Chapter XIX
                   Of the Dissolution of Government

  211. 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 every one
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 every one return 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 that 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 a house to
subsist when the materials of it are scattered and displaced by a
whirlwind, or jumbled into a confused heap by an earthquake.
  212. Besides this overturning from without, governments are
dissolved from within:
  First. When the legislative is altered, civil society being a
state of peace amongst those who are of it, from whom the state of war
is excluded by the umpirage which they have provided in their
legislative 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, has
the declaring and, as it were, keeping of that will. 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 laws, made by persons
authorised thereunto, 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 so to do, 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.

  213. This being usually brought about by such in the commonwealth,
who misuse the power they have, it is hard to consider it aright,
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. Secondly, an assembly of
hereditary nobility. Thirdly, an assembly of representatives chosen,
pro tempore, by the people. Such a form of government supposed, it
is evident:
  214. 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 in execution, and required to be obeyed, when other
laws are set up, and other rules pretended and enforced than what
the legislative, constituted by the society, have enacted, it is plain
that the legislative is changed. Whoever introduces new laws, not
being thereunto 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.
  215. Secondly, when the prince hinders the legislative from
assembling in its due time, or from acting freely, pursuant to those
ends for which it was constituted, 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 perfecting 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.
  216. 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
authorised thereunto do choose, or in another way than what the
society hath prescribed, those chosen are not the legislative
appointed by the people.
  217. 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
preserved one entire, free, independent society to be governed by
its own laws, this is lost whenever they are given up into the power
of another.
  218. 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 towards such changes under
pretence 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 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.
  219. 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 effectively 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.
  220. 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 free men. 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.
  221. There is, therefore, secondly, another way whereby
governments are dissolved, and that is, when the legislative, or the
prince, either of them act contrary to their trust.
  For the legislative acts against the trust reposed in them when they
endeavour 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.
  222. The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of
their property; and the end while they choose and authorise a
legislative is that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards
and fences to the properties of all 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 legislators of their own making: whenever
the legislators endeavour 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 farther 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, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of
any other, an 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 acts also contrary to his trust when he
employs the force, treasure, and offices of the society to corrupt the
representatives and gain them to his purposes, when he openly
pre-engages the electors, and prescribes, to their choice, such whom
he has, by solicitation, threats, promises, or otherwise, won 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 as
this, and endeavour to set up the declared abettors of his own will,
for the true representatives of the people, and the law-makers 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 way of
such a design, and will not comply and consent to betray the liberties
of their country, it will be past doubt what is doing. What power they
ought to have in the society who thus employ it contrary to the
trust that along with it in its first institution, 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.
  223. 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 humour 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 offence 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. And
if there be any original defects, or adventitious 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 quit their old constitutions
has in the many revolutions [that] have been seen in this kingdom,
in this and former ages, still kept us to, or after some interval 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 princes' heads, they never
carried the people so far as to place it in another line.
  224. 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 authorised
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.
  225. 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 whither they are going, it is not to
be wondered that they should then rouse themselves, and endeavour to
put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for
which government was at first erected, 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
