Chapter XVI
                             Of Conquest

  175. THOUGH governments can originally have no other rise than
that before mentioned, nor polities be founded on anything but the
consent of the people, yet such have been the disorders ambition has
filled the world with, that in the noise of war, which makes so
great a part of the history of mankind, this consent is little taken
notice of; and, therefore, many have mistaken the force of arms for
the consent of the people, and reckon conquest as one of the originals
of government. But conquest is as far from setting up any government
as demolishing a house is from building a new one in the place.
Indeed, it often makes way for a new frame of a commonwealth by
destroying the former; but, without the consent of the people, can
never erect a new one.
  176. That the aggressor, who puts himself into the state of war with
another, and unjustly invades another man's right, can, by such an
unjust war, never come to have a right over the conquered, will be
easily agreed by all men, who will not think that robbers and
pirates have a right of empire over whomsoever they have force
enough to master, or that men are bound by promises which unlawful
force extorts from them. Should a robber break into my house, and,
with a dagger at my throat, make me seal deeds to convey my estate
to him, would this give him any title? Just such a title by his
sword has an unjust conqueror who forces me into submission. The
injury and the crime is equal, whether committed by the wearer of a
crown or some petty villain. The title of the offender and the
number of his followers make no difference in the offence, unless it
be to aggravate it. The only difference is, great robbers punish
little ones to keep them in their obedience; but the great ones are
rewarded with laurels and triumphs, because they are too big for the
weak hands of justice in this world, and have the power in their own
possession which should punish offenders. What is my remedy against
a robber that so broke into my house? Appeal to the law for justice.
But perhaps justice is denied, or I am crippled and cannot stir;
robbed, and have not the means to do it. If God has taken away all
means of seeking remedy, there is nothing left but patience. But my
son, when able, may seek the relief of the law, which I am denied;
he or his son may renew his appeal till he recover his right. But
the conquered, or their children, have no court- no arbitrator on
earth to appeal to. Then they may appeal, as Jephtha did, to Heaven,
and repeat their appeal till they have recovered the native right of
their ancestors, which was to have such a legislative over them as the
majority should approve and freely acquiesce in. If it be objected
this would cause endless trouble, I answer, no more than justice does,
where she lies open to all that appeal to her. He that troubles his
neighbour without a cause is punished for it by the justice of the
court he appeals to. And he that appeals to Heaven must be sure he has
right on his side, and a right, too, that is worth the trouble and
cost of the appeal, as he will answer at a tribunal that cannot be
deceived, and will be sure to retribute to every one according to
the mischiefs he hath created to his fellow-subjects- that is, any
part of mankind. From whence it is plain that he that conquers in an
unjust war can thereby have no title to the subjection and obedience
of the conquered.
  177. But supposing victory favours the right side, let us consider a
conqueror in a lawful war, and see what power he gets, and over whom.
  First, it is plain he gets no power by his conquest over those
that conquered with him. They that fought on his side cannot suffer by
the conquest, but must, at least, be as much free men as they were
before. And most commonly they serve upon terms, and on condition to
share with their leader, and enjoy a part of the spoil and other
advantages that attend the conquering sword, or, at least, have a part
of the subdued country bestowed upon them. And the conquering people
are not, I hope, to be slaves by conquest, and wear their laurels only
to show they are sacrifices to their leader's triumph. They that found
absolute monarchy upon the title of the sword make their heroes, who
are the founders of such monarchies, arrant "draw-can-sirs," and
forget they had any officers and soldiers that fought on their side in
the battles they won, or assisted them in the subduing, or shared in
possessing the countries they mastered. We are told by some that the
English monarchy is founded in the Norman Conquest, and that our
princes have thereby a title to absolute dominion, which, if it were
true (as by the history it appears otherwise), and that William had
a right to make war on this island, yet his dominion by conquest could
reach no farther than to the Saxons and Britons that were then
inhabitants of this country. The Normans that came with him and helped
to conquer, and all descended from them, are free men and no
subjects by conquest, let that give what dominion it will. And if I or
anybody else shall claim freedom as derived from them, it will be very
hard to prove the contrary; and it is plain, the law that has made
no distinction between the one and the other intends not there
should be any difference in their freedom or privileges.
