American. And five
years' product is not worth the perpetual inheritance of land, where
all is possessed and none remains waste, to be taken up by him that
is disseised, which will be easily granted, if one do but take away
the imaginary value of money, the disproportion being more than
between five and five thousand; though, at the same time, half a
year's product is more worth than the inheritance where, there being
more land than the inhabitants possess and make use of, any one has
liberty to make use of the waste. But their conquerors take little
care to possess themselves of the lands of the vanquished. No damage
therefore that men in the state of Nature (as all princes and
governments are in reference to one another) suffer from one another
can give a conqueror power to dispossess the posterity of the
vanquished, and turn them out of that inheritance which ought to be
the possession of them and their descendants to all generations. The
conqueror indeed will be apt to think himself master; and it is the
very condition of the subdued not to be able to dispute their right.
But, if that be all, it gives no other title than what bare force
gives to the stronger over the weaker; and, by this reason, he that
is strongest will have a right to whatever he pleases to seize
on. 185. Over those, then, that joined with him in
the war, and over those of the subdued country that opposed him not,
and the posterity even of those that did, the conqueror, even in a
just war, hath, by his conquest, no right of dominion. They are free
from any subjection to him, and if their former government be
dissolved, they are at liberty to begin and erect another to
themselves. 186. The conqueror, it is true, usually by the
force he has over them, compels them, with a sword at their breasts,
to stoop to his conditions, and submit to such a government as he
pleases to afford them; but the inquiry is, what right he has to do
so? If it be said they submit by their own consent, then this allows
their own consent to be necessary to give the conqueror a title to
rule over them. It remains only to be considered whether promises,
extorted by force, without right, can be thought consent, and how far
they bind. To which I shall say, they bind not at all; because
whatsoever another gets from me by force, I still retain the right
of, and he is obliged presently to restore. He that forces my horse
from me ought presently to restore him, and I have still a right to
retake him. By the same reason, he that forced a promise from me
ought presently to restore it -- i.e., quit me of the obligation of
it; or I may resume it myself -- i.e., choose whether I will perform
it. For the law of Nature laying an obligation on me, only by the
rules she prescribes, cannot oblige me by the violation of her rules;
such is the extorting anything from me by force. Nor does it at all
alter the case, to say I gave my promise, no more than it excuses the
force, and passes the right, when I put my hand in my pocket and
deliver my purse myself to a thief who demands it with a pistol at my
breast. 187. From all which it follows that the
government of a conqueror, imposed by force on the subdued, against
whom he had no right of war, or who joined not in the war against
him, where he had right, has no obligation upon them. 188. But let us suppose that all the men of
that community being all members of the same body politic, may be
taken to have joined in that unjust war, wherein they are subdued,
and so their lives are at the mercy of the conqueror. 189. I say this concerns not their children who
are in their minority. For since a father hath not, in himself, a
power over the life or liberty of his child, no act of his can
possibly forfeit it; so that the children, whatever may have happened
to the fathers, are free men, and the absolute power of the conqueror
reaches no farther than the persons of the men that were subdued by
him, and dies with them; and should he govern them as slaves,
subjected to his absolute, arbitrary power, he has no such right of
dominion over their children. He can have no power over them but by
their own consent, whatever he may drive them to say or do, and he
has no lawful authority, whilst force, and not choice, compels them
to submission. 190. Every man is born with a double right.
First, a right of freedom to his person, which no other man has a
power over, but the free disposal of it lies in himself. Secondly, a
right before any other man, to inherit, with his brethren, his
father's goods. 191. By the first of these, a man is naturally
free from subjection to any government, though he be born in a place
under its jurisdiction. But if he disclaim the lawful government of
the country he was born in, he must also quit the right that belonged
to him, by the laws of it, and the possessions there descending to
him from his ancestors, if it were a government made by their
consent. 192. By the second, the inhabitants of any
country, who are descended and derive a title to their estates from
those who are subdued, and had a government forced upon them, against
their free consents, retain a right to the possession of their
ancestors, though they consent not freely to the government, whose
hard conditions were, by force, imposed on the possessors of that
country. For the first conqueror never having had a title to the land
of that country, the people, who are the descendants of, or claim
under those who were forced to submit to the yoke of a government by
constraint, have always a right to shake it off, and free themselves
from the usurpation or tyranny the sword hath brought in upon them,
till their rulers put them under such a frame of government as they
willingly and of choice consent to (which they can never be supposed
to do, till either they are put in a full state of liberty to choose
their government and governors, or at least till they have such
standing laws to which they have, by themselves or their
representatives, given their free consent, and also till they are
allowed their due property, which is so to be proprietors of what
they have that nobody can take away any part of it without their own
consent, without which, men under any government are not in the state
of free men, but are direct slaves under the force of war). And who
doubts but the Grecian Christians, descendants of the ancient
possessors of that country, may justly cast off the Turkish yoke they
have so long groaned under, whenever they have a power to do
it? 193. But granting that the conqueror, in a just
war, has a right to the estates, as well as power over the persons of
the conquered, which, it is plain, he hath not, nothing of absolute
power will follow from hence in the continuance of the government.
Because the descendants of these being all free men, if he grants
them estates and possessions to inhabit his country, without which it
would be worth nothing, whatsoever he grants them they have so far as
it is granted property in; the nature whereof is, that, without a
man's own consent, it cannot be taken from him. 194. Their persons are free by a native right,
and their properties, be they more or less, are their own, and at
their own dispose, and not at his; or else it is no property.
Supposing the conqueror gives to one man a thousand acres, to him and
his heirs for ever; to another he lets a thousand acres, for his
life, under the rent of L50 or L500 per annum. Has not the one of
these a right to his thousand acres for ever, and the other during
his life, paying the said rent? And hath not the tenant for life a
property in all that he gets over and above his rent, by his labour
and industry, during the said term, supposing it be double the rent?
Can any one say, the king, or conqueror, after his grant, may, by his
power of conqueror, take away all, or part of the land, from the
heirs of one, or from the other during his life, he paying the rent?
Or, can he take away from either the goods or money they have got
upon the said land at his pleasure? If he can, then all free and
voluntary contracts cease, and are void in the world; there needs
nothing but power enough to dissolve them at any time, and all the
grants and promises of men in power are but mockery and collusion.
For can there be anything more ridiculous than to say, I give you and
yours this for ever, and that in the surest and most solemn way of
conveyance can be devised, and yet it is to be understood that I have
right, if I please, to take it away from you again to-morrow?