inconveniencies being all as great and as near, but the remedy farther
off and more difficult.
  226. Thirdly: I answer, that this power in the people of providing
for their safety anew by a new legislative when their legislators have
acted contrary to their trust by invading their property, is the
best fence against rebellion, and the probable 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 amongst themselves, those who set up force again in
opposition to the laws, do rebellare- that is, bring back again the
state of war, and are properly rebels, which they who are in power, by
the pretence they have to authority, the temptation of force they have
in their hands, and the flattery of those about them being likeliest
to do, the proper 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.
  227. In both the forementioned 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 umpirage which every one had consented to for a
peaceable decision 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 authorised, actually introduce a state
of war, which is that of force without authority; and thus by removing
the legislative established by 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
endeavour 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,
rebellantes, rebels.
  228. 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 neighbour's. 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 kind of a 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. 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 [what] inconveniencies might happen if they should offer to
resist Polyphemus, who had now the power over them.
  229. The end of government is the good of mankind; and which is best
for mankind, that the people should be always 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?
  230. Nor let any one say that mischief can arise from hence as often
as 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 right 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 strong suspicions 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 in such a posture that they
would not have them thought as they are? I grant that the pride,
ambition, and turbulency of private men have sometimes caused great
disorders in commonwealths, and factions have been fatal to states and
kingdoms. But whether the mischief hath oftener begun in the
people's wantonness, and a desire to cast off the lawful authority
of their rulers, or in the rulers' insolence and endeavours to get and
exercise an arbitrary power over their 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, he is 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.
  231. 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.
  232. 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 so 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 assertor 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 of
princes is not rebellion. His words are these: "Quod siquis dicat,
Ergone populus tyrannicae crudelitati et furori jugulum semper
praebebit? Ergone multitudo civitates suas fame, ferro, et flamma
vastari, seque, conjuges, et liberos fortunae ludibrio et tyranni
libidini exponi, inque omnia vitae pericula omnesque miserias et
molestias a rege deduci patientur? Num illis quod omni animantium
generi est a natura tributum, denegari debet, ut sc. vim vi repellant,
seseque ab injuria tueantur? Huic breviter responsum sit, populo
universo negari defensionem, quae juris naturalis est, neque
ultionem quae praeter naturam est adversus regem concedi debere.
Quapropter si rex non in singulares tantum personas aliquot privatum
odium exerceat, sed corpus etiam reipublicae, cujus ipse, caput est-
i.e., totum populum, vel insignem aliquam ejus partem immani et
intoleranda saevitia seu tyrannide divexet; populo, quidem hoc casu
resistendi ac tuendi se ab injuria potestas competit, sed tuendi se
tantum, non enim in principem invadendi: et restituendae injuriae
illatae, non recedendi a debita reverentia propter acceptum
injuriam. Praesentem denique impetum propulsandi non vim praeteritam
ulciscendi jus habet. Horum enim alterum a natura est, ut vitani
scilicet corpusque tueamur. Alterum vero contra naturam, ut inferior
de superiori supplicium sumat. Quod itaque populus malum, antequam
factum sit, impedire potest, ne fiat, id postquam factum est, in regem
authorem sceleris vindicare non potest, populus igitur hoc amplius
quam privatus quispiam habet: Quod huic, vel ipsis adversariis
judicibus, excepto Buchanano, nullum nisi in patientia remedium
superest. Cum ille si intolerabilis tyrannis est (modicum enim ferre
omnino debet) resistere cum reverentia possit."- Barclay, Contra
Monarchomachos, iii. 8.
  In English thus:
  233. "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 tyrant's 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-defence 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 an 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 tyrannise over the whole, or a
considerable part of the people; in this case the people have a
right to resist and 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 must 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 them the people may prevent before it be
done, but, when it is done, they must not revenge it on the king,
though author of the villany. 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 excepted), 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."
  234. Thus far that great advocate of monarchical power allows of
resistance.
  235. 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 defence
serve only to draw on himself the worse usage. This is as ridiculous a
way of resisting as Juvenal thought it of fighting: Ubi tu pulsas, ego
vapulo tantum. And the success of the combat will be unavoidably the
same he there describes it:

