§. 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.