195. I will not dispute now whether princes are
exempt from the laws of their country, but this I am sure, they owe
subjection to the laws of God and Nature. Nobody, no power can exempt
them from the obligations of that eternal law. Those are so great and
so strong in the case of promises, that Omnipotency itself can be
tied by them. Grants, promises, and oaths are bonds that hold the
Almighty, whatever some flatterers say to princes of the world, who,
all together, with all their people joined to them, are, in
comparison of the great God, but as a drop of the bucket, or a dust
on the balance -- inconsiderable, nothing! 196. The short of the case in conquest, is
this: The conqueror, if he have a just cause, has a despotical right
over the persons of all that actually aided and concurred in the war
against him, and a right to make up his damage and cost out of their
labour and estates, so he injure not the right of any other. Over the
rest of the people, if there were any that consented not to the war,
and over the children of the captives themselves or the possessions
of either he has no power, and so can have, by virtue of conquest, no
lawful title himself to dominion over them, or derive it to his
posterity; but is an aggressor, and puts himself in a state of war
against them, and has no better a right of principality, he, nor any
of his successors, than Hingar, or Hubba, the Danes, had here in
England, or Spartacus, had be conquered Italy, which is to have their
yoke cast off as soon as God shall give those under their subjection
courage and opportunity to do it. Thus, notwithstanding whatever
title the kings of Assyria had over Judah, by the sword, God assisted
Hezekiah to throw off the dominion of that conquering empire. "And
the Lord was with Hezekiah, and he prospered; wherefore he went
forth, and he rebelled against the king of Assyria, and served him
not" (II Kings 18. 7). Whence it is plain that shaking off a power
which force, and not right, hath set over any one, though it hath the
name of rebellion, yet is no offence before God, but that which He
allows and countenances, though even promises and covenants, when
obtained by force, have intervened. For it is very probable, to any
one that reads the story of Ahaz and Hezekiah attentively, that the
Assyrians subdued Ahaz, and deposed him, and made Hezekiah king in
his father's lifetime, and that Hezekiah, by agreement, had done him
homage, and paid him tribute till this time.
198. In all lawful governments the designation
of the persons who are to bear rule being as natural and necessary a
part as the form of the government itself, and that which had its
establishment originally from the people -- the anarchy being much
alike, to have no form of government at all, or to agree that it
shall be monarchical, yet appoint no way to design the person that
shall have the power and be the monarch -- all commonwealths,
therefore, with the form of government established, have rules also
of appointing and conveying the right to those who are to have any
share in the public authority; and whoever gets into the exercise of
any part of the power by other ways than what the laws of the
community have prescribed hath no right to be obeyed, though the form
of the commonwealth be still preserved, since he is not the person
the laws have appointed, and, consequently, not the person the people
have consented to. Nor can such an usurper, or any deriving from him,
ever have a title till the people are both at liberty to consent, and
have actually consented, to allow and confirm in him the power he
hath till then usurped.
200. If one can doubt this to be truth or
reason because it comes from the obscure hand of a subject, I hope
the authority of a king will make it pass with him. King James, in
his speech to the Parliament, 16O3, tells them thus: "I will ever
prefer the weal of the public and of the whole commonwealth, in
making of good laws and constitutions, to any particular and private
ends of mine, thinking ever the wealth and weal of the commonwealth
to be my greatest weal and worldly felicity -- a point wherein a
lawful king doth directly differ from a tyrant; for I do acknowledge
that the special and greatest point of difference that is between a
rightful king and an usurping tyrant is this -- that whereas the
proud and ambitious tyrant doth think his kingdom and people are only
ordained for satisfaction of his desires and unreasonable appetites,
the righteous and just king doth, by the contrary, acknowledge
himself to be ordained for the procuring of the wealth and property
of his people." And again, in his speech to the Parliament, 1609, he
hath these words: "The king binds himself, by a double oath, to the
observation of the fundamental laws of his kingdom -- tacitly, as by
being a king, and so bound to protect, as well the people as the laws
of his kingdom; and expressly by his oath at his coronation; so as
every just king, in a settled kingdom, is bound to observe that
paction made to his people, by his laws, in framing his government
agreeable thereunto, according to that paction which God made with
Noah after the deluge: 'Hereafter, seed-time, and harvest, and cold,
and heat, and summer, and winter, and day, and night, shall not cease
while the earth remaineth.' And therefore a king, governing in a
settled kingdom, leaves to be a king, and degenerates into a tyrant,
as soon as he leaves off to rule according to his laws." And a little
after: "Therefore, all kings that are not tyrants, or perjured, will
be glad to bound themselves within the limits of their laws, and they
that persuade them the contrary are vipers, pests, both against them
and the commonwealth." Thus, that learned king, who well understood
the notions of things, makes the difference betwixt a king and a
tyrant to consist only in this: that one makes the laws the bounds of
his power and the good of the public the end of his government; the
other makes all give way to his own will and appetite. 201. It is a mistake to think this fault is
proper only to monarchies. Other forms of government are liable to it
as well as that; for wherever the power that is put in any hands for
the government of the people and the preservation of their properties
is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or
subdue them to the arbitrary and irregular commands of those that
have it, there it presently becomes tyranny, whether those that thus
use it are one or many. Thus we read of the thirty tyrants at Athens,
as well as one at Syracuse; and the intolerable dominion of the
Decemviri at Rome was nothing better. 202. Wherever law ends, tyranny begins, if the
law be transgressed to another's harm; and whosoever in authority
exceeds the power given him by the law, and makes use of the force he
has under his command to compass that upon the subject which the law
allows not, ceases in that to be a magistrate, and acting without
authority may be opposed, as any other man who by force invades the
right of another. This is acknowledged in subordinate magistrates. He
that hath authority to seize my person in the street may be opposed
as a thief and a robber if he endeavours to break into my house to
execute a writ, notwithstanding that I know he has such a warrant and
such a legal authority as will empower him to arrest me abroad. And
why this should not hold in the highest, as well as in the most
inferior magistrate, I would gladly be informed. Is it reasonable
that the eldest brother, because he has the greatest part of his
father's estate, should thereby have a right to take away any of his
younger brothers' portions? Or that a rich man, who possessed a whole
country, should from thence have a right to seize, when he pleased,
the cottage and garden of his poor neighbour? The being rightfully
possessed of great power and riches, exceedingly beyond the greatest
part of the sons of Adam, is so far from being an excuse, much less a
reason for rapine and oppression, which the endamaging another
without authority is, that it is a great aggravation of it. For
exceeding the bounds of authority is no more a right in a great than
a petty officer, no more justifiable in a king than a constable. But
so much the worse in him as that he has more trust put in him, is
supposed, from the advantage of education and counsellors, to have
better knowledge and less reason to do it, having already a greater
share than the rest of his brethren. 203. May the commands, then, of a prince be
opposed? May he be resisted, as often as any one shall find himself
aggrieved, and but imagine he has not right done him? This will
unhinge and overturn all polities, and instead of government and
order, leave nothing but anarchy and confusion. 204. To this I answer: That force is to be
opposed to nothing but to unjust and unlawful force. Whoever makes
any opposition in any other case draws on himself a just
condemnation, both from God and man; and so no such danger or
confusion will follow, as is often suggested. For -- 205. First. As in some countries the person of
the prince by the law is sacred, and so whatever he commands or does,
his person is still free from all question or violence, not liable to
force, or any judicial censure or condemnation. But yet opposition
may be made to the illegal acts of any inferior officer or other
commissioned by him, unless he will, by actually putting himself into
a state of war with his people, dissolve the government, and leave
them to that defence, which belongs to every one in the state of
Nature. For of such things, who can tell what the end will be? And a
neighbour kingdom has showed the world an odd example. In all other
cases the sacredness of the person exempts him from all
inconveniencies, whereby he is secure, whilst the government stands,
from all violence and harm whatsoever, than which there cannot be a
wiser constitution. For the harm he can do in his own person not
being likely to happen often, nor to extend itself far, nor being
able by his single strength to subvert the laws nor oppress the body
of the people, should any prince have so much weakness and ill-nature
as to be willing to do it. The inconveniency of some particular