  178. But supposing, which seldom happens, that the conquerors and
conquered never incorporate into one people under the same laws and
freedom; let us see next what power a lawful conqueror has over the
subdued, and that I say is purely despotical. He has an absolute power
over the lives of those who, by an unjust war, have forfeited them,
but not over the lives or fortunes of those who engaged not in the
war, nor over the possessions even of those who were actually
engaged in it.
  179. Secondly, I say, then, the conqueror gets no power but only
over those who have actually assisted, concurred, or consented to that
unjust force that is used against him. For the people having given
to their governors no power to do an unjust thing, such as is to
make an unjust war (for they never had such a power in themselves),
they ought not to be charged as guilty of the violence and injustice
that is committed in an unjust war any farther than they actually abet
it, no more than they are to be thought guilty of any violence or
oppression their governors should use upon the people themselves or
any part of their fellow-subjects, they having empowered them no
more to the one than to the other. Conquerors, it is true, seldom
trouble themselves to make the distinction, but they willingly
permit the confusion of war to sweep all together; but yet this alters
not the right; for the conqueror's power over the lives of the
conquered being only because they have used force to do or maintain an
injustice, he can have that power only over those who have concurred
in that force; all the rest are innocent, and he has no more title
over the people of that country who have done him no injury, and so
have made no forfeiture of their lives, than he has over any other
who, without any injuries or provocations, have lived upon fair
terms with him.
  180. Thirdly, the power a conqueror gets over those he overcomes
in a just war is perfectly despotical; he has an absolute power over
the lives of those who, by putting themselves in a state of war,
have forfeited them, but he has not thereby a right and title to their
possessions. This I doubt not but at first sight will seem a strange
doctrine, it being so quite contrary to the practice of the world;
there being nothing more familiar in speaking of the dominion of
countries than to say such an one conquered it, as if conquest,
without any more ado, conveyed a right of possession. But when we
consider that the practice of the strong and powerful, how universal
soever it may be, is seldom the rule of right, however it be one
part of the subjection of the conquered not to argue against the
conditions cut out to them by the conquering swords.
  181. Though in all war there be usually a complication of force
and damage, and the aggressor seldom fails to harm the estate when
he uses force against the persons of those he makes war upon, yet it
is the use of force only that puts a man into the state of war. For
whether by force he begins the injury, or else having quietly and by
fraud done the injury, he refuses to make reparation, and by force
maintains it, which is the same thing as at first to have done it by
force; it is the unjust use of force that makes the war. For he that
breaks open my house and violently turns me out of doors, or having
peaceably got in, by force keeps me out, does, in effect, the same
thing; supposing we are in such a state that we have no common judge
on earth whom I may appeal to, and to whom we are both obliged to
submit, for of such I am now speaking. It is the unjust use of
force, then, that puts a man into the state of war with another, and
thereby he that is guilty of it makes a forfeiture of his life. For
quitting reason, which is the rule given between man and man, and
using force, the way of beasts, he becomes liable to be destroyed by
him he uses force against, as any savage ravenous beast that is
dangerous to his being.
