§. 135. Though the legislative, whether placed in one or more, whether it be
always in being or only by intervals, though it be the supreme power in every
commonwealth, yet, first, it is not, nor can possibly be, absolutely arbitrary
over the lives and fortunes of the people. For it being but the joint power of
every member of the society given up to that person or assembly which is
legislator, it can be no more than those persons had in a state of Nature
before they entered into society, and gave it up to the community. For nobody
can transfer to another more power than he has in himself, and nobody has an
absolute arbitrary power over himself, or over any other, to destroy his own
life, or take away the life or property of another. A man, as has been proved,
cannot subject himself to the arbitrary power of another; and having, in the
state of Nature, no arbitrary power over the life, liberty, or possession of
another, but only so much as the law of Nature gave him for the preservation of
himself and the rest of mankind, this is all he doth, or can give up to the
commonwealth, and by it to the legislative power, so that the legislative can
have no more than this. Their power in the utmost bounds of it is limited to
the public good of the society.[2] It is a
power that hath no other end but preservation, and therefore can never have a
right to destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the subjects; the
obligations of the law of Nature cease not in society, but only in many cases
are drawn closer, and have, by human laws, known penalties annexed to them to
enforce their observation. Thus the law of Nature stands as an eternal rule to
all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for, other
men's actions must, as well as their own and other men's actions, be
conformable to the law of Nature — i.e., to the will of God, of which that
is a declaration, and the fundamental law of Nature being the preservation of
mankind, no human sanction can be good or valid against it.