mischiefs that may happen sometimes when a heady prince comes to the
throne are well recompensed by the peace of the public and security
of the government in the person of the chief magistrate, thus set out
of the reach of danger; it being safer for the body that some few
private men should be sometimes in danger to suffer than that the
head of the republic should be easily and upon slight occasions
exposed. 206. Secondly. But this privilege, belonging
only to the king's person, hinders not but they may be questioned,
opposed, and resisted, who use unjust force, though they pretend a
commission from him which the law authorises not; as is plain in the
case of him that has the king's writ to arrest a man which is a full
commission from the king, and yet he that has it cannot break open a
man's house to do it, nor execute this command of the king upon
certain days nor in certain places, though this commission have no
such exception in it; but they are the limitations of the law, which,
if any one transgress, the king's commission excuses him not. For the
king's authority being given him only by the law, he cannot empower
any one to act against the law, or justify him by his commission in
so doing. The commission or command of any magistrate where he has no
authority, being as void and insignificant as that of any private
man, the difference between the one and the other being that the
magistrate has some authority so far and to such ends, and the
private man has none at all; for it is not the commission but the
authority that gives the right of acting, and against the laws there
can be no authority. But notwithstanding such resistance, the king's
person and authority are still both secured, and so no danger to
governor or government. 207. Thirdly. Supposing a government wherein
the person of the chief magistrate is not thus sacred, yet this
doctrine of the lawfulness of resisting all unlawful exercises of his
power will not, upon every slight occasion, endanger him or embroil
the government; for where the injured party may be relieved and his
damages repaired by appeal to the law, there can be no pretence for
force, which is only to be used where a man is intercepted from
appealing to the law. For nothing is to be accounted hostile force
but where it leaves not the remedy of such an appeal. and it is such
force alone that puts him that uses it into a state of war, and makes
it lawful to resist him. A man with a sword in his hand demands my
purse on the highway, when perhaps I have not 12d. in my pocket. This
man I may lawfully kill. To another I deliver £100 to hold only
whilst I alight, which he refuses to restore me when I am got up
again, but draws his sword to defend the possession of it by force. I
endeavour to retake it. The mischief this man does me is a hundred,
or possibly a thousand times more than the other perhaps intended me
(whom I killed before he really did me any); and yet I might lawfully
kill the one and cannot so much as hurt the other lawfully. The
reason whereof is plain; because the one using force which threatened
my life, I could not have time to appeal to the law to secure it, and
when it was gone it was too late to appeal. The law could not restore
life to my dead carcass. The loss was irreparable; which to prevent
the law of Nature gave me a right to destroy him who had put himself
into a state of war with me and threatened my destruction. But in the
other case, my life not being in danger, I might have the benefit of
appealing to the law, and have reparation for my £100 that
way. 208. Fourthly. But if the unlawful acts done by
the magistrate be maintained (by the power he has got), and the
remedy, which is due by law, be by the same power obstructed, yet the
right of resisting, even in such manifest acts of tyranny, will not
suddenly, or on slight occasions, disturb the government. For if it
reach no farther than some private men's cases, though they have a
right to defend themselves, and to recover by force what by unlawful
force is taken from them, yet the right to do so will not easily
engage them in a contest wherein they are sure to perish; it being as
impossible for one or a few oppressed men to disturb the government
where the body of the people do not think themselves concerned in it,
as for a raving madman or heady malcontent to overturn a well-settled
state, the people being as little apt to follow the one as the
other. 209. But if either these illegal acts have
extended to the majority of the people, or if the mischief and
oppression has light only on some few, but in such cases as the
precedent and consequences seem to threaten all, and they are
persuaded in their consciences that their laws, and with them, their
estates, liberties, and lives are in danger, and perhaps their
religion too, how they will be hindered from resisting illegal force
used against them I cannot tell. This is an inconvenience, I confess,
that attends all governments whatsoever, when the governors have
brought it to this pass, to be generally suspected of their people,
the most dangerous state they can possibly put themselves in; wherein
they are the less to be pitied, because it is so easy to be avoided.
It being as impossible for a governor, if he really means the good of
his people, and the preservation of them and their laws together, not
to make them see and feel it, as it is for the father of a family not
to let his children see he loves and takes care of them. 210. But if all the world shall observe
pretences of one kind, and actions of another, arts used to elude the
law, and the trust of prerogative (which is an arbitrary power in
some things left in the prince's hand to do good, not harm, to the
people) employed contrary to the end for which it was given; if the
people shall find the ministers and subordinate magistrates chosen,
suitable to such ends, and favoured or laid by proportionably as they
promote or oppose them; if they see several experiments made of
arbitrary power, and that religion underhand favoured, though
publicly proclaimed against, which is readiest to introduce it, and
the operators in it supported as much as may be; and when that cannot
be done, yet approved still, and liked the better, and a long train
of acting show the counsels all tending that way, how can a man any
more hinder himself from being persuaded in his own mind which way
things are going; or, from casting about how to save himself, than he
could from believing the captain of a ship he was in was carrying him
and the rest of the company to Algiers, when he found him always
steering that course, though cross winds, leaks in his ship, and want
of men and provisions did often force him to turn his course another
way for some time, which he steadily returned to again as soon as the
wind, weather, and other circumstances would let him?
212. Besides this overturning from without,
governments are dissolved from within: First. When the legislative is altered, civil
society being a state of peace amongst those who are of it, from whom
the state of war is excluded by the umpirage which they have provided
in their legislative for the ending all differences that may arise
amongst any of them; it is in their legislative that the members of a
commonwealth are united and combined together into one coherent
living body. This is the soul that gives form, life, and unity to the
commonwealth; from hence the several members have their mutual
influence, sympathy, and connection; and therefore when the
legislative is broken, or dissolved, dissolution and death follows.
For the essence and union of the society consisting in having one
will, the legislative, when once established by the majority, has the
declaring and, as it were, keeping of that will. The constitution of
the legislative is the first and fundamental act of society, whereby
provision is made for the continuation of their union under the
direction of persons and bonds of laws, made by persons authorised
thereunto, by the consent and appointment of the people, without
which no one man, or number of men, amongst them can have authority
of making laws that shall be binding to the rest. When any one, or
more, shall take upon them to make laws whom the people have not
appointed so to do, they make laws without authority, which the
people are not therefore bound to obey; by which means they come
again to be out of subjection, and may constitute to themselves a new
legislative, as they think best, being in full liberty to resist the
force of those who, without authority, would impose anything upon
them. Every one is at the disposure of his own will, when those who
had, by the delegation of the society, the declaring of the public
will, are excluded from it, and others usurp the place who have no
such authority or delegation. 213. This being usually brought about by such
in the commonwealth, who misuse the power they have, it is hard to
consider it aright, and know at whose door to lay it, without knowing
the form of government in which it happens. Let us suppose, then, the
legislative placed in the concurrence of three distinct persons: --
First, a single hereditary person having the constant, supreme,
executive power, and with it the power of convoking and dissolving
the other two within certain periods of time. Secondly, an assembly
of hereditary nobility. Thirdly, an assembly of representatives
chosen, pro tempore, by the people. Such a form of government
supposed, it is evident: 214. First, that when such a single person or
prince sets up his own arbitrary will in place of the laws which are
the will of the society declared by the legislative, then the
legislative is changed. For that being, in effect, the legislative
whose rules and laws are put in execution, and required to be obeyed,
when other laws are set up, and other rules pretended and enforced
than what the legislative, constituted by the society, have enacted,
it is plain that the legislative is changed. Whoever introduces new
laws, not being thereunto authorised, by the fundamental appointment
of the society, or subverts the old, disowns and overturns the power
by which they were made, and so sets up a new legislative.