  182. But because the miscarriages of the father are no faults of the
children, who may be rational and peaceable, notwithstanding the
brutishness and injustice of the father, the father, by his
miscarriages and violence, can forfeit but his own life, and
involves not his children in his guilt or destruction. His goods which
Nature, that willeth the preservation of all mankind as much as is
possible, hath made to belong to the children to keep them from
perishing, do still continue to belong to his children. For
supposing them not to have joined in the war either through infancy or
choice, they have done nothing to forfeit them, nor has the
conqueror any right to take them away by the bare right of having
subdued him that by force attempted his destruction, though,
perhaps, he may have some right to them to repair the damages he has
sustained by the war, and the defence of his own right, which how
far it reaches to the possessions of the conquered we shall see
by-and-by; so that he that by conquest has a right over a man's
person, to destroy him if he pleases, has not thereby a right over his
estate to possess and enjoy it. For it is the brutal force the
aggressor has used that gives his adversary a right to take away his
life and destroy him, if he pleases, as a noxious creature; but it
is damage sustained that alone gives him title to another man's goods;
for though I may kill a thief that sets on me in the highway, yet I
may not (which seems less) take away his money and let him go; this
would be robbery on my side. His force, and the state of war he put
himself in, made him forfeit his life, but gave me no title to his
goods. The right, then, of conquest extends only to the lives of those
who joined in the war, but not to their estates, but only in order
to make reparation for the damages received and the charges of the
war, and that, too, with reservation of the right of the innocent wife
and children.
  183. Let the conqueror have as much justice on his side as could
be supposed, he has no right to seize more than the vanquished could
forfeit; his life is at the victor's mercy, and his service and
goods he may appropriate to make himself reparation; but he cannot
take the goods of his wife and children, they too had a title to the
goods he enjoyed, and their shares in the estate he possessed. For
example, I in the state of Nature (and all commonwealths are in the
state of Nature one with another) have injured another man, and
refusing to give satisfaction, it is come to a state of war wherein my
defending by force what I had gotten unjustly makes me the
aggressor. I am conquered; my life, it is true, as forfeit, is at
mercy, but not my wife's and children's. They made not the war, nor
assisted in it. I could not forfeit their lives, they were not mine to
forfeit. My wife had a share in my estate, that neither could I
forfeit. And my children also, being born of me, had a right to be
maintained out of my labour or substance. Here then is the case: The
conqueror has a title to reparation for damages received, and the
children have a title to their father's estate for their
subsistence. For as to the wife's share, whether her own labour or
compact gave her a title to it, it is plain her husband could not
forfeit what was hers. What must be done in the case? I answer: The
fundamental law of Nature being that all, as much as may be, should be
preserved, it follows that if there be not enough fully to satisfy
both- viz., for the conqueror's losses and children's maintenance,
he that hath and to spare must remit something of his full
satisfaction, and give way to the pressing and preferable title of
those who are in danger to perish without it.
  184. But supposing the charge and damages of the war are to be
made up to the conqueror to the utmost farthing, and that the children
of the vanquished, spoiled of all their father's goods, are to be left
to starve and perish, yet the satisfying of what shall, on this score,
be due to the conqueror will scarce give him a title to any country he
shall conquer. For the damages of war can scarce amount to the value
of any considerable tract of land in any part of the world, where
all the land is possessed, and none lies waste. And if I have not
taken away the conqueror's land which, being vanquished, it is
impossible I should, scarce any other spoil I have done him can amount
to the value of mine, supposing it of an extent any way coming near
what I had overrun of his, and equally cultivated too. The destruction
of a year's product or two (for it seldom reaches four or five) is the
utmost spoil that usually can be done. For as to money, and such
riches and treasure taken away, these are none of Nature's goods, they
have but a phantastical imaginary value; Nature has put no such upon
them. They are of no more account by her standard than the
Wampompeke of the Americans to an European prince, or the silver money
of Europe would have been formerly to an American. And five years'
product is not worth the perpetual inheritance of land, where all is
possessed and none remains waste, to be taken up by him that is
disseised, which will be easily granted, if one do but take away the
imaginary value of money, the disproportion being more than between
five and five thousand; though, at the same time, half a year's
product is more worth than the inheritance where, there being more
land than the inhabitants possess and make use of, any one has liberty
to make use of the waste. But their conquerors take little care to
possess themselves of the lands of the vanquished. No damage therefore
that men in the state of Nature (as all princes and governments are in
reference to one another) suffer from one another can give a conqueror
power to dispossess the posterity of the vanquished, and turn them out
of that inheritance which ought to be the possession of them and their
descendants to all generations. The conqueror indeed will be apt to
think himself master; and it is the very condition of the subdued
not to be able to dispute their right. But, if that be all, it gives
no other title than what bare force gives to the stronger over the
weaker; and, by this reason, he that is strongest will have a right to
whatever he pleases to seize on.
