§. 91. For he being supposed to have all, both legislative and executive,
power in himself alone, there is no judge to be found, no appeal lies open to
any one, who may fairly and indifferently, and with authority decide, and from
whence relief and redress may be expected of any injury or inconveniency that
may be suffered from him, or by his order. So that such a man, however
entitled, Czar, or Grand Signior, or how you please, is as much in the state of
Nature, with all under his dominion, as he is with the rest of mankind. For
wherever any two men are, who have no standing rule and common judge to appeal
to on earth, for the determination of controversies of right betwixt them,
there they are still in the state of Nature, and under all the inconveniencies
of it, with only this woeful difference to the subject, or rather slave of an
absolute prince.[2] That whereas, in the
ordinary state of Nature, he has a liberty to judge of his right, according to
the best of his power to maintain it; but whenever his property is invaded by
the will and order of his monarch, he has not only no appeal, as those in
society ought to have, but, as if he were degraded from the common state of
rational creatures, is denied a liberty to judge of, or defend his right, and
so is exposed to all the misery and inconveniencies that a man can fear from
one, who being in the unrestrained state of Nature, is yet corrupted with
flattery and armed with power.
