1. It having been shown in the
foregoing discourse:1
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.
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Chapter 2
Of the State of Nature
4. To understand political power
aright, and derive it from its original, we must consider what estate all men are naturally in, and
that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of
their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law
of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other
man.
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.
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Chapter 3
Of the State of War
16. The state of war is a state of
enmity and destruction; and therefore declaring by word or action, not a
passionate and hasty, but sedate, settled design upon another man's life puts
him in a state of war with him against whom he has declared such an intention,
and so has exposed his life to the other's power to be taken away by him, or
any one that joins with him in his defence, and espouses his quarrel; it being
reasonable and just I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me
with destruction; for by the fundamental law of Nature, man being to be
preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the
innocent is to be preferred, and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him,
or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill
a wolf or a lion, because they are not under the ties of the common law of
reason, have no other rule but that of force and violence, and so may be
treated as a beast of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures that will be
sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power.
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.
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Chapter 4
Of Slavery
21. The natural liberty of man is
to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or
legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of Nature for his rule.
The liberty of man in society is to be under no other legislative power but
that established by consent in the commonwealth, nor under the dominion of any
will, or restraint of any law, but what that legislative shall enact according
to the trust put in it. Freedom, then, is not what Sir Robert Filmer tells us:
"A liberty for every one to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not
to be tied by any laws"; but freedom of men under government is to have a
standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the
legislative power erected in it. A liberty to follow my own will in all things
where that rule prescribes not, not to be subject to the inconstant,
uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man, as freedom of nature is to
be under no other restraint but the law of Nature.
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.).
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Chapter 5
Of Property
24. Whether we consider natural
reason, which tells us that men, being once born, have a right to their
preservation, and consequently to meat and drink and such other things as
Nature affords for their subsistence, or "revelation," which gives us an
account of those grants God made of the world to Adam, and to Noah and his
sons, it is very clear that God, as King David says (Psalm 115. 16), "has
given the earth to the children of men," given it to mankind in common. But,
this being supposed, it seems to some a very great difficulty how any one
should ever come to have a property in anything, I will not content myself to
answer, that, if it be difficult to make out "property" upon a supposition
that God gave the world to Adam and his posterity in common, it is impossible
that any man but one universal monarch should have any "property" upon a
supposition that God gave the world to Adam and his heirs in succession,
exclusive of all the rest of his posterity; but I shall endeavour to show how
men might come to have a property in several parts of that which God gave to
mankind in common, and that without any express compact of all the
commoners.
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.
Back to
Contents
Chapter 6
Of Paternal Power
52. IT may perhaps be censured an
impertinent criticism in a discourse of this nature to find fault with words
and names that have obtained in the world. And yet possibly it may not be
amiss to offer new ones when the old are apt to lead men into mistakes, as
this of paternal power probably has done, which seems so to place the power of
parents over their children wholly in the father, as if the mother had no
share in it; whereas if we consult reason or revelation, we shall find she has
an equal title, which may give one reason to ask whether this might not be
more properly called parental power? For whatever obligation Nature and the
right of generation lays on children, it must certainly bind them equal to
both the concurrent causes of it. And accordingly we see the positive law of
God everywhere joins them together without distinction, when it commands the
obedience of children: "Honour thy father and thy mother" (Exod. 20. 12);
"Whosoever curseth his father or his mother" (Lev. 20. 9); "Ye shall fear
every man his mother and his father" (Lev. 19. 3); "Children, obey your
parents" (Eph. 6. 1), etc., is the style of the Old and New Testament.
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."
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Contents
Chapter 7
Of Political or Civil Society
77. GOD, having made man such a
creature that, in His own judgment, it was not good for him to be alone, put
him under strong obligations of necessity, convenience, and inclination, to
drive him into society, as well as fitted him with understanding and language
to continue and enjoy it. The first society was between man and wife, which
gave beginning to that between parents and children, to which, in time, that
between master and servant came to be added. And though all these might, and
commonly did, meet together, and make up but one family, wherein the master or
mistress of it had some sort of rule proper to a family, each of these, or all
together, came short of "political society," as we shall see if we consider
the different ends, ties, and bounds of each of these.
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
Back to
Contents
Chapter 8
Of the Beginning of Political
Societies
95. MEN being, as has been said, by
nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate
and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent, which
is done by agreeing with other men, to join and unite into a community for
their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living, one amongst another, in a
secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any that
are not of it. This any number of men may do, because it injures not the
freedom of the rest; they are left, as they were, in the liberty of the state
of Nature. When any number of men have so consented to make one community or
government, they are thereby presently incorporated, and make one body
politic, wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude the
rest.
