 Book II. CHAPTER XIX. He that will, with any clearness, speak of the dissolution of government, ought in the first place to distinguish between the dissolution of the society and the dissolution of the government. That which makes the community, and brings men out of the loose state of nature into one politic society, is the agreement which everyone has with the rest to incorporate, and act as one body, and so be one distinct commonwealth. The usual and almost only way whereby this union is dissolved is the inroad of foreign force making a conquest upon them. For in that case, not being able to maintain and support themselves as one entire and independent body, the union belonging to that body which consisted therein must necessarily cease, and so everyone returned to the state he was in before, with a liberty to shift for himself and provide for his own safety as he thinks fit in some other society. Whenever the society is dissolved it is certain the government of the society cannot remain. Thus conquerors, swords often cut up governments by the roots, and mangle societies to pieces, separating the subdued or scattered multitude from the protection of, and dependence on, that society which ought to have preserved them from violence. The world is too well instructed in, and too forward to allow of, this way of dissolving of governments, to need any more to be said of it, and there wants not much argument to prove, that where the society is dissolved the government cannot remain, that being as impossible as for the frame of an ose to subsist when the materials of it are scattered and dissipated by a whirlwind, or jumbled into a confused heat by an earthquake. Besides this overturning from without governments are dissolved from within, first when the legislative is altered, civil society being a state of peace among those who are of it from whom the state of war is excluded by the umpireage, which they have provided in their legislature, for the ending all differences that may arise amongst any of them, it is in their legislative that the members of a commonwealth are united, and combined together into one coherent living body. This is the soul that gives form, life, and unity to the commonwealth, from hence the several members have their mutual influence, sympathy, and connection, and therefore when the legislative is broken or dissolved dissolution and death follows, for the essence and union of the society consisting in having one will, the legislative, when once established by the majority, the constitution of the legislative is the first and fundamental act of society, whereby provision is made for the continuation of their union, under the direction of persons and bonds of law, made by persons authorized therein too, by the consent and appointment of the people, without which no one man or number of men amongst them, can have authority of making laws that shall be binding to the rest. When any one or more shall take upon them to make laws whom the people have not appointed to do so, they make laws without authority, which the people are not therefore bound to obey, by which means they come again to be out of subjection, and may constitute to themselves a new legislative, as they think best, being in full liberty to resist the force of those who without authority would impose anything upon them. Every one is at the disposure of his own will when those who had, by the delegation of the society, the declaring of the public will are excluded from it, and others usurp the place who have no such authority or delegation. This being usually brought about by such in the commonwealth who misuse the power they have, it is hard to consider it a right, and know at whose door to lay it, without knowing the form of government in which it happens. Let us suppose, then, the legislative placed in the concurrence of three distinct persons. First, a single hereditary person, having the constant supreme executive power, and with it the power of convoking and dissolving the other two within certain periods of time. Two, an assembly of hereditary nobility. Three, an assembly of representatives chosen, pro tempore by the people. Such a form of government, supposed, it is evident, first, that when such a single person or prince sets up his own arbitrary will in place of the laws, which are the will of the society declared by the legislative, then the legislative is changed. For that being in effect the legislative, whose rules and laws are put into execution, and required to be obeyed, when other laws are set up and other rules pretended and enforced, then what the legislative constituted by the society have enacted, it is plain that the legislative is changed. Whoever introduces new laws, not being there unto authorised by the fundamental appointment of the society, or subverts the old, disowns and overturns the power by which they were made, and so sets up a new legislative. Secondly, when the prince hinders the legislative from assembling in its new time, or from acting freely, pursuant to those ends for which it was constitutive, the legislative is altered. For it is not a certain number of men, no, nor their meeting, unless they have also freedom of debating and leisure of perfection, what is for the good of the society, wherein the legislative consists. When these are taken away or altered, so as to deprive the society of the due exercise of their power, the legislative is truly altered, for it is not names that constitute governments, but the use and exercise of those powers that were intended to accompany them, so that he who takes away the freedom, or hinders the acting of the legislative in its due seasons, in effect