Chapter 19
Of the Dissolution of Government
§. 211. HE that will, with any clearness, speak of the dissolution of
government, ought in the first place to distinguish between the dissolution of
the society and the dissolution of the government. That which makes the
community, and brings men out of the loose state of Nature into one politic
society, is the agreement which every one has with the rest to incorporate and
act as one body, and so be one distinct commonwealth. The usual, and almost
only way whereby this union is dissolved, is the inroad of foreign force making
a conquest upon them. For in that case (not being able to maintain and support
themselves as one entire and independent body) the union belonging to that
body, which consisted therein, must necessarily cease, and so every one return
to the state he was in before, with a liberty to shift for himself and provide
for his own safety, as he thinks fit, in some other society. Whenever the
society is dissolved, it is certain the government of that society cannot
remain. Thus conquerors' swords often cut up governments by the roots, and
mangle societies to pieces, separating the subdued or scattered multitude from
the protection of and dependence on that society which ought to have preserved
them from violence. The world is too well instructed in, and too forward to
allow of this way of dissolving of governments, to need any more to be said of
it; and there wants not much argument to prove that where the society is
dissolved, the government cannot remain; that being as impossible as for the
frame of a house to subsist when the materials of it are scattered and
displaced by a whirlwind, or jumbled into a confused heap by an earthquake.
§. 212. Besides this overturning from without, governments are dissolved from
within:
First. When the legislative is altered, civil society being a state of
peace amongst those who are of it, from whom the state of war is excluded by
the umpirage which they have provided in their legislative for the ending all
differences that may arise amongst any of them; it is in their legislative that
the members of a commonwealth are united and combined together into one
coherent living body. This is the soul that gives form, life, and unity to the
commonwealth; from hence the several members have their mutual influence,
sympathy, and connection; and therefore when the legislative is broken, or
dissolved, dissolution and death follows. For the essence and union of the
society consisting in having one will, the legislative, when once established
by the majority, has the declaring and, as it were, keeping of that will. The
constitution of the legislative is the first and fundamental act of society,
whereby provision is made for the continuation of their union under the
direction of persons and bonds of laws, made by persons authorised thereunto,
by the consent and appointment of the people, without which no one man, or
number of men, amongst them can have authority of making laws that shall be
binding to the rest. When any one, or more, shall take upon them to make laws
whom the people have not appointed so to do, they make laws without authority,
which the people are not therefore bound to obey; by which means they come
again to be out of subjection, and may constitute to themselves a new
legislative, as they think best, being in full liberty to resist the force of
those who, without authority, would impose anything upon them. Every one is at
the disposure of his own will, when those who had, by the delegation of the
society, the declaring of the public will, are excluded from it, and others
usurp the place who have no such authority or delegation.
§. 213. This being usually brought about by such in the commonwealth, who
misuse the power they have, it is hard to consider it aright, and know at whose
door to lay it, without knowing the form of government in which it happens. Let
us suppose, then, the legislative placed in the concurrence of three distinct
persons: — First, a single hereditary person having the constant, supreme,
executive power, and with it the power of convoking and dissolving the other
two within certain periods of time. Secondly, an assembly of hereditary
nobility. Thirdly, an assembly of representatives chosen, pro tempore, by the
people. Such a form of government supposed, it is evident:
§. 214. First, that when such a single person or prince sets up his own
arbitrary will in place of the laws which are the will of the society declared
by the legislative, then the legislative is changed. For that being, in effect,
the legislative whose rules and laws are put in execution, and required to be
obeyed, when other laws are set up, and other rules pretended and enforced than
what the legislative, constituted by the society, have enacted, it is plain
that the legislative is changed. Whoever introduces new laws, not being
thereunto authorised, by the fundamental appointment of the society, or
subverts the old, disowns and overturns the power by which they were made, and
so sets up a new legislative.
§. 215. Secondly, when the prince hinders the legislative from assembling in
its due time, or from acting freely, pursuant to those ends for which it was
constituted, the legislative is altered. For it is not a certain number of men
— no, nor their meeting, unless they have also freedom of debating and
leisure of perfecting what is for the good of the society, wherein the
legislative consists; when these are taken away, or altered, so as to deprive
the society of the due exercise of their power, the legislative is truly
altered. For it is not names that constitute governments, but the use and
exercise of those powers that were intended to accompany them; so that he who
takes away the freedom, or hinders the acting of the legislative in its due
seasons, in effect takes away the legislative, and puts an end to the
government.
