Chapter XVIII
                              Of Tyranny

  199. As usurpation is the exercise of power which another hath a
right to, so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which
nobody can have a right to; and this is making use of the power any
one has in his hands, not for the good of those who are under it,
but for his own private, separate advantage. When the governor,
however entitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule, and his
commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the
properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition,
revenge, covetousness, or any other irregular passion.
  200. If one can doubt this to be truth or reason because it comes
from the obscure hand of a subject, I hope the authority of a king
will make it pass with him. King James, in his speech to the
Parliament, 16O3, tells them thus: "I will ever prefer the weal of the
public and of the whole commonwealth, in making of good laws and
constitutions, to any particular and private ends of mine, thinking
ever the wealth and weal of the commonwealth to be my greatest weal
and worldly felicity- a point wherein a lawful king doth directly
differ from a tyrant; for I do acknowledge that the special and
greatest point of difference that is between a rightful king and an
usurping tyrant is this- that whereas the proud and ambitious tyrant
doth think his kingdom and people are only ordained for satisfaction
of his desires and unreasonable appetites, the righteous and just king
doth, by the contrary, acknowledge himself to be ordained for the
procuring of the wealth and property of his people." And again, in his
speech to the Parliament, 1609, he hath these words: "The king binds
himself, by a double oath, to the observation of the fundamental
laws of his kingdom- tacitly, as by being a king, and so bound to
protect, as well the people as the laws of his kingdom; and
expressly by his oath at his coronation; so as every just king, in a
settled kingdom, is bound to observe that paction made to his
people, by his laws, in framing his government agreeable thereunto,
according to that paction which God made with Noah after the deluge:
'Hereafter, seed-time, and harvest, and cold, and heat, and summer,
and winter, and day, and night, shall not cease while the earth
remaineth.' And therefore a king, governing in a settled kingdom,
leaves to be a king, and degenerates into a tyrant, as soon as he
leaves off to rule according to his laws." And a little after:
"Therefore, all kings that are not tyrants, or perjured, will be
glad to bound themselves within the limits of their laws, and they
that persuade them the contrary are vipers, pests, both against them
and the commonwealth." Thus, that learned king, who well understood
the notions of things, makes the difference betwixt a king and a
tyrant to consist only in this: that one makes the laws the bounds
of his power and the good of the public the end of his government; the
other makes all give way to his own will and appetite.
  201. It is a mistake to think this fault is proper only to
monarchies. Other forms of government are liable to it as well as
that; for wherever the power that is put in any hands for the
government of the people and the preservation of their properties is
applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or
subdue them to the arbitrary and irregular commands of those that have
it, there it presently becomes tyranny, whether those that thus use it
are one or many. Thus we read of the thirty tyrants at Athens, as well
as one at Syracuse; and the intolerable dominion of the Decemviri at
Rome was nothing better.
  202. Wherever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed
to another's harm; and whosoever in authority exceeds the power
given him by the law, and makes use of the force he has under his
command to compass that upon the subject which the law allows not,
ceases in that to be a magistrate, and acting without authority may be
opposed, as any other man who by force invades the right of another.
This is acknowledged in subordinate magistrates. He that hath
authority to seize my person in the street may be opposed as a thief
and a robber if he endeavours to break into my house to execute a
writ, notwithstanding that I know he has such a warrant and such a
legal authority as will empower him to arrest me abroad. And why
this should not hold in the highest, as well as in the most inferior
magistrate, I would gladly be informed. Is it reasonable that the
eldest brother, because he has the greatest part of his father's
estate, should thereby have a right to take away any of his younger
brothers' portions? Or that a rich man, who possessed a whole country,
should from thence have a right to seize, when he pleased, the cottage
and garden of his poor neighbour? The being rightfully possessed of
great power and riches, exceedingly beyond the greatest part of the
sons of Adam, is so far from being an excuse, much less a reason for
rapine and oppression, which the endamaging another without
authority is, that it is a great aggravation of it. For exceeding
the bounds of authority is no more a right in a great than a petty
officer, no more justifiable in a king than a constable. But so much
the worse in him as that he has more trust put in him, is supposed,
from the advantage of education and counsellors, to have better
knowledge and less reason to do it, having already a greater share
than the rest of his brethren.
  203. May the commands, then, of a prince be opposed? May he be
resisted, as often as any one shall find himself aggrieved, and but
imagine he has not right done him? This will unhinge and overturn
all polities, and instead of government and order, leave nothing but
anarchy and confusion.
  204. To this I answer: That force is to be opposed to nothing but to
unjust and unlawful force. Whoever makes any opposition in any other
case draws on himself a just condemnation, both from God and man;
and so no such danger or confusion will follow, as is often suggested.
For-
  205. First. As in some countries the person of the prince by the law
is sacred, and so whatever he commands or does, his person is still
free from all question or violence, not liable to force, or any
judicial censure or condemnation. But yet opposition may be made to
the illegal acts of any inferior officer or other commissioned by him,
unless he will, by actually putting himself into a state of war with
his people, dissolve the government, and leave them to that defence,
which belongs to every one in the state of Nature. For of such things,
who can tell what the end will be? And a neighbour kingdom has
showed the world an odd example. In all other cases the sacredness
of the person exempts him from all inconveniencies, whereby he is
secure, whilst the government stands, from all violence and harm
whatsoever, than which there cannot be a wiser constitution. For the
harm he can do in his own person not being likely to happen often, nor
to extend itself far, nor being able by his single strength to subvert
the laws nor oppress the body of the people, should any prince have so
much weakness and ill-nature as to be willing to do it. The
inconveniency of some particular mischiefs that may happen sometimes
when a heady prince comes to the throne are well recompensed by the
peace of the public and security of the government in the person of
the chief magistrate, thus set out of the reach of danger; it being
safer for the body that some few private men should be sometimes in
danger to suffer than that the head of the republic should be easily
and upon slight occasions exposed.