takes away the legislative and puts an end to the government. Thirdly, when by the arbitrary power of the prince, the electors or ways of election are altered, without the consent, and contrary to the common interest of the people, there also the legislative is altered, for if others than those whom the society hath authorized there unto do choose, or in another way than what the society hath prescribed, those chosen are not the legislative appointed by the people. Fourthly, the delivery also of the people into the subjection of a foreign power, either by the prince or by the legislative, is certainly a change of the legislative, and so a dissolution of the government, for the end why people entered into society being to be persevered one entire free independent society to be governed by its own laws, this is lost whenever they are given up unto the power of another. Why in such a constitution as this the dissolution of the government in these cases is to be imputed to the prince is evident, because he, having the force, treasure, and offices of the state to employ, and often persuading himself, or being flattered by others, that as supreme magistrate he is incapable of control, he alone is in a condition to make great advances toward such changes under pretense of lawful authority, and has it in his hands to terrify or suppress opposers as factious, seditious, and enemies to the government, whereas no other part of the legislative or people is capable by themselves to attempt any alteration of the legislative without open and visible rebellion apt enough to be taken notice of, which when it prevails produces effects very little different from foreign conquest. Besides, the prince in such a form of government, having the power of dissolving the other parts of the legislative, and thereby rendering them private persons, they can never in opposition to him or without his concurrence alter the legislative by a law, his consent being necessary to give any of their decrees that sanction. But yet so far as the other parts of the legislative in any way contribute to any attempt upon the government, and do either promote or not what lies in them, hinder such designs, they are guilty and partake in this, which is certainly the greatest crime men can be guilty of, one towards another. There is one way more whereby such a government may be dissolved, and that is, when he who has the supreme executive power neglects and abandons that charge, so that the laws already made can no longer be put in execution. This is demonstratively to reduce all to anarchy, and so effectually to dissolve the government, for laws not being made for themselves, but to be by their execution the bonds of the society, to keep every part of the body politic in its due place and function, when that totally ceases, the government visibly ceases, and the people become a confused multitude without order or connection. Where there is no longer the administration of justice for the securing of men's rights, nor any remaining power within the community to direct the force or provide for the necessities of the public, there certainly is no government left. Where the laws cannot be executed, it is all one as if there were no laws, and a government without laws is, I suppose, a mystery in politics, inconceivable to human capacity and inconsistent with human society. In these and the like cases, when the government is dissolved, the people are at liberty to provide for themselves by erecting a new legislative, differing from the other, by the change of persons or form or both, as they shall find it most for their safety and good. For the society can never, by the fault of another, lose the native and original right it has to preserve itself, which can only be done by a settled legislative and a fair and impartial execution of the laws made by it. But the state of mankind is not so miserable that they are not capable of using this remedy till it be too late to look for any. To tell people they may provide for themselves by erecting a new legislative, when by oppression, artifice, or being delivered over to a foreign power, their old one is gone, is only to tell them they may expect relief when it is too late, and the evil is past cure. This is in effect no more than to bid them first be slaves, and then to take care of their liberty, and when their chains are on tell them they may act like freemen. This, if barely so, is rather mockery than relief, and men can never be secure from tyranny if there be no means to escape it till they are perfectly under it. And therefore it is that they have not only a right to get out of it, but to prevent it. There is therefore, secondly, another way whereby governments are dissolved. That is, when the legislative or the prince, either of them, act contrary to their trust. First, the legislative acts against the trust reposed in them, when they endeavor to invade the property of the subject, and to make themselves, or any part of the community, masters or arbitrary disposers of the lives, liberties, or fortunes of the people. The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property, and the end why they choose and authorize a legislative is that there may be laws made and rules set as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society, to limit the power and moderate the dominion of every part and member of the society. For since it can never be supposed to be the will of the society that the legislative should have a power to destroy that which every one designs to secure by entering into society, and for which the people submitted themselves to legislatures of their own making, whenever the legislatures endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence. Whensoever, therefore, the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society, and either by ambition, fear, folly, or corruption, endeavor to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, and absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people, by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people who have a right to resume their original liberty, and by the establishment of a new legislative, such as they shall think fit, provide for their own safety and security which is the end for which they are in society. What I have said here concerning the legislative in general holds true also concerning the supreme executor, who having a double trust put in him, both to have a part in the legislative and the supreme execution of the law, acts against both, when he goes about to set up his own arbitrary will as the law of the society. He also acts contrary to his trust, when he either employs the force, treasure, and offices of the society, to corrupt the representatives, and gain them to his purposes, or openly pre-engages the electors, and prescribes to their choice such whom he has by solicitations, threats, promises, or otherwise, one to his designs, and employs them to bring in such who have promised beforehand what to vote, and what to enact. Thus, to regulate candidates and electors, and new model the ways of election, what is it but to cut up the government by the roots, and poison the very fountain of public security? For the people having reserved to themselves the choice of their representatives as the fence to their properties, could do it for no other end, but that they might always be freely chosen, and so chosen, freely act and advise as the necessity of the commonwealth, and the public good should, upon examination, and mature debate, be judged to require. This, those who give their votes before they hear the debate, and have weighed the reasons on all sides, are not capable of doing. To prepare such an assembly is this, and endeavor to set up the declarative betters of his own will, for the true representatives of the people, and the lawmakers of the society, is certainly as great a breach of trust, and as perfect a declaration of a design to subvert the government, as is possible to be met with. To which, if one shall add rewards and punishments visibly employed to the same end, and all the arts of perverted law made use of, to take off and destroy all that stand in the liberties of their country, it will be passed out what is doing. What power they ought to have in the society, who thus employ it contrary to the trust went along with it in its first institution, it is easy to determine, and one cannot but see, that he who has once attempted any such thing as this cannot any longer be trusted. To this perhaps it will be said, that the people being ignorant, and always discontented, to lay the foundation of government in the unsteady opinion and uncertain humor of the people, is to expose it to certain ruin, and no government will be able long to subsist if the people may set up a new legislative whenever they take offense at the old one. To this I answer, quite the contrary. People are not so easily got out of their old forms, as some are apt to suggest. They are hardly to be prevailed with to amend the acknowledged faults in the frame they have been accustomed to. Or adventurous ones introduced by time, or corruption, it is not an easy thing to get them changed, even when all the world sees there is an opportunity for it. This slowness and aversion in the people to quite their old constitutions has, in the many revolutions which have been seen in this kingdom, in this and former ages, still kept us to, or after some intervals of fruitless attempts, still brought us back again to our old legislative of king, lords, and commons. And whatever provocations have made the crown be taken from some of our prince's heads, they never carried the people so far as to place it in another line. But it will be said this hypothesis lays a ferment for frequent rebellion, to which I answer, first, no more than any other hypothesis, for when the people are made miserable and find themselves exposed to the ill usage of arbitrary power, cry up their governors, as much as you will, for sons of Jupiter, let them be sacred and divine, descended or authorized from heaven, give them out for whom or what you please, the same will happen. The people generally ill-treated, and contrary to right, will be ready upon any occasion to ease themselves of a burden that sits heavy upon them. They will wish, and seek for the opportunity, which in the change, weakness, and accidents of human affairs seldom delays long to offer itself. He must have lived but a little while in the world, who has not seen examples of this in his time, and he must have read very little, who cannot produce examples of it in all sorts of governments in the world. Secondly, I answer, such revolutions happen not upon every little mismanagement in public affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all the slips of human frailty, will be borne by the people without mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of abuses, prevarications, and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel what they lie under and see whether they are going, is it not to be wondered that they should then rouse themselves and endeavor to put the rule into such hands which may secure them the ends for which government was at first directed, and without which ancient names and specious forms are so far from being better that they are much worse than the state