§. 216. Thirdly, when, by the arbitrary power of the prince, the electors or
ways of election are altered without the consent and contrary to the common
interest of the people, there also the legislative is altered. For if others
than those whom the society hath authorised thereunto do choose, or in another
way than what the society hath prescribed, those chosen are not the legislative
appointed by the people.
§. 217. Fourthly, the delivery also of the people into the subjection of a
foreign power, either by the prince or by the legislative, is certainly a
change of the legislative, and so a dissolution of the government. For the end
why people entered into society being to be preserved one entire, free,
independent society to be governed by its own laws, this is lost whenever they
are given up into the power of another.
§. 218. Why, in such a constitution as this, the dissolution of the government
in these cases is to be imputed to the prince is evident, because he, having
the force, treasure, and offices of the State to employ, and often persuading
himself or being flattered by others, that, as supreme magistrate, he is
incapable of control; he alone is in a condition to make great advances towards
such changes under pretence of lawful authority, and has it in his hands to
terrify or suppress opposers as factious, seditious, and enemies to the
government; whereas no other part of the legislative, or people, is capable by
themselves to attempt any alteration of the legislative without open and
visible rebellion, apt enough to be taken notice of, which, when it prevails,
produces effects very little different from foreign conquest. Besides, the
prince, in such a form of government, having the power of dissolving the other
parts of the legislative, and thereby rendering them private persons, they can
never, in opposition to him, or without his concurrence, alter the legislative
by a law, his consent being necessary to give any of their decrees that
sanction. But yet so far as the other parts of the legislative any way
contribute to any attempt upon the government, and do either promote, or not,
what lies in them, hinder such designs, they are guilty, and partake in this,
which is certainly the greatest crime men can be guilty of one towards another.
§. 219. There is one way more whereby such a government may be dissolved, and
that is: When he who has the supreme executive power neglects and abandons that
charge, so that the laws already made can no longer be put in execution; this
is demonstratively to reduce all to anarchy, and so effectively to dissolve the
government. For laws not being made for themselves, but to be, by their
execution, the bonds of the society to keep every part of the body politic in
its due place and function. When that totally ceases, the government visibly
ceases, and the people become a confused multitude without order or connection.
Where there is no longer the administration of justice for the securing of
men's rights, nor any remaining power within the community to direct the force,
or provide for the necessities of the public, there certainly is no government
left. Where the laws cannot be executed it is all one as if there were no laws,
and a government without laws is, I suppose, a mystery in politics
inconceivable to human capacity, and inconsistent with human society.
§. 220. In these, and the like cases, when the government is dissolved, the
people are at liberty to provide for themselves by erecting a new legislative
differing from the other by the change of persons, or form, or both, as they
shall find it most for their safety and good. For the society can never, by the
fault of another, lose the native and original right it has to preserve itself,
which can only be done by a settled legislative and a fair and impartial
execution of the laws made by it. But the state of mankind is not so miserable
that they are not capable of using this remedy till it be too late to look for
any. To tell people they may provide for themselves by erecting a new
legislative, when, by oppression, artifice, or being delivered over to a
foreign power, their old one is gone, is only to tell them they may expect
relief when it is too late, and the evil is past cure. This is, in effect, no
more than to bid them first be slaves, and then to take care of their liberty,
and, when their chains are on, tell them they may act like free men. This, if
barely so, is rather mockery than relief, and men can never be secure from
tyranny if there be no means to escape it till they are perfectly under it;
and, therefore, it is that they have not only a right to get out of it, but to
prevent it.
§. 221. There is, therefore, secondly, another way whereby governments are
dissolved, and that is, when the legislative, or the prince, either of them act
contrary to their trust.
For the legislative acts against the trust reposed in them when they
endeavour to invade the property of the subject, and to make themselves, or any
part of the community, masters or arbitrary disposers of the lives, liberties,
or fortunes of the people.