  206. Secondly. But this privilege, belonging only to the king's
person, hinders not but they may be questioned, opposed, and resisted,
who use unjust force, though they pretend a commission from him
which the law authorises not; as is plain in the case of him that
has the king's writ to arrest a man which is a full commission from
the king, and yet he that has it cannot break open a man's house to do
it, nor execute this command of the king upon certain days nor in
certain places, though this commission have no such exception in it;
but they are the limitations of the law, which, if any one transgress,
the king's commission excuses him not. For the king's authority
being given him only by the law, he cannot empower any one to act
against the law, or justify him by his commission in so doing. The
commission or command of any magistrate where he has no authority,
being as void and insignificant as that of any private man, the
difference between the one and the other being that the magistrate has
some authority so far and to such ends, and the private man has none
at all; for it is not the commission but the authority that gives
the right of acting, and against the laws there can be no authority.
But notwithstanding such resistance, the king's person and authority
are still both secured, and so no danger to governor or government.
  207. Thirdly. Supposing a government wherein the person of the chief
magistrate is not thus sacred, yet this doctrine of the lawfulness
of resisting all unlawful exercises of his power will not, upon
every slight occasion, endanger him or embroil the government; for
where the injured party may be relieved and his damages repaired by
appeal to the law, there can be no pretence for force, which is only
to be used where a man is intercepted from appealing to the law. For
nothing is to be accounted hostile force but where it leaves not the
remedy of such an appeal. and it is such force alone that puts him
that uses it into a state of war, and makes it lawful to resist him. A
man with a sword in his hand demands my purse on the highway, when
perhaps I have not 12d. in my pocket. This man I may lawfully kill. To
another I deliver L100 to hold only whilst I alight, which he
refuses to restore me when I am got up again, but draws his sword to
defend the possession of it by force. I endeavour to retake it. The
mischief this man does me is a hundred, or possibly a thousand times
more than the other perhaps intended me (whom I killed before he
really did me any); and yet I might lawfully kill the one and cannot
so much as hurt the other lawfully. The reason whereof is plain;
because the one using force which threatened my life, I could not have
time to appeal to the law to secure it, and when it was gone it was
too late to appeal. The law could not restore life to my dead carcass.
The loss was irreparable; which to prevent the law of Nature gave me a
right to destroy him who had put himself into a state of war with me
and threatened my destruction. But in the other case, my life not
being in danger, I might have the benefit of appealing to the law, and
have reparation for my L100 that way.
  208. Fourthly. But if the unlawful acts done by the magistrate be
maintained (by the power he has got), and the remedy, which is due
by law, be by the same power obstructed, yet the right of resisting,
even in such manifest acts of tyranny, will not suddenly, or on slight
occasions, disturb the government. For if it reach no farther than
some private men's cases, though they have a right to defend
themselves, and to recover by force what by unlawful force is taken
from them, yet the right to do so will not easily engage them in a
contest wherein they are sure to perish; it being as impossible for
one or a few oppressed men to disturb the government where the body of
the people do not think themselves concerned in it, as for a raving
madman or heady malcontent to overturn a well-settled state, the
people being as little apt to follow the one as the other.
  209. But if either these illegal acts have extended to the
majority of the people, or if the mischief and oppression has light
only on some few, but in such cases as the precedent and
consequences seem to threaten all, and they are persuaded in their
consciences that their laws, and with them, their estates,
liberties, and lives are in danger, and perhaps their religion too,
how they will be hindered from resisting illegal force used against
them I cannot tell. This is an inconvenience, I confess, that
attends all governments whatsoever, when the governors have brought it
to this pass, to be generally suspected of their people, the most
dangerous state they can possibly put themselves in; wherein they
are the less to be pitied, because it is so easy to be avoided. It
being as impossible for a governor, if he really means the good of his
people, and the preservation of them and their laws together, not to
make them see and feel it, as it is for the father of a family not
to let his children see he loves and takes care of them.
  210. But if all the world shall observe pretences of one kind, and
actions of another, arts used to elude the law, and the trust of
prerogative (which is an arbitrary power in some things left in the
prince's hand to do good, not harm, to the people) employed contrary
to the end for which it was given; if the people shall find the
ministers and subordinate magistrates chosen, suitable to such ends,
and favoured or laid by proportionably as they promote or oppose them;
if they see several experiments made of arbitrary power, and that
religion underhand favoured, though publicly proclaimed against, which
is readiest to introduce it, and the operators in it supported as much
as may be; and when that cannot be done, yet approved still, and liked
the better, and a long train of acting show the counsels all tending
that way, how can a man any more hinder himself from being persuaded
in his own mind which way things are going; or, from casting about how
to save himself, than he could from believing the captain of a ship he
was in was carrying him and the rest of the company to Algiers, when
he found him always steering that course, though cross winds, leaks in
his ship, and want of men and provisions did often force him to turn
his course another way for some time, which he steadily returned to
again as soon as the wind, weather, and other circumstances would
let him?