Chapter 18
Of Tyranny
§. 199. As usurpation is the exercise of power which another hath a right to,
so tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right
to; and this is making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the
good of those who are under it, but for his own private, separate advantage.
When the governor, however entitled, makes not the law, but his will, the rule,
and his commands and actions are not directed to the preservation of the
properties of his people, but the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge,
covetousness, or any other irregular passion.
§. 200. If one can doubt this to be truth or reason because it comes from the
obscure hand of a subject, I hope the authority of a king will make it pass
with him. King James, in his speech to the Parliament, 16O3, tells them thus:
"I will ever prefer the weal of the public and of the whole commonwealth,
in making of good laws and constitutions, to any particular and private ends of
mine, thinking ever the wealth and weal of the commonwealth to be my greatest
weal and worldly felicity — a point wherein a lawful king doth directly
differ from a tyrant; for I do acknowledge that the special and greatest point
of difference that is between a rightful king and an usurping tyrant is this
— that whereas the proud and ambitious tyrant doth think his kingdom and
people are only ordained for satisfaction of his desires and unreasonable
appetites, the righteous and just king doth, by the contrary, acknowledge
himself to be ordained for the procuring of the wealth and property of his
people." And again, in his speech to the Parliament, 1609, he hath these
words:
"The king binds himself, by a double oath, to the observation of
the fundamental laws of his kingdom — tacitly, as by being a king, and so
bound to protect, as well the people as the laws of his kingdom; and expressly
by his oath at his coronation; so as every just king, in a settled kingdom, is
bound to observe that paction made to his people, by his laws, in framing his
government agreeable thereunto, according to that paction which God made with
Noah after the deluge: 'Hereafter, seed-time, and harvest, and cold, and heat,
and summer, and winter, and day, and night, shall not cease while the earth
remaineth.' And therefore a king, governing in a settled kingdom, leaves to be
a king, and degenerates into a tyrant, as soon as he leaves off to rule
according to his laws."
And a little after:
"Therefore, all kings
that are not tyrants, or perjured, will be glad to bound themselves within the
limits of their laws, and they that persuade them the contrary are vipers,
pests, both against them and the commonwealth."
Thus, that learned king,
who well understood the notions of things, makes the difference betwixt a king
and a tyrant to consist only in this: that one makes the laws the bounds of his
power and the good of the public the end of his government; the other makes all
give way to his own will and appetite.
§. 201. It is a mistake to think this fault is proper only to monarchies.
Other forms of government are liable to it as well as that; for wherever the
power that is put in any hands for the government of the people and the
preservation of their properties is applied to other ends, and made use of to
impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the arbitrary and irregular commands of
those that have it, there it presently becomes tyranny, whether those that thus
use it are one or many. Thus we read of the thirty tyrants at Athens, as well
as one at Syracuse; and the intolerable dominion of the Decemviri at Rome was
nothing better.
§. 202. Wherever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be transgressed to
another's harm; and whosoever in authority exceeds the power given him by the
law, and makes use of the force he has under his command to compass that upon
the subject which the law allows not, ceases in that to be a magistrate, and
acting without authority may be opposed, as any other man who by force invades
the right of another. This is acknowledged in subordinate magistrates. He that
hath authority to seize my person in the street may be opposed as a thief and a
robber if he endeavours to break into my house to execute a writ,
notwithstanding that I know he has such a warrant and such a legal authority as
will empower him to arrest me abroad. And why this should not hold in the
highest, as well as in the most inferior magistrate, I would gladly be
informed. Is it reasonable that the eldest brother, because he has the greatest
part of his father's estate, should thereby have a right to take away any of
his younger brothers' portions? Or that a rich man, who possessed a whole
country, should from thence have a right to seize, when he pleased, the cottage
and garden of his poor neighbour? The being rightfully possessed of great power
and riches, exceedingly beyond the greatest part of the sons of Adam, is so far
from being an excuse, much less a reason for rapine and oppression, which the
endamaging another without authority is, that it is a great aggravation of it.
For exceeding the bounds of authority is no more a right in a great than a
petty officer, no more justifiable in a king than a constable. But so much the
worse in him as that he has more trust put in him, is supposed, from the
advantage of education and counsellors, to have better knowledge and less
reason to do it, having already a greater share than the rest of his brethren.
§. 203.
May the commands, then, of a prince be opposed? May he be resisted, as
often as any one shall find himself aggrieved, and but imagine he has not right
done him? This will unhinge and overturn all polities, and instead of
government and order, leave nothing but anarchy and confusion.
§. 204. To this I answer: That force is to be opposed to nothing but to unjust
and unlawful force. Whoever makes any opposition in any other case draws on
himself a just condemnation, both from God and man; and so no such danger or
confusion will follow, as is often suggested. For —
§. 205. First. As in some countries the person of the prince by the law is
sacred, and so whatever he commands or does, his person is still free from all
question or violence, not liable to force, or any judicial censure or
condemnation. But yet opposition may be made to the illegal acts of any
inferior officer or other commissioned by him, unless he will, by actually
putting himself into a state of war with his people, dissolve the government,
and leave them to that defence, which belongs to every one in the state of
Nature. For of such things, who can tell what the end will be? And a neighbour
kingdom has showed the world an odd example. In all other cases the sacredness
of the person exempts him from all inconveniencies, whereby he is secure,
whilst the government stands, from all violence and harm whatsoever, than which
there cannot be a wiser constitution. For the harm he can do in his own person
not being likely to happen often, nor to extend itself far, nor being able by
his single strength to subvert the laws nor oppress the body of the people,
should any prince have so much weakness and ill-nature as to be willing to do
it. The inconveniency of some particular mischiefs that may happen sometimes
when a heady prince comes to the throne are well recompensed by the peace of
the public and security of the government in the person of the chief
magistrate, thus set out of the reach of danger; it being safer for the body
that some few private men should be sometimes in danger to suffer than that the
head of the republic should be easily and upon slight occasions exposed.