§. 222. The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their
property; and the end while they choose and authorise a legislative is that
there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties
of all the society, to limit the power and moderate the dominion of every part
and member of the society. For since it can never be supposed to be the will of
the society that the legislative should have a power to destroy that which
every one designs to secure by entering into society, and for which the people
submitted themselves to legislators of their own making: whenever the
legislators endeavour to take away and destroy the property of the people, or
to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a
state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther
obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all
men against force and violence. Whensoever, therefore, the legislative shall
transgress this fundamental rule of society, and either by ambition, fear,
folly, or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of
any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the
people, by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into
their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a
right to resume their original liberty, and by the establishment of a new
legislative (such as they shall think fit), provide for their own safety and
security, which is the end for which they are in society. What I have said here
concerning the legislative in general holds true also concerning the supreme
executor, who having a double trust put in him, both to have a part in the
legislative and the supreme execution of the law, acts against both, when he
goes about to set up his own arbitrary will as the law of the society. He acts
also contrary to his trust when he employs the force, treasure, and offices of
the society to corrupt the representatives and gain them to his purposes, when
he openly pre-engages the electors, and prescribes, to their choice, such whom
he has, by solicitation, threats, promises, or otherwise, won to his designs,
and employs them to bring in such who have promised beforehand what to vote and
what to enact. Thus to regulate candidates and electors, and new model the ways
of election, what is it but to cut up the government by the roots, and poison
the very fountain of public security? For the people having reserved to
themselves the choice of their representatives as the fence to their
properties, could do it for no other end but that they might always be freely
chosen, and so chosen, freely act and advise as the necessity of the
commonwealth and the public good should, upon examination and mature debate, be
judged to require. This, those who give their votes before they hear the
debate, and have weighed the reasons on all sides, are not capable of doing. To
prepare such an assembly as this, and endeavour to set up the declared abettors
of his own will, for the true representatives of the people, and the law-makers
of the society, is certainly as great a breach of trust, and as perfect a
declaration of a design to subvert the government, as is possible to be met
with. To which, if one shall add rewards and punishments visibly employed to
the same end, and all the arts of perverted law made use of to take off and
destroy all that stand in the way of such a design, and will not comply and
consent to betray the liberties of their country, it will be past doubt what is
doing. What power they ought to have in the society who thus employ it contrary
to the trust that along with it in its first institution, is easy to determine;
and one cannot but see that he who has once attempted any such thing as this
cannot any longer be trusted.
§. 223. To this, perhaps, it will be said that the people being ignorant and
always discontented, to lay the foundation of government in the unsteady
opinion and uncertain humour of the people, is to expose it to certain ruin;
and no government will be able long to subsist if the people may set up a new
legislative whenever they take offence at the old one. To this I answer, quite
the contrary. People are not so easily got out of their old forms as some are
apt to suggest. They are hardly to be prevailed with to amend the acknowledged
faults in the frame they have been accustomed to. And if there be any original
defects, or adventitious ones introduced by time or corruption, it is not an
easy thing to get them changed, even when all the world sees there is an
opportunity for it. This slowness and aversion in the people to quit their old
constitutions has in the many revolutions [that] have been seen in this
kingdom, in this and former ages, still kept us to, or after some interval of
fruitless attempts, still brought us back again to, our old legislative of
king, lords and commons; and whatever provocations have made the crown be taken
from some of our princes' heads, they never carried the people so far as to
place it in another line.
§. 224. But it will be said this hypothesis lays a ferment for frequent
rebellion. To which I answer:
First: no more than any other hypothesis. For when the people are made
miserable, and find themselves exposed to the ill usage of arbitrary power, cry
up their governors as much as you will for sons of Jupiter, let them be sacred
and divine, descended or authorised from Heaven; give them out for whom or what
you please, the same will happen. The people generally ill treated, and
contrary to right, will be ready upon any occasion to ease themselves of a
burden that sits heavy upon them. They will wish and seek for the opportunity,
which in the change, weakness, and accidents of human affairs, seldom delays
long to offer itself He must have lived but a little while in the world, who
has not seen examples of this in his time; and he must have read very little
who cannot produce examples of it in all sorts of governments in the world.
§. 225. Secondly: I answer, such revolutions happen not upon every little
mismanagement in public affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong
and inconvenient laws, and all the slips of human frailty will be borne by the
people without mutiny or murmur. But if a long train of abuses, prevarications,
and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people,
and they cannot but feel what they lie under, and see whither they are going,
it is not to be wondered that they should then rouse themselves, and endeavour
to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which
government was at first erected, and without which, ancient names and specious
forms are so far from being better, that they are much worse than the state of
Nature or pure anarchy; the inconveniencies being all as great and as near, but
the remedy farther off and more difficult.