215. Secondly, when the prince hinders the
legislative from assembling in its due time, or from acting freely,
pursuant to those ends for which it was constituted, the legislative
is altered. For it is not a certain number of men -- no, nor their
meeting, unless they have also freedom of debating and leisure of
perfecting what is for the good of the society, wherein the
legislative consists; when these are taken away, or altered, so as to
deprive the society of the due exercise of their power, the
legislative is truly altered. For it is not names that constitute
governments, but the use and exercise of those powers that were
intended to accompany them; so that he who takes away the freedom, or
hinders the acting of the legislative in its due seasons, in effect
takes away the legislative, and puts an end to the government.
216. Thirdly, when, by the arbitrary power of
the prince, the electors or ways of election are altered without the
consent and contrary to the common interest of the people, there also
the legislative is altered. For if others than those whom the society
hath authorised thereunto do choose, or in another way than what the
society hath prescribed, those chosen are not the legislative
appointed by the people. 217. Fourthly, the delivery also of the people
into the subjection of a foreign power, either by the prince or by
the legislative, is certainly a change of the legislative, and so a
dissolution of the government. For the end why people entered into
society being to be preserved one entire, free, independent society
to be governed by its own laws, this is lost whenever they are given
up into the power of another. 218. Why, in such a constitution as this, the
dissolution of the government in these cases is to be imputed to the
prince is evident, because he, having the force, treasure, and
offices of the State to employ, and often persuading himself or being
flattered by others, that, as supreme magistrate, he is incapable of
control; he alone is in a condition to make great advances towards
such changes under pretence of lawful authority, and has it in his
hands to terrify or suppress opposers as factious, seditious, and
enemies to the government; whereas no other part of the legislative,
or people, is capable by themselves to attempt any alteration of the
legislative without open and visible rebellion, apt enough to be
taken notice of, which, when it prevails, produces effects very
little different from foreign conquest. Besides, the prince, in such
a form of government, having the power of dissolving the other parts
of the legislative, and thereby rendering them private persons, they
can never, in opposition to him, or without his concurrence, alter
the legislative by a law, his consent being necessary to give any of
their decrees that sanction. But yet so far as the other parts of the
legislative any way contribute to any attempt upon the government,
and do either promote, or not, what lies in them, hinder such
designs, they are guilty, and partake in this, which is certainly the
greatest crime men can be guilty of one towards another. 219. There is one way more whereby such a
government may be dissolved, and that is: When he who has the supreme
executive power neglects and abandons that charge, so that the laws
already made can no longer be put in execution; this is
demonstratively to reduce all to anarchy, and so effectively to
dissolve the government. For laws not being made for themselves, but
to be, by their execution, the bonds of the society to keep every
part of the body politic in its due place and function. When that
totally ceases, the government visibly ceases, and the people become
a confused multitude without order or connection. Where there is no
longer the administration of justice for the securing of men's
rights, nor any remaining power within the community to direct the
force, or provide for the necessities of the public, there certainly
is no government left. Where the laws cannot be executed it is all
one as if there were no laws, and a government without laws is, I
suppose, a mystery in politics inconceivable to human capacity, and
inconsistent with human society. 220. In these, and the like cases, when the
government is dissolved, the people are at liberty to provide for
themselves by erecting a new legislative differing from the other by
the change of persons, or form, or both, as they shall find it most
for their safety and good. For the society can never, by the fault of
another, lose the native and original right it has to preserve
itself, which can only be done by a settled legislative and a fair
and impartial execution of the laws made by it. But the state of
mankind is not so miserable that they are not capable of using this
remedy till it be too late to look for any. To tell people they may
provide for themselves by erecting a new legislative, when, by
oppression, artifice, or being delivered over to a foreign power,
their old one is gone, is only to tell them they may expect relief
when it is too late, and the evil is past cure. This is, in effect,
no more than to bid them first be slaves, and then to take care of
their liberty, and, when their chains are on, tell them they may act
like free men. This, if barely so, is rather mockery than relief, and
men can never be secure from tyranny if there be no means to escape
it till they are perfectly under it; and, therefore, it is that they
have not only a right to get out of it, but to prevent it.
221. There is, therefore, secondly, another way
whereby governments are dissolved, and that is, when the legislative,
or the prince, either of them act contrary to their trust.
For the legislative acts against the trust
reposed in them when they endeavour to invade the property of the
subject, and to make themselves, or any part of the community,
masters or arbitrary disposers of the lives, liberties, or fortunes
of the people. 222. The reason why men enter into society is
the preservation of their property; and the end while they choose and
authorise a legislative is that there may be laws made, and rules
set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the society, to
limit the power and moderate the dominion of every part and member of
the society. For since it can never be supposed to be the will of the
society that the legislative should have a power to destroy that
which every one designs to secure by entering into society, and for
which the people submitted themselves to legislators of their own
making: whenever the legislators endeavour to take away and destroy
the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under
arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the
people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and
are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men
against force and violence. Whensoever, therefore, the legislative
shall transgress this fundamental rule of society, and either by
ambition, fear, folly, or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves,
or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives,
liberties, and estates of the people, by this breach of trust they
forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite
contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to
resume their original liberty, and by the establishment of a new
legislative (such as they shall think fit), provide for their own
safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society.
What I have said here concerning the legislative in general holds
true also concerning the supreme executor, who having a double trust
put in him, both to have a part in the legislative and the supreme
execution of the law, acts against both, when he goes about to set up
his own arbitrary will as the law of the society. He acts also
contrary to his trust when he employs the force, treasure, and
offices of the society to corrupt the representatives and gain them
to his purposes, when he openly pre-engages the electors, and
prescribes, to their choice, such whom he has, by solicitation,
threats, promises, or otherwise, won to his designs, and employs them
to bring in such who have promised beforehand what to vote and what
to enact. Thus to regulate candidates and electors, and new model the
ways of election, what is it but to cut up the government by the
roots, and poison the very fountain of public security? For the
people having reserved to themselves the choice of their
representatives as the fence to their properties, could do it for no
other end but that they might always be freely chosen, and so chosen,
freely act and advise as the necessity of the commonwealth and the
public good should, upon examination and mature debate, be judged to
require. This, those who give their votes before they hear the
debate, and have weighed the reasons on all sides, are not capable of
doing. To prepare such an assembly as this, and endeavour to set up
the declared abettors of his own will, for the true representatives
of the people, and the law-makers of the society, is certainly as
great a breach of trust, and as perfect a declaration of a design to
subvert the government, as is possible to be met with. To which, if
one shall add rewards and punishments visibly employed to the same
end, and all the arts of perverted law made use of to take off and
destroy all that stand in the way of such a design, and will not
comply and consent to betray the liberties of their country, it will
be past doubt what is doing. What power they ought to have in the
society who thus employ it contrary to the trust that along with it
in its first institution, is easy to determine; and one cannot but
see that he who has once attempted any such thing as this cannot any
longer be trusted. 223. To this, perhaps, it will be said that the
people being ignorant and always discontented, to lay the foundation
of government in the unsteady opinion and uncertain humour of the
people, is to expose it to certain ruin; and no government will be
able long to subsist if the people may set up a new legislative
whenever they take offence at the old one. To this I answer, quite
the contrary. People are not so easily got out of their old forms as
some are apt to suggest. They are hardly to be prevailed with to
amend the acknowledged faults in the frame they have been accustomed
to. And if there be any original defects, or adventitious ones
introduced by time or corruption, it is not an easy thing to get them
changed, even when all the world sees there is an opportunity for it.
