§. 171. Secondly, political power is that power which every man having in the
state of Nature has given up into the hands of the society, and therein to the
governors whom the society hath set over itself, with this express or tacit
trust, that it shall be employed for their good and the preservation of their
property. Now this power, which every man has in the state of Nature, and which
he parts with to the society in all such cases where the society can secure
him, is to use such means for the preserving of his own property as he thinks
good and Nature allows him; and to punish the breach of the law of Nature in
others so as (according to the best of his reason) may most conduce to the
preservation of himself and the rest of mankind; so that the end and measure of
this power, when in every man's hands, in the state of Nature, being the
preservation of all of his society — that is, all mankind in general
— it can have no other end or measure, when in the hands of the
magistrate, but to preserve the members of that society in their lives,
liberties, and possessions, and so cannot be an absolute, arbitrary power over
their lives and fortunes, which are as much as possible to be preserved; but a
power to make laws, and annex such penalties to them as may tend to the
preservation of the whole, by cutting off those parts, and those only, which
are so corrupt that they threaten the sound and healthy, without which no
severity is lawful. And this power has its original only from compact and
agreement and the mutual consent of those who make up the community.