Chapter X
                    Of the Forms of a Commonwealth

  132. THE majority having, as has been showed, upon men's first
uniting into society, the whole power of the community naturally in
them, may employ all that power in making laws for the community
from time to time, and executing those laws by officers of their own
appointing, and then the form of the government is a perfect
democracy; or else may put the power of making laws into the hands
of a few select men, and their heirs or successors, and then it is
an oligarchy; or else into the hands of one man, and then it is a
monarchy; if to him and his heirs, it is a hereditary monarchy; if
to him only for life, but upon his death the power only of
nominating a successor, to return to them, an elective monarchy. And
so accordingly of these make compounded and mixed forms of government,
as they think good. And if the legislative power be at first given
by the majority to one or more persons only for their lives, or any
limited time, and then the supreme power to revert to them again, when
it is so reverted the community may dispose of it again anew into what
hands they please, and so constitute a new form of government; for the
form of government depending upon the placing the supreme power, which
is the legislative, it being impossible to conceive that an inferior
power should prescribe to a superior, or any but the supreme make
laws, according as the power of making laws is placed, such is the
form of the commonwealth.
  133. By "commonwealth" I must be understood all along to mean not
a democracy, or any form of government, but any independent
community which the Latins signified by the word civitas, to which the
word which best answers in our language is "commonwealth," and most
properly expresses such a society of men which "community" does not
(for there may be subordinate communities in a government), and "city"
much less. And therefore, to avoid ambiguity, I crave leave to use the
word "commonwealth" in that sense, in which sense I find the word used
by King James himself, which I think to be its genuine
signification, which, if anybody dislike, I consent with him to change
it for a better.