This slowness and aversion in the people to quit their old
constitutions has in the many revolutions [that] have been seen in
this kingdom, in this and former ages, still kept us to, or after
some interval of fruitless attempts, still brought us back again to,
our old legislative of king, lords and commons; and whatever
provocations have made the crown be taken from some of our princes'
heads, they never carried the people so far as to place it in another
line. 224. But it will be said this hypothesis lays a
ferment for frequent rebellion. To which I answer: First: no more than any other hypothesis. For
when the people are made miserable, and find themselves exposed to
the ill usage of arbitrary power, cry up their governors as much as
you will for sons of Jupiter, let them be sacred and divine,
descended or authorised from Heaven; give them out for whom or what
you please, the same will happen. The people generally ill treated,
and contrary to right, will be ready upon any occasion to ease
themselves of a burden that sits heavy upon them. They will wish and
seek for the opportunity, which in the change, weakness, and
accidents of human affairs, seldom delays long to offer itself He
must have lived but a little while in the world, who has not seen
examples of this in his time; and he must have read very little who
cannot produce examples of it in all sorts of governments in the
world. 225. Secondly: I answer,
such revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in public
affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws,
and all the slips of human frailty
will be borne by the people without mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of abuses, prevarications,
and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to
the people, and they cannot but feel what they lie under, and see
whither they are going, it is not to be wondered that they should
then rouse themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands
which may secure to them the ends for which government was at first
erected, and without which, ancient names and specious forms are so
far from being better, that they are much worse than the state of
Nature or pure anarchy; the inconveniencies being all as great and as
near, but the remedy farther off and more difficult. 226. Thirdly: I answer, that this power in the
people of providing for their safety anew by a new legislative when
their legislators have acted contrary to their trust by invading
their property, is the best fence against rebellion, and the probable
means to hinder it. For rebellion being an opposition, not to
persons, but authority, which is founded only in the constitutions
and laws of the government: those, whoever they be, who, by force,
break through, and, by force, justify their violation of them, are
truly and properly rebels. For when men, by entering into society and
civil government, have excluded force, and introduced laws for the
preservation of property, peace, and unity amongst themselves, those
who set up force again in opposition to the laws, do rebellare --
that is, bring back again the state of war, and are properly rebels,
which they who are in power, by the pretence they have to authority,
the temptation of force they have in their hands, and the flattery of
those about them being likeliest to do, the proper way to prevent the
evil is to show them the danger and injustice of it who are under the
greatest temptation to run into it. 227. In both the forementioned cases, when
either the legislative is changed, or the legislators act contrary to
the end for which they were constituted, those who are guilty are
guilty of rebellion. For if any one by force takes away the
established legislative of any society, and the laws by them made,
pursuant to their trust, he thereby takes away the umpirage which
every one had consented to for a peaceable decision of all their
controversies, and a bar to the state of war amongst them. They who
remove or change the legislative take away this decisive power, which
nobody can have but by the appointment and consent of the people, and
so destroying the authority which the people did, and nobody else
can, set up, and introducing a power which the people hath not
authorised, actually introduce a state of war, which is that of force
without authority; and thus by removing the legislative established
by the society, in whose decisions the people acquiesced and united
as to that of their own will, they untie the knot, and expose the
people anew to the state of war. And if those, who by force take away
the legislative, are rebels, the legislators themselves, as has been
shown, can be no less esteemed so, when they who were set up for the
protection and preservation of the people, their liberties and
properties shall by force invade and endeavour to take them away; and
so they putting themselves into a state of war with those who made
them the protectors and guardians of their peace, are properly, and
with the greatest aggravation, rebellantes, rebels. 228. But if they who say it lays a foundation
for rebellion mean that it may occasion civil wars or intestine
broils to tell the people they are absolved from obedience when
illegal attempts are made upon their liberties or properties, and may
oppose the unlawful violence of those who were their magistrates when
they invade their properties, contrary to the trust put in them, and
that, therefore, this doctrine is not to be allowed, being so
destructive to the peace of the world; they may as well say, upon the
same ground, that honest men may not oppose robbers or pirates,
because this may occasion disorder or bloodshed. If any mischief come
in such cases, it is not to be charged upon him who defends his own
right, but on him that invades his neighbour's. If the innocent
honest man must quietly quit all he has for peace sake to him who
will lay violent hands upon it, I desire it may be considered what
kind of a peace there will be in the world which consists only in
violence and rapine, and which is to be maintained only for the
benefit of robbers and oppressors. Who would not think it an
admirable peace betwixt the mighty and the mean, when the lamb,
without resistance, yielded his throat to be torn by the imperious
wolf? Polyphemus's den gives us a perfect pattern of such a peace.
Such a government wherein Ulysses and his companions had nothing to
do but quietly to suffer themselves to be devoured. And no doubt
Ulysses, who was a prudent man, preached up passive obedience, and
exhorted them to a quiet submission by representing to them of what
concernment peace was to mankind, and by showing [what]
inconveniencies might happen if they should offer to resist
Polyphemus, who had now the power over them. 229. The end of government is the good of
mankind; and which is best for mankind, that the people should be
always exposed to the boundless will of tyranny, or that the rulers
should be sometimes liable to be opposed when they grow exorbitant in
the use of their power, and employ it for the destruction, and not
the preservation, of the properties of their people? 230. Nor let any one say that mischief can
arise from hence as often as it shall please a busy head or turbulent
spirit to desire the alteration of the government. It is true such
men may stir whenever they please, but it will be only to their own
just ruin and perdition. For till the mischief be grown general, and
the ill designs of the rulers become visible, or their attempts
sensible to the greater part, the people, who are more disposed to
suffer than right themselves by resistance, are not apt to stir. The
examples of particular injustice or oppression of here and there an
unfortunate man moves them not. But if they universally have a
persuasion grounded upon manifest evidence that designs are carrying
on against their liberties, and the general course and tendency of
things cannot but give them strong suspicions of the evil intention
of their governors, who is to be blamed for it? Who can help it if
they, who might avoid it, bring themselves into this suspicion? Are
the people to be blamed if they have the sense of rational creatures,
and can think of things no otherwise than as they find and feel them?
