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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.

CHAPTER X.

§. 132.

Of the forms of a commonwealth.

THE

HE 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 an 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 the community may 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 inferiour power should prescribe to a superiour, or any but the supreme make

laws)

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 Latines 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 or city in English does not: for there may be subordinate communities in government; and city amongst us has quite a different notion from commonwealth: and therefore, to avoid ambiguity, I crave leave to use the word commonwealth in that sense, in which I find it used by king James the first: and I take it to be its genuine signification; which if any body dislike, I consent with him to change it for a better.

CHAPTER XI.

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 any body 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 no-body can have a power to make laws, 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 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 com'monwealth; 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

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* "The lawful power of making laws to command whole politic so"cieties 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 immedi ❝ately 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's Eccl. Pol. 1. i. sect. "Of this point therefore we are to note, that sith men naturally "have no full and perfect power to command whole politic multitudes of 66 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 by the like universal agreement. "Laws therefore human, of what kind soever, are available by con"sent." Ibid.

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gave

gave up to the community: for no-body 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. 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

*

"Two foundations there are which bear up public societies; the "" one a natural inclination, whereby all men desire sociable life and fel"lowship; 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 regiment 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 na. "ture; in a word, unless presuming man to be, in regard of his de"praved mind, little better than a wild beast, they do accordingly pro"vide, notwithstanding, so to frame his outward actions, that they be no hindrance unto the common good, for which societies are insti"tuted. Unless they do this, they are not perfect." Hooker's Eccl. Pol. 1. i. sect. 10. "law,

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"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 to decide the rights of the subject, by promulgated, standing laws, and known authorized judges. For the law of nature being unwritten, and so no-where 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 ought, 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 or dinarily but his own single strength, hath not force enough to defend himself from injuries, or to 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 which 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.

**Human laws are measures in respect of men whose actions they "must direct, how beit 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's Eccl. Pol. 1. iii. sect. 9.

"To constrain men to any thing inconvenient doth seem unreason"able." Ibid. 1. i, sect. 10.

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§. 137.

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