  185. Over those, then, that joined with him in the war, and over
those of the subdued country that opposed him not, and the posterity
even of those that did, the conqueror, even in a just war, hath, by
his conquest, no right of dominion. They are free from any
subjection to him, and if their former government be dissolved, they
are at liberty to begin and erect another to themselves.
  186. The conqueror, it is true, usually by the force he has over
them, compels them, with a sword at their breasts, to stoop to his
conditions, and submit to such a government as he pleases to afford
them; but the inquiry is, what right he has to do so? If it be said
they submit by their own consent, then this allows their own consent
to be necessary to give the conqueror a title to rule over them. It
remains only to be considered whether promises, extorted by force,
without right, can be thought consent, and how far they bind. To which
I shall say, they bind not at all; because whatsoever another gets
from me by force, I still retain the right of, and he is obliged
presently to restore. He that forces my horse from me ought
presently to restore him, and I have still a right to retake him. By
the same reason, he that forced a promise from me ought presently to
restore it- i.e., quit me of the obligation of it; or I may resume
it myself- i.e., choose whether I will perform it. For the law of
Nature laying an obligation on me, only by the rules she prescribes,
cannot oblige me by the violation of her rules; such is the
extorting anything from me by force. Nor does it at all alter the
case, to say I gave my promise, no more than it excuses the force, and
passes the right, when I put my hand in my pocket and deliver my purse
myself to a thief who demands it with a pistol at my breast.
  187. From all which it follows that the government of a conqueror,
imposed by force on the subdued, against whom he had no right of
war, or who joined not in the war against him, where he had right, has
no obligation upon them.
  188. But let us suppose that all the men of that community being all
members of the same body politic, may be taken to have joined in
that unjust war, wherein they are subdued, and so their lives are at
the mercy of the conqueror.
  189. I say this concerns not their children who are in their
minority. For since a father hath not, in himself, a power over the
life or liberty of his child, no act of his can possibly forfeit it;
so that the children, whatever may have happened to the fathers, are
free men, and the absolute power of the conqueror reaches no farther
than the persons of the men that were subdued by him, and dies with
them; and should he govern them as slaves, subjected to his
absolute, arbitrary power, he has no such right of dominion over their
children. He can have no power over them but by their own consent,
whatever he may drive them to say or do, and he has no lawful
authority, whilst force, and not choice, compels them to submission.
  190. Every man is born with a double right. First, a right of
freedom to his person, which no other man has a power over, but the
free disposal of it lies in himself. Secondly, a right before any
other man, to inherit, with his brethren, his father's goods.
  191. By the first of these, a man is naturally free from
subjection to any government, though he be born in a place under its
jurisdiction. But if he disclaim the lawful government of the
country he was born in, he must also quit the right that belonged to
him, by the laws of it, and the possessions there descending to him
from his ancestors, if it were a government made by their consent.
  192. By the second, the inhabitants of any country, who are
descended and derive a title to their estates from those who are
subdued, and had a government forced upon them, against their free
consents, retain a right to the possession of their ancestors,
though they consent not freely to the government, whose hard
conditions were, by force, imposed on the possessors of that
country. For the first conqueror never having had a title to the
land of that country, the people, who are the descendants of, or claim
under those who were forced to submit to the yoke of a government by
constraint, have always a right to shake it off, and free themselves
from the usurpation or tyranny the sword hath brought in upon them,
till their rulers put them under such a frame of government as they
willingly and of choice consent to (which they can never be supposed
to do, till either they are put in a full state of liberty to choose
their government and governors, or at least till they have such
standing laws to which they have, by themselves or their
representatives, given their free consent, and also till they are
allowed their due property, which is so to be proprietors of what they
have that nobody can take away any part of it without their own
consent, without which, men under any government are not in the
state of free men, but are direct slaves under the force of war).