And is it not rather their fault who put things in such a posture
that they would not have them thought as they are? I grant that the
pride, ambition, and turbulency of private men have sometimes caused
great disorders in commonwealths, and factions have been fatal to
states and kingdoms. But whether the mischief hath oftener begun in
the people's wantonness, and a desire to cast off the lawful
authority of their rulers, or in the rulers' insolence and endeavours
to get and exercise an arbitrary power over their people, whether
oppression or disobedience gave the first rise to the disorder, I
leave it to impartial history to determine. This I am sure, whoever,
either ruler or subject, by force goes about to invade the rights of
either prince or people, and lays the foundation for overturning the
constitution and frame of any just government, he is guilty of the
greatest crime I think a man is capable of, being to answer for all
those mischiefs of blood, rapine, and desolation, which the breaking
to pieces of governments bring on a country; and he who does it is
justly to be esteemed the common enemy and pest of mankind, and is to
be treated accordingly. 231. That subjects or foreigners attempting by
force on the properties of any people may be resisted with force is
agreed on all hands; but that magistrates doing the same thing may be
resisted, hath of late been denied; as if those who had the greatest
privileges and advantages by the law had thereby a power to break
those laws by which alone they were set in a better place than their
brethren; whereas their offence is thereby the greater, both as being
ungrateful for the greater share they have by the law, and breaking
also that trust which is put into their hands by their
brethren. 232. Whosoever uses force without right -- as
every one does in society who does it without law -- puts himself
into a state of war with those against whom he so uses it, and in
that state all former ties are cancelled, all other rights cease, and
every one has a right to defend himself, and to resist the aggressor.
This is so evident that Barclay himself -- that great assertor of the
power and sacredness of kings -- is forced to confess that it is
lawful for the people, in some cases, to resist their king, and that,
too, in a chapter wherein he pretends to show that the Divine law
shuts up the people from all manner of rebellion. Whereby it is
evident, even by his own doctrine, that since they may, in some
cases, resist, all resisting of princes is not rebellion. His words
are these: "Quod siquis dicat, Ergone populus tyrannicae crudelitati
et furori jugulum semper praebebit? Ergone multitudo civitates suas
fame, ferro, et flamma vastari, seque, conjuges, et liberos fortunae
ludibrio et tyranni libidini exponi, inque omnia vitae pericula
omnesque miserias et molestias a rege deduci patientur? Num illis
quod omni animantium generi est a natura tributum, denegari debet, ut
sc. vim vi repellant, seseque ab injuria tueantur? Huic breviter
responsum sit, populo universo negari defensionem, quae juris
naturalis est, neque ultionem quae praeter naturam est adversus regem
concedi debere. Quapropter si rex non in singulares tantum personas
aliquot privatum odium exerceat, sed corpus etiam reipublicae, cujus
ipse, caput est -- i.e., totum populum, vel insignem aliquam ejus
partem immani et intoleranda saevitia seu tyrannide divexet; populo,
quidem hoc casu resistendi ac tuendi se ab injuria potestas competit,
sed tuendi se tantum, non enim in principem invadendi: et
restituendae injuriae illatae, non recedendi a debita reverentia
propter acceptum injuriam. Praesentem denique impetum propulsandi non
vim praeteritam ulciscendi jus habet. Horum enim alterum a natura
est, ut vitani scilicet corpusque tueamur. Alterum vero contra
naturam, ut inferior de superiori supplicium sumat. Quod itaque
populus malum, antequam factum sit, impedire potest, ne fiat, id
postquam factum est, in regem authorem sceleris vindicare non potest,
populus igitur hoc amplius quam privatus quispiam habet: Quod huic,
vel ipsis adversariis judicibus, excepto Buchanano, nullum nisi in
patientia remedium superest. Cum ille si intolerabilis tyrannis est
(modicum enim ferre omnino debet) resistere cum reverentia possit."
-- Barclay, Contra Monarchomachos, iii. 8. In English thus: 233. "But if any one should ask: Must the
people, then, always lay themselves open to the cruelty and rage of
tyranny -- must they see their cities pillaged and laid in ashes,
their wives and children exposed to the tyrant's lust and fury, and
themselves and families reduced by their king to ruin and all the
miseries of want and oppression, and yet sit still -- must men alone
be debarred the common privilege of opposing force with force, which
Nature allows so freely to all other creatures for their preservation
from injury? I answer: Self-defence is a part of the law of Nature;
nor can it be denied the community, even against the king himself;
but to revenge themselves upon him must, by no means, be allowed
them, it being not agreeable to that law. Wherefore, if the king
shall show an hatred, not only to some particular persons, but sets
himself against the body of the commonwealth, whereof he is the head,
and shall, with intolerable ill-usage, cruelly tyrannise over the
whole, or a considerable part of the people; in this case the people
have a right to resist and defend themselves from injury; but it must
be with this caution, that they only defend themselves, but do not
attack their prince. They may repair the damages received, but must
not, for any provocation, exceed the bounds of due reverence and
respect. They may repulse the present attempt, but must not revenge
past violences. For it is natural for us to defend life and limb, but
that an inferior should punish a superior is against nature. The
mischief which is designed them the people may prevent before it be
done, but, when it is done, they must not revenge it on the king,
though author of the villany. This, therefore, is the privilege of
the people in general above what any private person hath: That
particular men are allowed, by our adversaries themselves (Buchanan
only excepted), to have no other remedy but patience; but the body of
the people may, with respect, resist intolerable tyranny, for when it
is but moderate they ought to endure it." 234. Thus far that great advocate of
monarchical power allows of resistance. 235. It is true, he has annexed two limitations
to it, to no purpose: First. He says it must be with
reverence. Secondly. It must be without retribution or
punishment; and the reason he gives is, "because an inferior cannot
punish a superior." First. How to resist force without striking
again, or how to strike with reverence, will need some skill to make
intelligible. He that shall oppose an assault only with a shield to
receive the blows, or in any more respectful posture, without a sword
in his hand to abate the confidence and force of the assailant, will
quickly be at an end of his resistance, and will find such a defence
serve only to draw on himself the worse usage. This is as ridiculous
a way of resisting as Juvenal thought it of fighting: Ubi tu pulsas,
ego vapulo tantum. And the success of the combat will be unavoidably
the same he there describes it: Libertas pauperis haec est; This will always be the event of such an
imaginary resistance, where men may not strike again. He, therefore,
who may resist must be allowed to strike. And then let our author, or
anybody else, join a knock on the head or a cut on the face with as
much reverence and respect as he thinks fit. He that can reconcile
blows and reverence may, for aught I know, deserve for his pains a
civil, respectful cudgelling wherever he can meet with it.
Secondly. As to his second -- "An inferior
cannot punish a superior" -- that is true, generally speaking, whilst
he is his superior. But to resist force with force, being the state
of war that levels the parties, cancels all former relation of
reverence, respect, and superiority; and then the odds that remains
is -- that he who opposes the unjust aggressor has this superiority
over him, that he has a right, when he prevails, to punish the
offender, both for the breach of the peace and all the evils that
followed upon it. Barclay, therefore, in another place, more
coherently to himself, denies it to be lawful to resist a king in any
case. But he there assigns two cases whereby a king may unking
himself. His words are: "Quid ergo, nulline casus incidere possunt
quibus populo sese erigere atque in regem impotentius dominantem arma
capere et invadere jure suo suaque authoritate liceat? Nulli certe
quamdiu rex manet. Semper enim ex divinis id obstat, Regem
honorificato, et qui potestati resistit, Dei ordinationi resistit;
non alias igitur in eum populo potestas est quam si id committat
propter quod ipso jure rex esse desinat. Tunc enim se ipse principatu
exuit atque in privatis constituit liber; hoc modo populus et
superior efficitur, reverso ad eum scilicet jure illo quod ante regem
inauguratum in interregno habuit. At sunt paucorum generum commissa
ejusmodi quae hunc effectum pariunt. At ego cum plurima animo
perlustrem, duo tantum invenio, duos, inquam, casus quibus rex ipso
facto ex rege non regem se facit et omni honore et dignitate regali
atque in subditos potestate destituit; quorum etiam meminit Winzerus.