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.
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Chapter 9
Of the Ends of Political Society and
Government
123. IF man in the state of Nature
be so free as has been said, if he be absolute lord of his own person and
possessions, equal to the greatest and subject to nobody, why will he part
with his freedom, this empire, and subject himself to the dominion and control
of any other power? To which it is obvious to answer, that though in the state
of Nature he hath such a right, yet the enjoyment of it is very uncertain and
constantly exposed to the invasion of others; for all being kings as much as
he, every man his equal, and the greater part no strict observers of equity
and justice, the enjoyment of the property he has in this state is very
unsafe, very insecure. This makes him willing to quit this condition which,
however free, is full of fears and continual dangers; and it is not without
reason that he seeks out and is willing to join in society with others who are
already united, or have a mind to unite for the mutual preservation of their
lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name --
property.
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.
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Chapter 10
Of the Forms of a Commonwealth
132. THE majority having, as has
been showed, upon men's first uniting into society, the whole power of the
community naturally in them, may employ all that power in making laws for the
community from time to time, and executing those laws by officers of their own
appointing, and then the form of the government is a perfect democracy; or
else may put the power of making laws into the hands of a few select men, and
their heirs or successors, and then it is an oligarchy; or else into the hands
of one man, and then it is a monarchy; if to him and his heirs, it is a
hereditary monarchy; if to him only for life, but upon his death the power
only of nominating a successor, to return to them, an elective monarchy. And
so accordingly of these make compounded and mixed forms of government, as they
think good. And if the legislative power be at first given by the majority to
one or more persons only for their lives, or any limited time, and then the
supreme power to revert to them again, when it is so reverted the community
may dispose of it again anew into what hands they please, and so constitute a
new form of government; for the form of government depending upon the placing
the supreme power, which is the legislative, it being impossible to conceive
that an inferior power should prescribe to a superior, or any but the supreme
make laws, according as the power of making laws is placed, such is the form
of the commonwealth.
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.
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Chapter 11
Of the Extent of the Legislative
Power
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.
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Chapter 12
The Legislative, Executive, and Federative
Power
of the Commonwealth
143. THE legislative power is that
which has a right to direct how the force of the commonwealth shall be
employed for preserving the community and the members of it. Because those
laws which are constantly to be executed, and whose force is always to
continue, may be made in a little time, therefore there is no need that the
legislative should be always in being, not having always business to do. And
because it may be too great temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at
power, for the same persons who have the power of making laws to have also in
their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from
obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making and
execution, to their own private advantage, and thereby come to have a distinct
interest from the rest of the community, contrary to the end of society and
government. Therefore in well-ordered commonwealths, where the good of the
whole is so considered as it ought, the legislative power is put into the
hands of divers persons who, duly assembled, have by themselves, or jointly
with others, a power to make laws, which when they have done, being separated
again, they are themselves subject to the laws they have made; which is a new
and near tie upon them to take care that they make them for the public
good.
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.
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Chapter 13
Of the Subordination of the Powers of the
Commonwealth
149. THOUGH in a constituted
commonwealth standing upon its own basis and acting according to its own
nature -- that is, acting for the preservation of the community, there can be
but one supreme power, which is the legislative, to which all the rest are and
must be subordinate, yet the legislative being only a fiduciary power to act
for certain ends, there remains still in the people a supreme power to remove
or alter the legislative, when they find the legislative act contrary to the
trust reposed in them. For all power given with trust for the attaining an end
being limited by that end, whenever that end is manifestly neglected or
opposed, the trust must necessarily be forfeited, and the power devolve into
the hands of those that gave it, who may place it anew where they shall think
best for their safety and security. And thus the community perpetually retains
a supreme power of saving themselves from the attempts and designs of anybody,
even of their legislators, whenever they shall be so foolish or so wicked as
to lay and carry on designs against the liberties and properties of the
subject. For no man or society of men having a power to deliver up their
preservation, or consequently the means of it, to the absolute will and
arbitrary dominion of another, whenever any one shall go about to bring them
into such a slavish condition, they will always have a right to preserve what
they have not a power to part with, and to rid themselves of those who invade
this fundamental, sacred, and unalterable law of self-preservation for which
they entered into society. And thus the community may be said in this respect
to be always the supreme power, but not as considered under any form of
government, because this power of the people can never take place till the
government be dissolved.
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.