of nature or pure anarchy, the inconveniences being all as great and as near but the remedy farther off and more difficult. Thirdly I answer that this doctrine of a power in the people of providing for their safety anew by a new legislative whenever their legislators have acted contrary to their trust, by invading their property, is the best fence against rebellion and the probabilist means to hinder it, for rebellion being an opposition not to persons but authority which is founded only in the constitutions and laws of the government, those whoever they be who by force break through and by force justify their violation of them are truly and properly rebels, for when men by entering into society and civil government have excluded force and introduced laws for the preservation of property, peace and unity among themselves, those who set up force again in opposition to the laws do rebel, that is, bring back again into the state of war and are properly rebels, which they who are in power by the pretense they have authority, the temptation of force they have in their hands and the flattery of those about them, being likely as to do the properest way to prevent the evil is to show them the danger and injustice of it, who are under the greatest temptation to run into it. In both the four mentioned cases, when either the legislative is changed or the legislators act contrary to the end for which they were constituted, those who are guilty are guilty of rebellion, for if any one by force takes away the established legislative of any society and the laws by them made, pursuant to their trust, he thereby takes away the umpireage, which every one had consented to, for a peaceable division of all their controversies, and a bar to the state of war amongst them. They who remove or change the legislative take away this decisive power which nobody can have but by the appointment and consent of the people, and so destroying the authority which the people did, and nobody else can set up and introducing a power which the people hath not authorized, they actually introduce a state of war, which is that of force without authority, and thus by removing the legislative established in the society, in whose decisions the people acquiesced and united as to that of their own will, they untie the knot, and expose the people anew to the state of war. And if those who by force take away the legislative are rebels, the legislators themselves, as has been shown, can be no less esteemed so, when they who were set up for the protection and preservation of the people, their liberties and properties shall by force invade and endeavor to take them away, and so they, putting themselves into a state of war with those who made them the protectors and guardians of their peace, are properly and with the greatest aggravation, rebellance, rebels. But if they who say it lays a foundation for rebellion mean that it may occasion civil wars, or intestine broils, to tell the people they are absolved from obedience when illegal attempts are made upon their liberties or properties, and may oppose the unlawful violence of those who were their magistrates when they invade their properties contrary to the trust put in them, and that therefore this doctrine is not to be allowed, being so destructive to the peace of the world, they may as well say upon the same ground that honest men may not oppose robbers or pirates, because this may occasion disorder or bloodshed. If any mischief come in such cases, it is not to be charged upon him who defends his own right, but on him that invades his neighbors. If the innocent honest man must quietly quit all he has for peace sake, to him who will lay violent hands upon it, I desire it may be considered what a kind of peace there will be in the world, which consists only in violence and rapine, and which is to be maintained only for the benefit of robbers and oppressors. Who would not think it an admirable peace betwixt the mighty and the mean when the lamb without resistance yielded his throat to be torn by the imperious wolf? Polyphemus's den gives us a perfect pattern of such a peace and such a government, wherein Ulysses and his companions had nothing to do, but quietly to suffer themselves to be devoured. And no doubt Ulysses, who was a prudent man, preached up passive obedience and exhorted them to a quiet submission by representing to them of what concernment peace was to mankind, and by showing the inconveniences that might happen if they should offer to resist Polyphemus, who had now the power over them. The end of government is the good of mankind, and which is best for mankind, that the people should always be exposed to the boundless will of tyranny, or that the rulers should be sometimes liable to be opposed, when they grow exorbitant in the use of their power, and employ it for the destruction, and not the preservation of the properties of their people. Or let anyone say that mischief can arise from hence, as often it shall please a busy head, or turbulent spirit, to desire the alteration of the government. It is true such men may stir whenever they please, but it will be only to their own just ruin and perdition, for till the mischief be grown general and the ill designs of the rulers become visible, or their attempts sensible to the greater part, the people, who are more disposed to suffer than write themselves by resistance, are not apt to stir. The examples of particular injustice, or oppression, of here and there an unfortunate man, moves them not. But if they universally have a persuasion, grounded upon manifest evidence, that designs are carrying on against their liberties, and the general course and