Horum unus est, si regnum disperdat, quemadmodum de Nerone fertur,
quod is nempe senatum populumque Romanum atque adeo urbem ipsam ferro
flammaque vastare, ac novas sibi sedes quaerere decrevisset. Et de
Caligula, quod palam denunciarit se neque civem neque principem
senatui amplius fore, inque animo habuerit, interempto utriusque
ordinis electissimo, quoque Alexandriam commigrare, ac ut populum uno
ictu interimeret, unam ei cervicem optavit. Talia cum rex aliquis
meditatur et molitur serio, omnem regnandi curam et animum ilico
abjicit, ac proinde imperium in subditos amittit, ut dominus servi
pro derelicto habiti, dominium. 236. "Arlter casus est, si rex in alicujus
clientelam se contulit, ac regnum quod liberum a majoribus et populo
traditum accepit, alienae ditioni mancipavit. Nam tunc quamvis forte
non ea mente id agit populo plane ut incommodet; tamen quia quod
praecipuum est regiae dignitatis amisit, ut summus scilicet in regno
secundum Deum sit, et solo Deo inferior, atque populum etiam totum
ignorantem vel invitum, cujus libertatem sartam et tectam conservare
debuit, in alterius gentis ditionem et potestatem dedidit; hac velut
quadam rengi abalienatione effecit, ut nec quod ipse in regno
imperium habuit retineat, nec in eum cui collatum voluit, juris
quicquam transferat, atque ita eo facto liberum jam et suae
potestatis populum relinquit, cujus rei exemplum unum annales Scotici
suppeditant." -- Barclay, Contra Monarchomachos, I. iii., c.
16. Which may be thus Englished: 237. "What, then, can there no case happen
wherein the people may of right, and by their own authority, help
themselves, take arms, and set upon their king, imperiously
domineering over them? None at all whilst he remains a king. 'Honour
the king,' and 'he that resists the power, resists the ordinance of
God,' are Divine oracles that will never permit it. The people,
therefore, can never come by a power over him unless he does
something that makes him cease to be a king; for then he divests
himself of his crown and dignity, and returns to the state of a
private man, and the people become free and superior; the power which
they had in the interregnum, before they crowned him king, devolving
to them again. But there are but few miscarriages which bring the
matter to this state. After considering it well on all sides, I can
find but two. Two cases there are, I say, whereby a king, ipso facto,
becomes no king, and loses all power and regal authority over his
people, which are also taken notice of by Winzerus. The first is, if
he endeavour to overturn the government -- that is, if he have a
purpose and design to ruin the kingdom and commonwealth, as it is
recorded of Nero that he resolved to cut off the senate and people of
Rome, lay the city waste with fire and sword, and then remove to some
other place; and of Caligula, that he openly declared that he would
be no longer a head to the people or senate, and that he had it in
his thoughts to cut off the worthiest men of both ranks, and then
retire to Alexandria; and he wished that the people had but one neck
that he might dispatch them all at a blow. Such designs as these,
when any king harbours in his thoughts, and seriously promotes, he
immediately gives up all care and thought of the commonwealth, and,
consequently, forfeits the power of governing his subjects, as a
master does the dominion over his slaves whom he hath
abandoned. 238. "The other case is, when a king makes
himself the dependent of another, and subjects his kingdom, which his
ancestors left him, and the people put free into his hands, to the
dominion of another. For however, perhaps, it may not be his
intention to prejudice the people, yet because he has hereby lost the
principal part of regal dignity -- viz., to be next and immediately
under God, supreme in his kingdom; and also because he betrayed or
forced his people, whose liberty he ought to have carefully
preserved, into the power and dominion of a foreign nation. By this,
as it were, alienation of his kingdom, he himself loses the power he
had in it before, without transferring any the least right to those
on whom he would have bestowed it; and so by this act sets the people
free, and leaves them at their own disposal. One example of this is
to be found in the Scotch annals." 239. In these cases Barclay, the great champion
of absolute monarchy, is forced to allow that a king may be resisted,
and ceases to be a king. That is in short -- not to multiply cases --
in whatsoever he has no authority, there he is no king, and may be
resisted: for wheresoever the authority ceases, the king ceases too,
and becomes like other men who have no authority. And these two cases
that he instances differ little from those above mentioned, to be
destructive to governments, only that he has omitted the principle
from which his doctrine flows, and that is the breach of trust in not
preserving the form of government agreed on, and in not intending the
end of government itself, which is the public good and preservation
of property. When a king has dethroned himself, and put himself in a
state of war with his people, what shall hinder them from prosecuting
him who is no king, as they would any other man, who has put himself
into a state of war with them, Barclay, and those of his opinion,
would do well to tell us. Bilson, a bishop of our Church, and a great
stickler for the power and prerogative of princes, does, if I mistake
not, in his treatise of "Christian Subjection," acknowledge that
princes may forfeit their power and their title to the obedience of
their subjects; and if there needed authority in a case where reason
is so plain, I could send my reader to Bracton, Fortescue, and the
author of the "Mirror," and others, writers that cannot be suspected
to be ignorant of our government, or enemies to it. But I thought
Hooker alone might be enough to satisfy those men who, relying on him
for their ecclesiastical polity, are by a strange fate carried to
deny those principles upon which he builds it. Whether they are
herein made the tools of cunninger workmen, to pull down their own
fabric, they were best look. This I am sure, their civil policy is so
new, so dangerous, and so destructive to both rulers and people, that
as former ages never could bear the broaching of it, so it may be
hoped those to come, redeemed from the impositions of these Egyptian
under-taskmasters, will abhor the memory of such servile flatterers,
who, whilst it seemed to serve their turn, resolved all government
into absolute tyranny, and would have all men born to what their mean
souls fitted them -- slavery. 240. Here it is like the common question will
be made: Who shall be judge whether the prince or legislative act
contrary to their trust? This, perhaps, ill-affected and factious men
may spread amongst the people, when the prince only makes use of his
due prerogative. To this I reply, The people shall be judge; for who
shall be judge whether his trustee or deputy acts well and according
to the trust reposed in him, but he who deputes him and must, by
having deputed him, have still a power to discard him when he fails
in his trust? If this be reasonable in particular cases of private
men, why should it be otherwise in that of the greatest moment, where
the welfare of millions is concerned and also where the evil, if not
prevented, is greater, and the redress very difficult, dear, and
dangerous? 241. But, farther, this question, Who shall be
judge? cannot mean that there is no judge at all. For where there is
no judicature on earth to decide controversies amongst men, God in
heaven is judge. He alone, it is true, is judge of the right. But
every man is judge for himself, as in all other cases so in this,
whether another hath put himself into a state of war with him, and
whether he should appeal to the supreme judge, as Jephtha did.
