§. 139. But government, into whosesoever hands it is put, being as I have
before shown, entrusted with this condition, and for this end, that men might
have and secure their properties, the prince or senate, however it may have
power to make laws for the regulating of property between the subjects one
amongst another, yet can never have a power to take to themselves the whole, or
any part of the subjects' property, without their own consent; for this would
be in effect to leave them no property at all. And to let us see that even
absolute power, where it is necessary, is not arbitrary by being absolute, but
is still limited by that reason and confined to those ends which required it in
some cases to be absolute, we need look no farther than the common practice of
martial discipline. For the preservation of the army, and in it of the whole
commonwealth, requires an absolute obedience to the command of every superior
officer, and it is justly death to disobey or dispute the most dangerous or
unreasonable of them; but yet we see that neither the sergeant that could
command a soldier to march up to the mouth of a cannon, or stand in a breach
where he is almost sure to perish, can command that soldier to give him one
penny of his money; nor the general that can condemn him to death for deserting
his post, or not obeying the most desperate orders, cannot yet with all his
absolute power of life and death dispose of one farthing of that soldier's
estate, or seize one jot of his goods; whom yet he can command anything, and
hang for the least disobedience. Because such a blind obedience is necessary to
that end for which the commander has his power — viz., the preservation of
the rest, but the disposing of his goods has nothing to do with it.
