 Book 2 Chapter 7 of two tree-disease on civil government. God, having made man such a creature that in his own judgment it was not good for him to be alone, putting 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 altogether, came short of political society, as we shall see, if we consider the different ends, ties, and bounds of each of these. Conjugal society is made by voluntary compact between man and woman, and though it consists 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. 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 it 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 viviporous 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 pray for themselves, but by the joint care of the male and the female. The same is to be observed in all birds, except some domestic ones, where plenty of food excuses the cock from feeding, and taking care of the younger brood, whose young needing food in the nest, the cock and hen continue mates till the young are able to use their wing and provide for themselves. 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, vis because the female is capable of conceiving, and de facto is commonly with child again, and brings forth to 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 is due to him from his parents, whereby his 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 Hyman 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 foresight, and an ability to lay up for the future, as well as to 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, in their interest better united, to make provision and lay out goods for their common issue, which uncertain mixture, or easy and frequent solutions of conjugal society, would mightily disturb. But though these are ties upon mankind, which make the conjugal bonds more firm and lasting in 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 taking 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 in 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. But the husband and wife, though they have but one common concern, yet have 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 in property, leaves the wife in full and free possession of what by contract is her peculiar right, and gives the husband no more power over her life than she has over his, 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. For all the ends of marriage being to be obtained under a political 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 there 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 those countries where the husband is allowed no such absolute authority. But the ends of matrimony requiring no such power in the husband, the condition of conjugal society put it not in him, it being not at all necessary to that state. Conjugal society could subsist and attain its ends without it. Nay, community of goods, and the power over them, mutual assistance and maintenance, and other things belonging to the conjugal society, might be varied and regulated by that contract which unites man and wife in that society, as far as may consist with procreation and the bringing up of children till they could shift for themselves, nothing being necessary to any society, that is not necessary to the ends for which it is made. The society betwixt parents and children, and their distinct rights and powers belonging respectively to them, I have treated of so largely in the foregoing chapter that I shall not hear need to say anything of it, and I think it is plain that it is far different from a politic society. 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. 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, which what resemblance soever it may have in its order, offices in number two, 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 paterfamilius, the absolute monarch in it. Absolute monarchy will have, but a very shattered in 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, or expecting the slave, and the family is as much a family, and his power as paterfamilius 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. Men 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 there unto punish the offenses of all those of that society, there and there only is political society, where every one of the members hath quitted his 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 by settled standing rules, indifferent, and the same to all parties, and by men having authority from the community, for the execution of those rules decides all the differences that may happen between any members of that society concerning any matter of right, and punishes those offenses 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 who 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 people, I mean on earth, are still in a 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. And thus the common wealth comes by a power to set down what punishment shall belong to the several transgressions which 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 it is possible. But though every man who has entered into civil society, and has become a member of any common wealth, has thereby quitted his power to punish offenses against the law of nature in prosecution of his own private judgment, yet with the judgment of offenses which he has given up to the legislative in all cases, where he can appeal to the magistrate, he has given a right to the common wealth to employ his force for the execution of the judgments of the common wealth, whenever he should be called to it, which indeed are his own judgments, 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 offenses are to be punished when committed within the common wealth, and also to determine 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. Wherever therefore any number of men are so united 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 authorizes 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 the common wealth by setting up a judge on earth with authority to determine all the controversies and redresses of the injuries that may happen to any member of the common wealth, which judge is the legislative or magistrates appointed by it, and wherever there are a number of men, however associated, that have no such decisive power to appeal to, there they are still in the state of nature. Hence it is evident that absolute monarchy, which by some men is counted the only government in the world, is indeed inconsistent with civil society, and so can be no 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 this society ought to obey. However any persons are, who have not such an authority to appeal to, for the decision of any difference between them, there those persons are still in the state of nature, and so is every absolute prince in respect to those who are under his dominion. 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 whose decision relief and redress may be expected of any injury or inconvenience that may be suffered from the prince, or by his order, so that such a man, however entitled, czar or grand-senor, 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 inconveniences of it, with only this woeful difference to the subject, or rather slave of an absolute prince, that whereas, in the ordinary state of nature, he has a liberty to judge of his right, and according to the best of his power, to maintain it. Now, 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 to defend his right, and so is exposed to all the misery and inconveniences that a man can fear from one who, being in the unrestrained state of nature, is yet corrupted with flattery and armed with power. 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 of the contrary. He that would have been insolent and injurious in the woods of America would not probably be much better in 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 silents all those that dare question it, for what the protection of absolute monarch is, what kind of fathers of their countries it makes princes be, and to what degree of happiness in security it carries a civil society where this sort of government is grown to perfection he that will look into the late relation of silent may easily see. 