tendency of things cannot but give them a strong suspicion of the evil intention of their governors, who is to be blamed for it? Who can help it, if they, who might avoid it, bring themselves into this suspicion? Are the people to be blamed, if they have the sense of rational creatures, and can think of things no otherwise than as they find and feel them? And is it not rather their fault, who put things into such a posture, that they would not have them thought to be as they are? I grant that the pride, ambition, and turbulence of private men have sometimes caused great disorders in commonwealths, and factions have been fatal to states and kingdoms. But whether the mischief hath often are begun in the people's wantonness, and a desire to cast off the lawful authority of their rulers, or in the rulers' insolence and endeavors to get and exercise an arbitrary power over the people, whether oppression or disobedience gave the first rise to the disorder, I leave it to impartial history to determine. This I am sure, whoever, either ruler or subject, by force goes about to invade the rights of either prince or people, and lays the foundation for overturning the constitution and frame of any just government, is highly guilty of the greatest crime, I think, a man is capable of, being to answer for all those mischiefs of blood, rapine, and desolation, which the breaking to pieces of governments bring on a country. And he who does it is justly to be esteemed the common enemy and pest of mankind, and is to be treated accordingly. That subjects or foreigners attempting by force on the properties of any people, may be resisted with force, is agreed on all hands. But that magistrates, doing the same thing, may be resisted, hath of late been denied, as if those who had the greatest privileges and advantages by the law had thereby a power to break those laws, by which alone they were set in a better place than their brethren, whereas their offence is thereby the greater, both as being ungrateful for the greater share they have by the law, and breaking also that trust, which is put into their hands by their brethren. Whosoever uses force without right, as every one does in society, who does it without law, puts himself into a state of war with those against whom he uses it, and in that state all former ties are cancelled, all other rights cease, and every one has a right to defend himself and to resist the aggressor. This is so evident that Barclay himself, that great asserter of the power and sacredness of kings, is forced to confess, that it is lawful for the people, in some cases, to resist their king, and that too in a chapter wherein he pretends to show that the divine law shuts up the people from all manner of rebellion, whereby it is evident, even by his own doctrine, that since they may in some cases resist, all resisting a prince is not rebellion. His words are these, in English thus, but if any one should ask, must the people then always lay themselves open to the cruelty and rage of tyranny, must they see their cities pillaged, and laid in ashes, their wives and children exposed to the tyrants lust and fury, and themselves and families reduced by their king to ruin, and all the miseries of want and oppression, and yet sit still? Must men alone be debarred the common privilege of opposing force with force, which nature allows so freely to all other creatures for their preservation from injury? I answer, self-defense is a part of the law of nature, nor can it be denied the community, even against the king himself. But to revenge themselves upon him must by no means be allowed them, it being not agreeable to that law. Wherefore if the king shall show and hatred not only to some particular persons, but sets himself against the body of the commonwealth, whereof he is the head, and shall with intolerable ill usage cruelly tyrannize over the whole, or a considerable part of the people? In this case the people have a right to resist and to defend themselves from injury. But it must be with this caution that they only defend themselves, but do not attack their prince. They may repair the damages received, but not for any provocation exceed the bounds of due reverence and respect. They may repulse the present attempt, but must not revenge past violences, for it is natural for us to defend life and limb, but that an inferior should punish a superior is against nature. The mischief which is designed to them, the people may prevent before it be done, but when it is done they must not revenge it on the king, though the author of the villainy. This therefore is the privilege of the people in general, above what any private person hath. That particular men are allowed by our adversaries themselves, Buchanan only accepted, to have no other remedy but patience, but the body of the people may, with respect, resist intolerable tyranny, for when it is but moderate they ought to endure it. As far as that great advocate of monarchical power allows of resistance. It is true he has annexed two limitations to it to no purpose. First he says it must be with reverence. Secondly it must be without retribution or punishment, and the reason he gives is because an inferior cannot punish a superior. First how to resist force without striking again, or how to strike with reverence, will need some skill to make intelligible. He that shall oppose an assault only with a shield to receive the blows, or in any more respectful posture, without a sword in his hand, to abate the confidence and force of the assailant, will quickly be at an end of his resistance, and will find such a defense serve only to draw on himself the worst usage. This is a ridiculous