                         Libertas pauperis haec est;
         Pulsatus rogat, et pugnis concisus, adorat,
         Ut liceat paucis cum dentibus inde reverti.

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 aught I know, deserve for his pains a civil, respectful
cudgelling 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 then 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.
Barclay, 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:
  "Quid ergo, nulline casus incidere possunt quibus populo sese
erigere atque in regem impotentius dominantem arma capere et
invadere jure suo suaque authoritate liceat? Nulli certe quamdiu rex
manet. Semper enim ex divinis id obstat, Regem honorificato, et qui
potestati resistit, Dei ordinationi resistit; non alias igitur in
eum populo potestas est quam si id committat propter quod ipso jure
rex esse desinat. Tunc enim se ipse principatu exuit atque in privatis
constituit liber; hoc modo populus et superior efficitur, reverso ad
eum scilicet jure illo quod ante regem inauguratum in interregno
habuit. At sunt paucorum generum commissa ejusmodi quae hunc
effectum pariunt. At ego cum plurima animo perlustrem, duo tantum
invenio, duos, inquam, casus quibus rex ipso facto ex rege non regem
se facit et omni honore et dignitate regali atque in subditos
potestate destituit; quorum etiam meminit Winzerus. Horum unus est, si
regnum disperdat, quemadmodum de Nerone fertur, quod is nempe
senatum populumque Romanum atque adeo urbem ipsam ferro flammaque
vastare, ac novas sibi sedes quaerere decrevisset. Et de Caligula,
quod palam denunciarit se neque civem neque principem senatui
amplius fore, inque animo habuerit, interempto utriusque ordinis
electissimo, quoque Alexandriam commigrare, ac ut populum uno ictu
interimeret, unam ei cervicem optavit. Talia cum rex aliquis meditatur
et molitur serio, omnem regnandi curam et animum ilico abjicit, ac
proinde imperium in subditos amittit, ut dominus servi pro derelicto
habiti, dominium.
  236. "Arlter casus est, si rex in alicujus clientelam se contulit,
ac regnum quod liberum a majoribus et populo traditum accepit, alienae
ditioni mancipavit. Nam tunc quamvis forte non ea mente id agit populo
plane ut incommodet; tamen quia quod praecipuum est regiae
dignitatis amisit, ut summus scilicet in regno secundum Deum sit, et
solo Deo inferior, atque populum etiam totum ignorantem vel invitum,
cujus libertatem sartam et tectam conservare debuit, in alterius
gentis ditionem et potestatem dedidit; hac velut quadam rengi
abalienatione effecit, ut nec quod ipse in regno imperium habuit
retineat, nec in eum cui collatum voluit, juris quicquam transferat,
atque ita eo facto liberum jam et suae potestatis populum relinquit,
cujus rei exemplum unum annales Scotici suppeditant."- Barclay, Contra
Monarchomachos, I. iii., c. 16.
  Which may be thus Englished:
  237. "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? None at all whilst
he remains a king. 'Honour 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 unless 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,
ipso facto, becomes no king, and loses all power and regal authority
over his people, which are also taken notice of by Winzerus. 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 resolved 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.
  238. "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- viz., 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."
  239. In these cases Barclay, the great champion of absolute
monarchy, is forced to allow that a king may be resisted, and ceases
to be a 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 that he
instances differ little from those above mentioned, to be
destructive to governments, only that he has omitted the principle
from which his doctrine flows, and that is the breach of trust in
not 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, Barclay, and those of his
opinion, would do well to tell us. Bilson, 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 there needed authority in a
case where reason is so plain, I could send my reader to Bracton,
Fortescue, 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
strange fate carried to deny those principles upon which he builds it.
Whether they are herein made the tools of cunninger 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 never could bear the
broaching of it, so it may be hoped those to come, redeemed from the
impositions of these Egyptian under-taskmasters, 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- slavery.
  240. 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
the 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, have still a power to discard him when he fails in his trust?
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 the evil, if not prevented, is
greater, and the redress very difficult, dear, and dangerous?
  241. 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.
  242. If a controversy arise betwixt a prince and some of the
people in a matter where the law is silent or doubtful, and the
thing be of great consequence, I should think the proper umpire in
such a case should be the body of the people. For in such cases
where the prince hath a trust reposed in him, and is dispensed from
the common, ordinary rules of the law, there, if any men find
themselves aggrieved, and think the prince acts contrary to, or beyond
that trust, who so proper to judge as 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.
  243. 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 any 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 a legislative with power to
continue for ever, 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 the
forfeiture of their rulers, or at the determination of the time set,
it reverts to the society, and the people have a right to act as
supreme, and continue the legislative in themselves or place it in a
new form, or new hands, as they think good.

                                   THE END