And who doubts but the Grecian Christians, descendants of the
ancient possessors of that country, may justly cast off the Turkish
yoke they have so long groaned under, whenever they have a power to do
it?
  193. But granting that the conqueror, in a just war, has a right
to the estates, as well as power over the persons of the conquered,
which, it is plain, he hath not, nothing of absolute power will follow
from hence in the continuance of the government. Because the
descendants of these being all free men, if he grants them estates and
possessions to inhabit his country, without which it would be worth
nothing, whatsoever he grants them they have so far as it is granted
property in; the nature whereof is, that, without a man's own consent,
it cannot be taken from him.
  194. Their persons are free by a native right, and their properties,
be they more or less, are their own, and at their own dispose, and not
at his; or else it is no property. Supposing the conqueror gives to
one man a thousand acres, to him and his heirs for ever; to another he
lets a thousand acres, for his life, under the rent of L50 or L500 per
annum. Has not the one of these a right to his thousand acres for
ever, and the other during his life, paying the said rent? And hath
not the tenant for life a property in all that he gets over and
above his rent, by his labour and industry, during the said term,
supposing it be double the rent? Can any one say, the king, or
conqueror, after his grant, may, by his power of conqueror, take
away all, or part of the land, from the heirs of one, or from the
other during his life, he paying the rent? Or, can he take away from
either the goods or money they have got upon the said land at his
pleasure? If he can, then all free and voluntary contracts cease,
and are void in the world; there needs nothing but power enough to
dissolve them at any time, and all the grants and promises of men in
power are but mockery and collusion. For can there be anything more
ridiculous than to say, I give you and yours this for ever, and that
in the surest and most solemn way of conveyance can be devised, and
yet it is to be understood that I have right, if I please, to take
it away from you again to-morrow?
  195. I will not dispute now whether princes are exempt from the laws
of their country, but this I am sure, they owe subjection to the
laws of God and Nature. Nobody, no power can exempt them from the
obligations of that eternal law. Those are so great and so strong in
the case of promises, that Omnipotency itself can be tied by them.
Grants, promises, and oaths are bonds that hold the Almighty, whatever
some flatterers say to princes of the world, who, all together, with
all their people joined to them, are, in comparison of the great
God, but as a drop of the bucket, or a dust on the balance-
inconsiderable, nothing!
  196. The short of the case in conquest, is this: The conqueror, if
he have a just cause, has a despotical right over the persons of all
that actually aided and concurred in the war against him, and a
right to make up his damage and cost out of their labour and
estates, so he injure not the right of any other. Over the rest of the
people, if there were any that consented not to the war, and over
the children of the captives themselves or the possessions of either
he has no power, and so can have, by virtue of conquest, no lawful
title himself to dominion over them, or derive it to his posterity;
but is an aggressor, and puts himself in a state of war against
them, and has no better a right of principality, he, nor any of his
successors, than Hingar, or Hubba, the Danes, had here in England,
or Spartacus, had be conquered Italy, which is to have their yoke cast
off as soon as God shall give those under their subjection courage and
opportunity to do it. Thus, notwithstanding whatever title the kings
of Assyria had over Judah, by the sword, God assisted Hezekiah to
throw off the dominion of that conquering empire. "And the Lord was
with Hezekiah, and he prospered; wherefore he went forth, and he
rebelled against the king of Assyria, and served him not" (II Kings
18. 7). Whence it is plain that shaking off a power which force, and
not right, hath set over any one, though it hath the name of
rebellion, yet is no offence before God, but that which He allows
and countenances, though even promises and covenants, when obtained by
force, have intervened. For it is very probable, to any one that reads
the story of Ahaz and Hezekiah attentively, that the Assyrians subdued
Ahaz, and deposed him, and made Hezekiah king in his father's
lifetime, and that Hezekiah, by agreement, had done him homage, and
paid him tribute till this time.