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Chapter 14
Of Prerogative
159. WHERE the legislative and
executive power are in distinct hands, as they are in all moderated monarchies
and well-framed governments, there the good of the society requires that
several things should be left to the discretion of him that has the executive
power. For the legislators not being able to foresee and provide by laws for
all that may be useful to the community, the executor of the laws, having the
power in his hands, has by the common law of Nature a right to make use of it
for the good of the society, in many cases where the municipal law has given
no direction, till the legislative can conveniently be assembled to provide
for it; nay, many things there are which the law can by no means provide for,
and those must necessarily be left to the discretion of him that has the
executive power in his hands, to be ordered by him as the public good and
advantage shall require; nay, it is fit that the laws themselves should in
some cases give way to the executive power, or rather to this fundamental law
of Nature and government -- viz., that as much as may be all the members of
the society are to be preserved. For since many accidents may happen wherein a
strict and rigid observation of the laws may do harm, as not to pull down an
innocent man's house to stop the fire when the next to it is burning; and a
man may come sometimes within the reach of the law, which makes no distinction
of persons, by an action that may deserve reward and pardon; it is fit the
ruler should have a power in many cases to mitigate the severity of the law,
and pardon some offenders, since the end of government being the preservation
of all as much as may be, even the guilty are to be spared where it can prove
no prejudice to the innocent.
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.
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Chapter 15
Of Paternal, Political and Despotical Power
Considered Together
169. THOUGH I have had occasion to
speak of these separately before, yet the great mistakes of late about
government having, as I suppose, arisen from confounding these distinct powers
one with another, it may not perhaps be amiss to consider them here
together.
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.
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Chapter 16
Of Conquest
175. THOUGH governments can
originally have no other rise than that before mentioned, nor polities be
founded on anything but the consent of the people, yet such have been the
disorders ambition has filled the world with, that in the noise of war, which
makes so great a part of the history of mankind, this consent is little taken
notice of; and, therefore, many have mistaken the force of arms for the
consent of the people, and reckon conquest as one of the originals of
government. But conquest is as far from setting up any government as
demolishing a house is from building a new one in the place. Indeed, it often
makes way for a new frame of a commonwealth by destroying the former; but,
without the consent of the people, can never erect a new one.
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.
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Chapter 17
Of Usurpation
197. As conquest may be called a
foreign usurpation, so usurpation is a kind of domestic conquest, with this
difference -- that an usurper can never have right on his side, it being no
usurpation but where one is got into the possession of what another has right
to. This, so far as it is usurpation, is a change only of persons, but not of
the forms and rules of the government; for if the usurper extend his power
beyond what, of right, belonged to the lawful princes or governors of the
commonwealth, it is tyranny added to usurpation.
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.
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Chapter 18
Of Tyranny
199. As usurpation is the exercise
of power which another hath a right to, so tyranny is the exercise of power
beyond right, which nobody can have a right to; and this is making use of the
power any one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it,
but for his own private, separate advantage. When the governor, however
entitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule, and his commands and
actions are not directed to the preservation of the properties of his people,
but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or any other
irregular passion.
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?
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Chapter 19
Of the Dissolution of Government
211. HE that will, with any
clearness, speak of the dissolution of government, ought in the first place to
distinguish between the dissolution of the society and the dissolution of the
government. That which makes the community, and brings men out of the loose
state of Nature into one politic society, is the agreement which every one has
with the rest to incorporate and act as one body, and so be one distinct
commonwealth. The usual, and almost only way whereby this union is dissolved,
is the inroad of foreign force making a conquest upon them. For in that case
(not being able to maintain and support themselves as one entire and
independent body) the union belonging to that body, which consisted therein,
must necessarily cease, and so every one return to the state he was in before,
with a liberty to shift for himself and provide for his own safety, as he
thinks fit, in some other society. Whenever the society is dissolved, it is
certain the government of that society cannot remain. Thus conquerors' swords
often cut up governments by the roots, and mangle societies to pieces,
separating the subdued or scattered multitude from the protection of and
dependence on that society which ought to have preserved them from violence.
The world is too well instructed in, and too forward to allow of this way of
dissolving of governments, to need any more to be said of it; and there wants
not much argument to prove that where the society is dissolved, the government
cannot remain; that being as impossible as for the frame of a house to subsist
when the materials of it are scattered and displaced by a whirlwind, or
jumbled into a confused heap by an earthquake.
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;
Pulsatus rogat, et pugnis
concisus, adorat,
Ut liceat paucis cum dentibus inde
reverti.
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.