§. 226. Thirdly: I answer, that this power in the people of providing for
their safety anew by a new legislative when their legislators have acted
contrary to their trust by invading their property, is the best fence against
rebellion, and the probable means to hinder it. For rebellion being an
opposition, not to persons, but authority, which is founded only in the
constitutions and laws of the government: those, whoever they be, who, by
force, break through, and, by force, justify their violation of them, are truly
and properly rebels. For when men, by entering into society and civil
government, have excluded force, and introduced laws for the preservation of
property, peace, and unity amongst themselves, those who set up force again in
opposition to the laws, do rebellare — that is, bring back again the state
of war, and are properly rebels, which they who are in power, by the pretence
they have to authority, the temptation of force they have in their hands, and
the flattery of those about them being likeliest to do, the proper way to
prevent the evil is to show them the danger and injustice of it who are under
the greatest temptation to run into it.
§. 227. In both the forementioned cases, when either the legislative is
changed, or the legislators act contrary to the end for which they were
constituted, those who are guilty are guilty of rebellion. For if any one by
force takes away the established legislative of any society, and the laws by
them made, pursuant to their trust, he thereby takes away the umpirage which
every one had consented to for a peaceable decision of all their controversies,
and a bar to the state of war amongst them. They who remove or change the
legislative take away this decisive power, which nobody can have but by the
appointment and consent of the people, and so destroying the authority which
the people did, and nobody else can, set up, and introducing a power which the
people hath not authorised, actually introduce a state of war, which is that of
force without authority; and thus by removing the legislative established by
the society, in whose decisions the people acquiesced and united as to that of
their own will, they untie the knot, and expose the people anew to the state of
war. And if those, who by force take away the legislative, are rebels, the
legislators themselves, as has been shown, can be no less esteemed so, when
they who were set up for the protection and preservation of the people, their
liberties and properties shall by force invade and endeavour to take them away;
and so they putting themselves into a state of war with those who made them the
protectors and guardians of their peace, are properly, and with the greatest
aggravation, rebellantes, rebels.
§. 228. But if they who say it lays a foundation for rebellion mean that it
may occasion civil wars or intestine broils to tell the people they are
absolved from obedience when illegal attempts are made upon their liberties or
properties, and may oppose the unlawful violence of those who were their
magistrates when they invade their properties, contrary to the trust put in
them, and that, therefore, this doctrine is not to be allowed, being so
destructive to the peace of the world; they may as well say, upon the same
ground, that honest men may not oppose robbers or pirates, because this may
occasion disorder or bloodshed. If any mischief come in such cases, it is not
to be charged upon him who defends his own right, but on him that invades his
neighbour's. If the innocent honest man must quietly quit all he has for peace
sake to him who will lay violent hands upon it, I desire it may be considered
what kind of a peace there will be in the world which consists only in violence
and rapine, and which is to be maintained only for the benefit of robbers and
oppressors. Who would not think it an admirable peace betwixt the mighty and
the mean, when the lamb, without resistance, yielded his throat to be torn by
the imperious wolf? Polyphemus's den gives us a perfect pattern of such a
peace. Such a government wherein Ulysses and his companions had nothing to do
but quietly to suffer themselves to be devoured. And no doubt Ulysses, who was
a prudent man, preached up passive obedience, and exhorted them to a quiet
submission by representing to them of what concernment peace was to mankind,
and by showing [what] inconveniencies might happen if they should offer to
resist Polyphemus, who had now the power over them.
§. 229. The end of government is the good of mankind; and which is best for
mankind, that the people should be always exposed to the boundless will of
tyranny, or that the rulers should be sometimes liable to be opposed when they
grow exorbitant in the use of their power, and employ it for the destruction,
and not the preservation, of the properties of their people?
§. 230. Nor let any one say that mischief can arise from hence as often as it
shall please a busy head or turbulent spirit to desire the alteration of the
government. It is true such men may stir whenever they please, but it will be
only to their own just ruin and perdition. For till the mischief be grown
general, and the ill designs of the rulers become visible, or their attempts
sensible to the greater part, the people, who are more disposed to suffer than
right themselves by resistance, are not apt to stir. The examples of particular
injustice or oppression of here and there an unfortunate man moves them not.