242. If a controversy arise betwixt a prince
and some of the people in a matter where the law is silent or
doubtful, and the thing be of great consequence, I should think the
proper umpire in such a case should be the body of the people. For in
such cases where the prince hath a trust reposed in him, and is
dispensed from the common, ordinary rules of the law, there, if any
men find themselves aggrieved, and think the prince acts contrary to,
or beyond that trust, who so proper to judge as the body of the
people (who at first lodged that trust in him) how far they meant it
should extend? But if the prince, or whoever they be in the
administration, decline that way of determination, the appeal then
lies nowhere but to Heaven. Force between either persons who have no
known superior on earth or, which permits no appeal to a judge on
earth, being properly a state of war, wherein the appeal lies only to
heaven; and in that state the injured party must judge for himself
when he will think fit to make use of that appeal and put himself
upon it. 243. To conclude. The power that every
individual gave the society when he entered into it can never revert
to the individuals again, as long as the society lasts, but will
always remain in the community; because without this there can be no
community -- no commonwealth, which is contrary to the original
agreement; so also when the society hath placed the legislative in
any assembly of men, to continue in them and their successors, with
direction and authority for providing such successors, the
legislative can never revert to the people whilst that government
lasts: because, having provided a legislative with power to continue
for ever, they have given up their political power to the
legislative, and cannot resume it. But if they have set limits to the
duration of their legislative, and made this supreme power in any
person or assembly only temporary; or else when, by the miscarriages
of those in authority, it is forfeited; upon the forfeiture of their
rulers, or at the determination of the time set, it reverts to the
society, and the people have a right to act as supreme, and continue
the legislative in themselves or place it in a new form, or new
hands, as they think good.
1. [An Essay Concerning
Certain False Principles.] 2. [Richard Hooker, The Laws
of Ecclesiastical Polity.] 3. "It is no improbable
opinion, therefore, which the arch-philosopher was of, That the chief
person in every household was always, as it were, a king; so when
numbers of households joined themselves in civil societies together,
kings were the first kind of governors among them, which is also, as
it seemeth, the reason why the name of fathers continued still in
them, who of fathers were made rulers; as also the ancient custom of
governors to do as Melchizedec; and being kings, to exercise the
office of priests, which fathers did, at the first, grew, perhaps, by
the same occasion. Howbeit, this is not the only kind of regimen that
has been received in the world. The inconveniencies of one kind have
caused sundry others to be devised, so that, in a word, all public
regimen, of what kind soever, seemeth evidently to have risen from
the deliberate advice, consultation and composition between men,
judging it convenient and behoveful, there being no impossibility in
Nature, considered by itself, but that man might have lived without
any public regimen." Hooker, Eccl. Pol., i. 10. 4. "The public power of all
society is above every soul contained in the same society, and the
principal use of that power is to give laws unto all that are under
it, which laws in such cases we must obey, unless there be reason
showed which may necessarily enforce that the law of reason or of God
doth enjoin the contrary." Hooker, Eccl. Pol., i. 16. 5. "To take away all such
mutual grievances, injuries, and wrongs -- i.e., such as attend men
in the state of Nature, there was no way but only by growing into
composition and agreement amongst themselves by ordaining some kind
of government public, and by yielding themselves subject thereunto,
that unto whom they granted authority to rule and govern, by them the
peace, tranquillity, and happy estate of the rest might be procured.
Men always knew that where force and injury was offered, they might
be defenders of themselves. They knew that, however men may seek
their own commodity, yet if this were done with injury unto others,
it was not to be suffered, but by all men and all good means to be
withstood. Finally, they knew that no man might, in reason, take upon
him to determine his own right, and according to his own
determination proceed in maintenance thereof, in as much as every man
is towards himself, and them whom he greatly affects, partial; and
therefore, that strifes and troubles would be endless, except they
gave their common consent, all to be ordered by some whom they should
agree upon, without which consent there would be no reason that one
man should take upon him to be lord or judge over another." Hooker,
ibid. 10. 6. "At the first, when some
certain kind of regimen was once appointed, it may be that nothing
was then further thought upon for the manner of governing, but all
permitted unto their wisdom and discretion which were to rule till,
by experience, they found this for all parts very inconvenient, so as
the thing which they had devised for a remedy did indeed but increase
the sore which it should have cured. They saw that to live by one
man's will became the cause of all men's misery. This constrained
them to come unto laws wherein all men might see their duty
beforehand, and know the penalties of transgressing them." Hooker,
Eccl. Pol. i. 10. 7. "Civil law, being the act
of the whole body politic, doth therefore overrule each several part
of the same body." Hooker, ibid. 8. "At the first, when some
certain kind of regimen was once approved, it may be that nothing was
then further thought upon for the manner of governing, but all
permitted unto their wisdom and discretion, which were to rule till,
by experience, they found this for all parts very inconvenient, so as
the thing which they had devised for a remedy did indeed but increase
the sore which it should have cured. They saw that to live by one
man's will became the cause of all men's misery. This constrained
them to come unto laws wherein all men might see their duty
beforehand, and know the penalties of transgressing them." Hooker,
Eccl. Pol. 1. 10. 9. "The lawful power of making
laws to command whole politic societies of men, belonging so properly
unto the same entire societies, that for any prince or potentate, of
what kind soever upon earth, to exercise the same of himself, and not
by express commission immediately and personally received from God,
or else by authority derived at the first from their consent, upon
whose persons they impose laws, it is no better than mere tyranny.
Laws they are not, therefore, which public approbation hath not made
so." Hooker, ibid. 10. "Of this point, therefore, we are to note that
such men naturally have no full and perfect power to command whole
politic multitudes of men, therefore utterly without our consent we
could in such sort be at no man's commandment living. And to be
commanded, we do consent when that society, whereof we be a part,
hath at any time before consented, without revoking the same after by
the like universal agreement. "Laws therefore human, of what kind soever, are
available by consent." Hooker, Ibid. 10. "Two foundations there are
which bear up public societies; the one a natural inclination whereby
all men desire sociable life and fellowship; the other an order,
expressly or secretly agreed upon, touching the manner of their union
in living together. The latter is that which we call the law of a
commonweal, the very soul of a politic body, the parts whereof are by
law animated, held together, and set on work in such actions as the
common good requireth. Laws politic, ordained for external order and
regimen amongst men, are never framed as they should be, unless
presuming the will of man to be inwardly obstinate, rebellious, and
averse from all obedience to the sacred laws of his nature; in a
word, unless presuming man to be in regard of his depraved mind
little better than a wild beast, they do accordingly provide
notwithstanding, so to frame his outward actions, that they be no
hindrance unto the common good, for which societies are instituted.
Unless they do this they are not perfect." Hooker, Eccl. Pol. i.
10. 11. "Human laws are measures
in respect of men whose actions they must direct, howbeit such
measures they are as have also their higher rules to be measured by,
which rules are two -- the law of God and the law of Nature; so that
laws human must be made according to the general laws of Nature, and
without contradiction to any positive law of Scripture, otherwise
they are ill made." Hooker, Eccl. Pol. iii. 9. "To constrain men to anything inconvenient doth
seem unreasonable." Ibid. i. 10.
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