§. 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.