way of resisting, as Juvenal thought it of fighting, Ubitiposis ego vapulum tatum. And the success of the combat will be unavoidably the same. He there describes it, libertas papyrus hecest, pulsatus rogat, epugnus concisis adorat, at leastet pausis cum dentibus inde reverte. This will always be the event of such an imaginary resistance, where men may not strike again. He therefore, who may resist, must be allowed to strike, and then let our author, or anybody else, join a knock on the head, or a cut on the face, with as much reverence and respect as he thinks fit. He that can reconcile blows and reverence may, for odd I know, desire for his pains a civil, respectful cuddling wherever he can meet with it. Secondly, as to his second, an inferior cannot punish a superior, that is true generally speaking, whilst he is his superior. But to resist force with force, being the state of war that levels the parties, cancels all former relation of reverence, respect, and superiority. And the odds that remains is that he who opposes the unjust aggressor has this superiority over him, that he has a right when he prevails to punish the offender, both for the breach of the peace and all the evils that followed upon it. Barkley, therefore, in another place, more coherently to himself denies it to be lawful to resist a king in any case. But he there assigns two cases, whereby a king may unking himself. His words are, which in English run thus, what then, can there no case happen wherein the people may of right, and by their own authority help themselves, take arms, and set upon their king, imperiously domineering over them? Not at all, whilst he remains a king. Honor the king, and he that resists the power, resists the ordinance of God, are divine oracles that will never permit it. The people, therefore, can never come by a power over him, thus he does something that makes him cease to be a king. For then he divests himself of his crown and dignity, and returns to the state of a private man, and the people become free and superior, the power which they had in the interregnum before they crowned him king, devolving to them again. But there are but few miscarriages which bring the matter to this state. After considering it well on all sides, I can find but two. Two cases there are, I say, whereby a king, Ipsophacto, becomes no king, and loses all power and regal authority over his people, which are also taken notice of by Winserus. The first is, if he endeavour to overturn the government, that is, if he have a purpose and design to ruin the kingdom and commonwealth, as it is recorded of Nero, that he resolve to cut off the senate and people of Rome, lay the city waste with fire and sword, and then remove to some other place. And of Caligula, that he openly declared, that he would be no longer a head to the people or senate, and that he had it in his thoughts to cut off the worthiest men of both ranks, and then retire to Alexandria, and he wished that the people had but one neck that he might dispatch them all at a blow. Such designs as these, when any king harbours in his thoughts, and seriously promotes, he immediately gives up all care and thought of the commonwealth, and consequently forfeits the power of governing his subjects, as a master does the dominion over his slaves whom he hath abandoned. The other case is, when a king makes himself the dependent of another, and subjects his kingdom, which his ancestors left him, and the people put free into his hands, to the dominion of another, for however perhaps it may not be his intention to prejudice the people, yet because he has hereby lost the principal part of regal dignity, vis, to be next and immediately under God, supreme in his kingdom, and also because he betrayed or forced his people, whose liberty he ought to have carefully preserved into the power and dominion of a foreign nation. By this, as it were, alienation of his kingdom, he himself loses the power he had in it before, without transferring any the least right to those on whom he would have bestowed it, and so by this act sets the people free, and leaves them at their own disposal. One example of this is to be found in the Scotch annals. In these cases Barkley, the great champion of absolute monarchy, is forced to allow that a king may be resisted and ceases to be king. That is, in short, not to multiply cases in whatsoever he has no authority, there he is no king, and may be resisted. For wheresoever the authority ceases, the king ceases too, and becomes like other men who have no authority. And these two cases he instances in differ little from those above mentioned, to be destructive to governments, only that he has omitted the principle from which this doctrine flows. That is, the breach of trust, not in preserving the form of government agreed on, and in not intending the end of government itself, which is the public good and preservation of property. When a king has dethroned himself and put himself in a state of war with his people, what shall hinder them from prosecuting him who is no king, as they would any other man who has put himself into a state of war with them? Barkley and those of his opinion would do well to tell us. This farther I desire may be taken notice of out of Barkley, that he says, the mischief that has designed them the people may prevent before it be done, whereby he allows resistance when tyranny is but in design. Such designs as these, says he, when any king harbors in his thoughts and seriously promotes, he immediately gives up all care and thought of the commonwealth, so that according to him the neglect of the public good is to be taken as an evidence of such design, or at