§. 119. Every man being, as has been showed, naturally free, and nothing being
able to put him into subjection to any earthly power, but only his own consent,
it is to be considered what shall be understood to be a sufficient declaration
of a man's consent to make him subject to the laws of any government. There is
a common distinction of an express and a tacit consent, which will concern our
present case. Nobody doubts but an express consent of any man, entering into
any society, makes him a perfect member of that society, a subject of that
government. The difficulty is, what ought to be looked upon as a tacit consent,
and how far it binds — i.e., how far any one shall be looked on to have
consented, and thereby submitted to any government, where he has made no
expressions of it at all. And to this I say, that every man that hath any
possession or enjoyment of any part of the dominions of any government doth
hereby give his tacit consent, and is as far forth obliged to obedience to the
laws of that government, during such enjoyment, as any one under it, whether
this his possession be of land to him and his heirs for ever, or a lodging only
for a week; or whether it be barely travelling freely on the highway; and, in
effect, it reaches as far as the very being of any one within the territories
of that government.