§. 206. Secondly. But this privilege, belonging only to the king's person,
hinders not but they may be questioned, opposed, and resisted, who use unjust
force, though they pretend a commission from him which the law authorises not;
as is plain in the case of him that has the king's writ to arrest a man which
is a full commission from the king, and yet he that has it cannot break open a
man's house to do it, nor execute this command of the king upon certain days
nor in certain places, though this commission have no such exception in it; but
they are the limitations of the law, which, if any one transgress, the king's
commission excuses him not. For the king's authority being given him only by
the law, he cannot empower any one to act against the law, or justify him by
his commission in so doing. The commission or command of any magistrate where
he has no authority, being as void and insignificant as that of any private
man, the difference between the one and the other being that the magistrate has
some authority so far and to such ends, and the private man has none at all;
for it is not the commission but the authority that gives the right of acting,
and against the laws there can be no authority. But notwithstanding such
resistance, the king's person and authority are still both secured, and so no
danger to governor or government.
§. 207. Thirdly. Supposing a government wherein the person of the chief
magistrate is not thus sacred, yet this doctrine of the lawfulness of resisting
all unlawful exercises of his power will not, upon every slight occasion,
endanger him or embroil the government; for where the injured party may be
relieved and his damages repaired by appeal to the law, there can be no
pretence for force, which is only to be used where a man is intercepted from
appealing to the law. For nothing is to be accounted hostile force but where it
leaves not the remedy of such an appeal. and it is such force alone that puts
him that uses it into a state of war, and makes it lawful to resist him. A man
with a sword in his hand demands my purse on the highway, when perhaps I have
not 12d. in my pocket. This man I may lawfully kill. To another I deliver
£100 to hold only whilst I alight, which he refuses to restore me when I
am got up again, but draws his sword to defend the possession of it by force. I
endeavour to retake it. The mischief this man does me is a hundred, or possibly
a thousand times more than the other perhaps intended me (whom I killed before
he really did me any); and yet I might lawfully kill the one and cannot so much
as hurt the other lawfully. The reason whereof is plain; because the one using
force which threatened my life, I could not have time to appeal to the law to
secure it, and when it was gone it was too late to appeal. The law could not
restore life to my dead carcass. The loss was irreparable; which to prevent the
law of Nature gave me a right to destroy him who had put himself into a state
of war with me and threatened my destruction. But in the other case, my life
not being in danger, I might have the benefit of appealing to the law, and have
reparation for my £100 that way.
§. 208. Fourthly. But if the unlawful acts done by the magistrate be
maintained (by the power he has got), and the remedy, which is due by law, be
by the same power obstructed, yet the right of resisting, even in such manifest
acts of tyranny, will not suddenly, or on slight occasions, disturb the
government. For if it reach no farther than some private men's cases, though
they have a right to defend themselves, and to recover by force what by
unlawful force is taken from them, yet the right to do so will not easily
engage them in a contest wherein they are sure to perish; it being as
impossible for one or a few oppressed men to disturb the government where the
body of the people do not think themselves concerned in it, as for a raving
madman or heady malcontent to overturn a well-settled state, the people being
as little apt to follow the one as the other.
§. 209. But if either these illegal acts have extended to the majority of the
people, or if the mischief and oppression has light only on some few, but in
such cases as the precedent and consequences seem to threaten all, and they are
persuaded in their consciences that their laws, and with them, their estates,
liberties, and lives are in danger, and perhaps their religion too, how they
will be hindered from resisting illegal force used against them I cannot tell.
This is an inconvenience, I confess, that attends all governments whatsoever,
when the governors have brought it to this pass, to be generally suspected of
their people, the most dangerous state they can possibly put themselves in;
wherein they are the less to be pitied, because it is so easy to be avoided. It
being as impossible for a governor, if he really means the good of his people,
and the preservation of them and their laws together, not to make them see and
feel it, as it is for the father of a family not to let his children see he
loves and takes care of them.
§. 210. But if all the world shall observe pretences of one kind, and actions
of another, arts used to elude the law, and the trust of prerogative (which is
an arbitrary power in some things left in the prince's hand to do good, not
harm, to the people) employed contrary to the end for which it was given; if
the people shall find the ministers and subordinate magistrates chosen,
suitable to such ends, and favoured or laid by proportionably as they promote
or oppose them; if they see several experiments made of arbitrary power, and
that religion underhand favoured, though publicly proclaimed against, which is
readiest to introduce it, and the operators in it supported as much as may be;
and when that cannot be done, yet approved still, and liked the better, and a
long train of acting show the counsels all tending that way, how can a man any
more hinder himself from being persuaded in his own mind which way things are
going; or, from casting about how to save himself, than he could from believing
the captain of a ship he was in was carrying him and the rest of the company to
Algiers, when he found him always steering that course, though cross winds,
leaks in his ship, and want of men and provisions did often force him to turn
his course another way for some time, which he steadily returned to again as
soon as the wind, weather, and other circumstances would let him?