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 everyone thinks necessary, and believes he deserves to be thought as declared an enemy to society and mankind who should go about to take it away. But whether this be from true love of mankind and society, as such a charity as we owe all one 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 labor 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 for 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 power to do more hurt and wrong. It is right when he does it. To ask how you may be guarded from harm or injury, on that side where the strongest hand is to do it, is presently the voice of faction and rebellion. And if when men quitting the state of nature entered into society, they agreed that all of them, but one, should be under their strain 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 polk hats or foxes, but are content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions. But whatever flatterers may talk to amuse people's understandings, it hinders not men from feeling. And when they perceive that any man, in what stations so ever, is out of the bounds of the civil society which they are of, and that they have no appeal on earth against him, 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 preeminency among the rest, had this deference paid to his goodness and virtue as to a kind of natural authority, that the chief rule which arbitration of their differences by a tacit consent developed 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 of customs, which the negligent and unforeseen 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 was, 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 legislature was placed in collective bodies of men calling 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 anyone by his own authority avoid the force of the law when once made nor by any pretense of superiority plead exemption thereby to a license his own or the miscarriages of any of his dependence. 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 anyone will say the state of nature in civil society are one and the same thing which I have never yet found any one so great a patron of anarchy as to a farm end of chapter 7 recording by Nikki Sullivan Chicago. Book 2 Chapter 8 of two treatises of civil government. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Anna Seumon. Two treatises of civil government by John Locke. Book 2 Chapter 8 of the beginning of political societies. Man 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. The only way whereby anyone divests himself of his natural liberty and puts on the bonds of civil society is 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 the greater security against any that are not of it. This any number of man 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 man 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. For when any number of man have by the consent of every individual made a community they have thereby made that community one body with the 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 necessary to that which is one body to move one way. It is necessary the body should move that way with 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 should and so everyone 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 and thus every man by consenting with others to make one body politic and the 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 tight by any decrees of the society than he himself thought fit and it actually consent to this would be still as great a liberty as he himself had before his compact or anyone else in the state of nature hath who may submit himself and consent to any acts of it if he thinks fit 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 but such a consent is next impossible ever to be had if we consider the infirmities of health and evocations of business which in a number though much less than that of a commonwealth will necessarily keep many away from the public assembly to which if we add the variety of opinions and contrariety of interests which unavoidably happen in all collections of men they're coming into society upon such terms would be only like katoes coming into the theater only to go out again such a constitution as this would make the mighty leviathan of a shorter duration and 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 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 of 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 a consent of any number of freemen capable of a 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 to this i find two objections made first 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 secondly 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 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 live together in the state of nature the inconveniences of that condition and the love and want of society no sooner brought any number of them together but they presently united and incorporated if they're 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 salman asa 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 the 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 their original they are beholden 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 accepting that of the Jews where God himself immediately interposed and which favors 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 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 chaikuanas 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 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 not away 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 political societies all began from a voluntary union and a mutual agreement of men freely acting in the choice of their governors and forms of government and I hope those who went away from Sparta with Palantas mentioned by Justin will be allowed to have been free men 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 urged against natural liberty for if they can give so many instances out of history of governance begun upon paternal right I think though at best an argument from what has been to what should of right be has 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 less they should find at the foundation of most of them something very little favorable to the design they promote and such a power as they contend for 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 a 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 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 and tied 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 offenses against that law might thereby punish his transgressing children even when they were men and out of their pupillage and they were very likely to submit to his punishment and all joined with him against the offender in their turns giving him thereby power to execute a sentence against any transgression and so in effect make him a lawmaker 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 to any other if therefore they must have one to rule them as the government is hardly to be avoided amongst men that live together who's 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 air 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 use their natural freedom to set up him whom they judged the ableist and most likely to rule well over them conformable here on to we find the people of america who living out of reach of the conquering swords and spreading domination of the two great empires of peru and mexico enjoyed their own natural freedom though kaitres parbus they commonly prefer the heir of their deceased king yet if they find him anyway weak or incapable they pass him by and set up the stoutest and bravest man for their ruler