§. 151. In some commonwealths where the legislative is not always in being,
and the executive is vested in a single person who has also a share in the
legislative, there that single person, in a very tolerable sense, may also be
called supreme; not that he has in himself all the supreme power, which is that
of law-making, but because he has in him the supreme execution from whom all
inferior magistrates derive all their several subordinate powers, or, at least,
the greatest part of them; having also no legislative superior to him, there
being no law to be made without his consent, which cannot be expected should
ever subject him to the other part of the legislative, he is properly enough in
this sense supreme. But yet it is to be observed that though oaths of
allegiance and fealty are taken to him, it is not to him as supreme legislator,
but as supreme executor of the law made by a joint power of him with others,
allegiance being nothing but an obedience according to law, which, when he
violates, he has no right to obedience, nor can claim it otherwise than as the
public person vested with the power of the law, and so is to be considered as
the image, phantom, or representative of the commonwealth, acted by the will of
the society declared in its laws, and thus he has no will, no power, but that
of the law. But when he quits this representation, this public will, and acts
by his own private will, he degrades himself, and is but a single private
person without power and without will; the members owing no obedience but to
the public will of the society.
