§. 87. Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect freedom and
an uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of
Nature, equally with any other man, or number of men in the world, hath by
nature a power not only to preserve his property — that is, his life,
liberty, and estate, against the injuries and attempts of other men, but to
judge of and punish the breaches of that law in others, as he is persuaded the
offence deserves, even with death itself, in crimes where the heinousness of
the fact, in his opinion, requires it. But because no political society can be,
nor subsist, without having in itself the power to preserve the property, and
in order thereunto punish the offences of all those of that society, there, and
there only, is political society where every one of the members hath quitted
this natural power, resigned it up into the hands of the community in all cases
that exclude him not from appealing for protection to the law established by
it. And thus all private judgment of every particular member being excluded,
the community comes to be umpire, and by understanding indifferent rules and
men authorised by the community for their execution, decides all the
differences that may happen between any members of that society concerning any
matter of right, and punishes those offences which any member hath committed
against the society with such penalties as the law has established; whereby it
is easy to discern who are, and are not, in political society together. Those
who are united into one body, and have a common established law and judicature
to appeal to, with authority to decide controversies between them and punish
offenders, are in civil society one with another; but those who have no such
common appeal, I mean on earth, are still in the state of Nature, each being
where there is no other, judge for himself and executioner; which is, as I have
before showed it, the perfect state of Nature.