thus through 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 that is at 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 man to mistake and think that by nature government was monarchical and belonged to the father it may not be a miss here to consider why people in the beginning generally pitched upon this form which though perhaps the father's preeminence he might in the first institution of some common worlds give 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 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 to 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 had been all accustomed to and which by experience had found both easy and safe to which if we add that monarchy being simple and most obvious to man 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 inconveniences 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 defense against foreign invasions and injuries than of multiplicity of laws the equality of a simple poor way of living confining their desires within the narrow bounds of each man's small property made few controversies and so no need of many laws to decide them or variety of officers to superintend the process or look after the execution of justice where there were but few trespasses 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 in one 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 thus we see 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 plurality of governors naturally devolves the command into the king's sole authority 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 in the heads of their forces appears plainly in the story of javta the emanate making war upon israel the gileadites in fear sent to javta a bastard of their family whom they had cast off and article with him if he will assist them against the ammonites to make them 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 has to be judge and he judged israel judges 12 7 that is was their captain general six years so when jotham abrades the shechemites with the obligation they had to gideon who'd been their judge and ruler he tells them he fought for you and adventured his life far 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 wary of the ill conduct of samuel's sons the children of israel desire the king like all the nations to judge them and to go out before them and to fight their battles one samuel 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 9 16 as if the only business of a king had been to lead out their armies and fight in their defense and accordingly at his inauguration pouring a vial of oil upon him declares to soul that the lord had anointed him to be captain over his inheritance 10 1 and therefore those who after souls being solemnly chosen and saluted king but the tribes at misba were unwilling to have him their king made no other objection but this how shall this man save us 5 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 had sought him a man after his own heart and the lord had commanded him to be captain over his people 13 14 as if the whole kingly authority were nothing else but to be their general and therefore the tribes who had stuck to souls 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 souls time and therefore they had no reason but to receive him as their king now also say they in time past when soul was king over us now was he that leadest out and broadest in israel and the lord said unto thee now shall feed my people israel and now shall be a captain over israel thus whether a family by degrees grew up into a commonwealth and the fatherly authority being continued on to the elder son everyone in his turn growing up under it desperately submitted to it and the easiness and equality of it not offending anyone everyone 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 chants neighborhood or business brought together uniting 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 man 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 whichever of those it was that at first put the rule into the hands of a single person certain it is nobody was entrusted with it but for the public good and safety and to those ends in the infancies of commonwealths those who had it commonly used it and unless they had done so young societies could not have subsisted without such nursing fathers tender and careful of the public wheel all governments would have sunk under the weakness and infirmities of their infancy and the prince and the people had soon perished together but through the golden age before vain ambition and amorce caleratus habendi evil concupiscence had corrupted man's minds into a mistake of true power and honor 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 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 slattery 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 their power which they having entrusted in another's hands only for their own good they found was made use of to hurt them 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 dreamt of monarchy being iure 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've mentioned is this that is 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 10 other freemen 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 anyone born under the dominion of another may be so free as to have a right to command others in a new and distinct empire everyone 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 know 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 endeavor 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 everyone 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 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 government 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 all must have been but only one universal monarchy if men had not been at liberty to separate themselves from their families and the government be it what it will there was set up in it and go and make distinct commonwealths and other governments as they thought fit 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 then 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've 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 anyone has 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 fathers because that estate being his father's property he may dispose or settle it as he pleases and this had generally given the occasion to 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 the commonwealth and thus the consent of freemen born under government which only makes the 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 man 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 english woman in france who's 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 frances 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 the 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 or government he is under his father's tuition and authority till he comes to age of discretion and then he is a freeman 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's being a subject of this kingdom nor is he bound up by any compact of his ancestors and why then had not his son by the same reason the same liberty though he be born anywhere else since the power that a father had 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 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 that is how far anyone 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 possessions or enjoyment of any part of the dominions of any government doth thereby give his tacit consent and is as far forth obliged to obedience to the laws of that government during such enjoyment as anyone under it whether this his possession be of land to him and his heirs forever or lodging only for a week or whether it be barely traveling freely on the highway and in effect it reaches as far as the very being of anyone within the territories of that government to understand this the better it is fit to consider that every man when he had first incorporates himself into any