least for a sufficient cause of resistance. And the reason of all he gives in these words, because he betrayed or forced his people, whose liberty he ought carefully to have preserved. What he finds into the power and dominion of a foreign nation signifies nothing, the fault and forfeiture lying in the loss of their liberty, which he ought to have preserved, and not in any distinction of the persons to whose dominion they were subjected. The people's right is equally invaded, and their liberty lost, whether they are made slaves to any of their own, or to a foreign nation. And in this lies the injury, and against this only have they the right of defense. And there are instances to be found in all countries, which show that it is not the change of nations in the persons of their governors, but the change of government that gives the offense. Billson, a bishop of our church, and a great stickler for the power and prerogative of princes, does, if I mistake not, in his treatise of Christian subjection, acknowledge that princes may forfeit their power, and their title to the obedience of their subjects, and if their needed authority in a case where reason is so plain, I could send my reader to Bracton Fortescu and the author of the Mirror, and others, writers that cannot be suspected to be ignorant of our government or enemies to it. But I thought Hooker alone might be enough to satisfy those men, who relying on him for their ecclesiastical polity, are by a strong fate carried to deny those principles upon which he builds it. Whether they are herein made the tools of cunning or workmen to pull down their own fabric, they were best look. This I am sure their civil policy is so new, so dangerous, and so destructive to both rulers and people, that as former ages it never could bear the broaching of it, so it may be hoped, those to come, redeemed from the impositions of these Egyptian under-task masters, will abhor the memory of such servile flatterers, who, whilst it seemed to serve their turn, resolved all government into absolute tyranny, and would have all men born to what their mean souls fitted them for, slavery. Here it is like the common question will be made, who shall be judge, whether the prince or legislative act contrary to their trust? This perhaps ill-affected and factious men may spread amongst people, when the prince only makes use of his due prerogative. To this I reply, the people shall be judge, for who shall be judge whether his trustee or deputy acts well, and according to the trust reposed in him, but he who deputes him, and must, by having deputed him, still have a power to discard him when he fails in his case. If this be reasonable in particular cases of private men, why should it be otherwise in that of the greatest moment, where the welfare of millions is concerned, and also where evil, if not prevented, is greater, and the redress very difficult, dear and dangerous? But farther this question, who shall be judge, cannot mean that there is no judge at all, for where there is no judicature on earth to decide controversies amongst men, God in heaven is judge. He alone it is true is judge of the right, but every man is judge for himself, as in all other cases, so in this whether another hath put himself into a state of war with him, and whether he should appeal to the supreme judge as Jephtha did. If a controversy arise between its prince and some of the people, in a manner where the law is silent or doubtful, and the thing be of great consequence, I should think the proper empire in such a case should be the body of the people. For in cases where the prince hath a trust reposed in him, and is dispensed from the common ordinary rules of law, there if any men find themselves aggrieved, and think the prince acts contrary to, or beyond, that trust, who so proper to judge is the body of the people, who at first lodged that trust in him, how far they meant it should extend. But if the prince, or whoever they be in the administration, decline that way of determination, the appeal then lies nowhere but to heaven, force between either persons who have no known superior on earth, or which permits no appeal to a judge on earth, being properly a state of war, wherein the appeal lies only to heaven, and in that state the injured party must judge for himself, when he will think fit to make use of that appeal, and put himself upon it. To conclude, the power that every individual gave the society, when he entered into it, can never revert to the individuals again, as long as the society lasts, but will always remain in the community. Because without this there can be no community, no commonwealth, which is contrary to the original agreement. So also when the society hath placed the legislative in an assembly of men, to continue in them and their successors, with direction and authority for providing such successors, the legislative can never revert to the people whilst that government lasts. Because having provided the legislative with power to continue forever, they have given up their political power to the legislative and cannot resume it. But if they have set limits to the duration of their legislative, and made this supreme power in any person or assembly only temporary, or else, when by the miscarriages of those in authority it is forfeited, upon this forfeiture, or at the determination of the time set, it reverts to the society, and the people have arrived to act as supreme and continue the legislative in themselves, or erect a new form, or under the old form place it in new hands as they think good. End of Book 2, Chapter 19 End of Two Treatises of Civil Government by John Locke Edited by Thomas Hollis