§. 182. But because the miscarriages of the father are no faults of the
children, who may be rational and peaceable, notwithstanding the brutishness
and injustice of the father, the father, by his miscarriages and violence, can
forfeit but his own life, and involves not his children in his guilt or
destruction. His goods which Nature, that willeth the preservation of all
mankind as much as is possible, hath made to belong to the children to keep
them from perishing, do still continue to belong to his children. For supposing
them not to have joined in the war either through infancy or choice, they have
done nothing to forfeit them, nor has the conqueror any right to take them away
by the bare right of having subdued him that by force attempted his
destruction, though, perhaps, he may have some right to them to repair the
damages he has sustained by the war, and the defence of his own right, which
how far it reaches to the possessions of the conquered we shall see by-and-by;
so that he that by conquest has a right over a man's person, to destroy him if
he pleases, has not thereby a right over his estate to possess and enjoy it.
For it is the brutal force the aggressor has used that gives his adversary a
right to take away his life and destroy him, if he pleases, as a noxious
creature; but it is damage sustained that alone gives him title to another
man's goods; for though I may kill a thief that sets on me in the highway, yet
I may not (which seems less) take away his money and let him go; this would be
robbery on my side. His force, and the state of war he put himself in, made him
forfeit his life, but gave me no title to his goods. The right, then, of
conquest extends only to the lives of those who joined in the war, but not to
their estates, but only in order to make reparation for the damages received
and the charges of the war, and that, too, with reservation of the right of the
innocent wife and children.