commonwealth he by his uniting himself there on to annexed 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 anyone 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 the proprietor of the land is a subject by the same act therefore whereby anyone 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 the minion of that commonwealth as long as it hath a being whoever therefore from thence forth by inheritance purchase permission or other ways enjoys any part of the land so annexed to and under the government of that commonwealth 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 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 anyone 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 tested consent to the government will by donation sale or otherwise quit the sad possession is it liberty to go and incorporate himself into any other commonwealth or to agree with others to begin a new one in vacuous locus 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 commonwealth is perpetually and indispensably obliged to be and remain unalterably accepted to it and can never be again in the liberty of the state of nature unless by any calamity the government he was under becomes to be dissolved or else by some public act cuts him off from being any longer a member of it 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 this 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 were of the force of its laws extends but this no more makes a man a member of that society a perpetual subject of that commonwealth then 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 our 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 is 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 anyone a member of any commonwealth end of book two chapter eight book two chapter nine of two treatises of civil government this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org two treatises of civil government by John Locke book two chapter nine of the ends of political society and government if a 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 why will he give up this empire and subject himself to the dominion of 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 has equal and the greater part no strict observers of equity and justice the employment of the property he has in this state is very unsafe very unsecure this makes him willing to quit a 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 the great and chief end therefore of men's 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 first there once 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 binding law to them in the application of it to their particular cases 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 everyone 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 to make them too remiss in other men's thirdly in the state of nature they're often wants power to back and support the sentence when right and to give it due execution they who by any injustice offend 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 thus mankind not withstanding 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 inconveniences that they are there in 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 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 authorized 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 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 come into 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 by positive agreements combined into smaller and divided associations 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 politics society and incorporates into any commonwealth separate from the rest of mankind the first power vis of doing whatsoever be thought 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 can find the liberty he had by the law of nature 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 saw fit to assist the executive power of that society as the law thereof shall require for being now in a new state wherein he is to enjoy many conveniences from the labor 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 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 legislature as the good of the society shall require yet it being only with an intention in everyone 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 preserve everyone's property by providing against these three defects above mention 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. CHAPTER X 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 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 of the supreme power which is the legislative it being impossible to conceive that an inferior powers 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 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 civitus 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 a government and city amongst us has a quite 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 anybody dislike I consent with him to change it for a better end of book two chapter ten book two chapter eleven of two treatises of civil government this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by J. C. Guan two treatises of civil government by John Locke book two chapter eleven of the extent of the legislative power section 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 commonwealth 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 the 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 addict of anybody else in what form so ever conceived or by what powers so ever backed have the force and obligation of a law which has not its sanction from the 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 footnote the lawful power of making laws to commend whole politic societies and men belonging so properly on to the same entire societies that for any prince or pretended of what can't so ever 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 has not made so hookers ecclesiastical policier book one section 10 of this point therefore we are to note that this man naturally have no fault and perfect power to command whole politic multitude use of men therefore utterly without our consent we could in such sort be at no man's commandment leaving and to be commanded we do consent when that society where of we be apart has at any time before consented without revoking the same after by the like universal agreement laws therefore human of what kind so ever are available by consent i bid and footnote which is absolutely necessary to its being a law the consent of society over whom nobody 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 anyone 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 disobedience to the legislative acting pursuant to their trust nor oblige him to any obedience contrary to the laws so enacted or further than they do allow its being ridiculous to imagine one can be tied ultimately to obey any power in the society which is not the supreme section 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 common wealth yet first it is not nor can possibly be absolutely arbitrary over the lives and fortunes of the people for its being but the joint power of every number of the society given up by 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 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 common wealth and buy 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 has no other end but preservation and therefore can never footnote two foundations there are which bear up public societies the one a natural inclination whereby all men desire sociable life and fellowship the other and 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 common well the very soul of a politic body the parts whereof are by law animated held together and sets on work in such actions as the common good requires 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 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's ecclesiastical policier volume one section 10 end footnote and therefore can never have a right to destroy and slave or designedly to impoverish the subjects the obligations of the law of nature sees not in society but only in many cases are drawn closer and have by human laws known penalty 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 section 136 secondly footnote human laws are measures in respect of men whose actions they must direct albeit such measures they are as have also their higher rules to be measured by which rules are to 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 ecclesiastical policier book three section nine to constrain men of anything inconvenient dot seem unreasonable i bid book one section 10 and footnote secondly the legislative or supreme authority cannot assume to itself a power to roll by extemporary arbitrary decrees but is bound to dispense justice and decide the rights of the subject by promulgated standing laws and known authorized 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 ought to determine the rights and fence the properties of those that live under it especially where everyone is judge interpreter and executioner of it too and that's in his own case and he that has rights on his side having ordinary but his own single strength has not forced enough to defend himself from injuries or to punish delinquents to avoid these inconveniences 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 roles to bound it by which everyone may know what it is 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 distrust 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 section 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 roles of right and property to secure their peace and quiet it cannot be supposed that they should intend had the power to do so to give to anyone 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 the liberty to defend their right against the injuries of others and were upon equal terms a 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 who is exposed to the arbitrary power of one man who has the command of a hundred thousand then he that is exposed to the arbitrary power of a hundred thousand single men no body 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 rolling power ought to govern by declared and received laws and nor 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 man was the joint power of a multitude to force them to obey at pleasure the exorbitant and unlimited decrease of their sudden thoughts or unrestrained until that moment unknown wells 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 bounds and not be tempted by the power they have in their hands to employ it to such purposes and by such measures as they would not have known and own not willingly section 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's 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 to 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 laws of the community are theirs and that nobody has a right to take their substance or any part of it 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 places 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 government 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 government where the legislative is in one lasting assembly always in being or in one man as an absolute monarchy's 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 fits 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 commends those subjects have power to take from any private man what part he pleases of his property and to use and dispose of it as he thinks good section 139 but government into whatsoever hands it is put being as i have before showed entrusted with this condition and for this end that's men might have and secure their properties the prince or senate however it's 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 subject's property without their own consent for this will be in effect to leave them no property at all and 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 further than the common practice of martial discipline for the preservation of the army and in it of the whole common wealth 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 the soldier to march up to the mouth of a cannon or stand in the 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 for death for deserting his post or for not obeying the most desperate orders can yet with all his absolute power of life and death dispose of one farthing of that soldier's estate or sees one jot of his goods whom yet he can command anything and hang for the last disobedience because such a blind obedience is necessary to that end for which the commander has his power vis the preservation of the rest but the disposing of his goods has nothing to do with it section 140 it is true governments cannot be supported without great charge and it is fit everyone 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 his own consent i.e the consent of the majority giving it either by themselves or the representatives chosen by them for if anyone 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 section 141 forcefully the legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hence for it is 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 submit to rules and be governed by laws made by such man and in such forms nobody else can say other men shall make laws for them nor can the people be bound by any laws but such as are enacted by those whom they have chosen and authorized to make laws for them the power of the legislative being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution can be no other than what the positive grant conveyed which being only to make laws and not to make legislators the legislative can have no power to transfer your authority of making laws and place it in other hands section 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 have one rule for rich and poor for the favorite at court and the country man at plow secondly these laws also ought to be designed for no other and 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 the legislative neither must nor can transfer the power of making laws to anybody else or place it anywhere but where the people have end of book 2 chapter 11 of two treatises of civil government this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Ashwin Jain two treatises of civil government by John Locke book 2 chapter 12 of the legislative executive and federative power of the commonwealth 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 members of it but 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 always in being not having always business to do and because it may be too great a 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 to be considered as it ought the legislative power is put into the hands of diverse persons who newly 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 and they make them for the public good 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 therein too therefore it is necessary there should be a power always in being we 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 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 society for though in a commonwealth the members of it are distinct persons still in reference to one another and as such a 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 the mankind hence it is 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 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 anyone pleases so the thing we understood i am indifferent as to the name these two powers executive and federative though may 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 for the laws that concern subjects one amongst another being to direct their actions may well enough recede them but what is to be done in reference to foreigners depending much upon their actions and the variation 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 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 or ruin end of chapter 12 recording by Ashwin Jain