But if they universally have a persuasion grounded upon manifest evidence that
designs are carrying on against their liberties, and the general course and
tendency of things cannot but give them strong suspicions of the evil intention
of their governors, who is to be blamed for it? Who can help it if they, who
might avoid it, bring themselves into this suspicion? Are the people to be
blamed if they have the sense of rational creatures, and can think of things no
otherwise than as they find and feel them? And is it not rather their fault who
put things in such a posture that they would not have them thought as they are?
I grant that the pride, ambition, and turbulency of private men have sometimes
caused great disorders in commonwealths, and factions have been fatal to states
and kingdoms. But whether the mischief hath oftener begun in the people's
wantonness, and a desire to cast off the lawful authority of their rulers, or
in the rulers' insolence and endeavours to get and exercise an arbitrary power
over their people, whether oppression or disobedience gave the first rise to
the disorder, I leave it to impartial history to determine. This I am sure,
whoever, either ruler or subject, by force goes about to invade the rights of
either prince or people, and lays the foundation for overturning the
constitution and frame of any just government, he is guilty of the greatest
crime I think a man is capable of, being to answer for all those mischiefs of
blood, rapine, and desolation, which the breaking to pieces of governments
bring on a country; and he who does it is justly to be esteemed the common
enemy and pest of mankind, and is to be treated accordingly.
§. 231. That subjects or foreigners attempting by force on the properties of
any people may be resisted with force is agreed on all hands; but that
magistrates doing the same thing may be resisted, hath of late been denied; as
if those who had the greatest privileges and advantages by the law had thereby
a power to break those laws by which alone they were set in a better place than
their brethren; whereas their offence is thereby the greater, both as being
ungrateful for the greater share they have by the law, and breaking also that
trust which is put into their hands by their brethren.
§. 232. Whosoever uses force without right — as every one does
in society who does it without law — puts himself into a state of
war with those against whom he so uses it, and in that state all former
ties are cancelled, all other rights cease, and every one has a right to
defend himself, and to resist the aggressor. This is so evident that
Barclay himself — that great assertor of the power and sacredness
of kings — is forced to confess that it is lawful for the people,
in some cases, to resist their king, and that, too, in a chapter wherein
he pretends to show that the Divine law shuts up the people from all
manner of rebellion. Whereby it is evident, even by his own doctrine,
that since they may, in some cases, resist, all resisting of princes is
not rebellion. His words are these:
"Quod
siquis dicat, Ergone populus tyrannicæ crudelitati & furori jugulum
semper præbebit? Ergone multitudo civitates suas fame, ferro, &
flammâ vastari, seque, conjuges, & liberos fortunæ ludibrio &
tyranni libidini exponi, inque omnia vitæ pericula omnesque miserias &
molestias à rege deduci patientur? Num illis quod omni animantium generi
est à naturâ tributum, denegari debet, ut sc. vim vi repellant, seseque
ab injuria tueantur? Huic breviter responsum sit, populo universo negari
defensionem, quæ juris naturalis est, neque ultionem quæ præter
naturam est adversus regem concedi debere. Quapropter si rex non in
singulares tantum personas aliquot privatum odium exerceat, sed corpus
etiam reipublicæ, cujus ipse, caput est — i.e., totum populum, vel
insignem aliquam ejus partem immani & intolerandâ sævitia seu
tyrannide divexet; populo, quidem hoc casu resistendi ac tuendi se ab
injuria potestas competit, sed tuendi se tantum, non enim in principem
invadendi: & restituendæ injuriæ illatæ, non recedendi à
debita reverentia propter acceptum injuriam. Præsentem denique impetum
propulsandi non vim præteritam ulciscendi jus habet. Horum enim alterum
à naturâ est, ut vitani scilicet corpusque tueamur. Alterum vero contra
naturam, ut inferior de superiori supplicium sumat. Quod itaque populus
malum, antequam factum sit, impedire potest, ne fiat, id postquam factum
est, in regem authorem sceleris vindicare non potest, populus igitur hoc
amplius quam privatus quispiam habet: Quod huic, vel ipsis adversariis
judicibus, excepto Buchanano, nullum nisi in patientia remedium
superest. Cum ille si intolerabilis tyrannis est (modicum enim ferre
omnino debet) resistere cum reverentia possit."
—
Barclay, Contra Monarchomachos, iii. 8.
In English thus:
§. 233. "But if any one should ask: Must the people, then, always lay
themselves open to the cruelty and rage of tyranny — must they see their
cities pillaged and laid in ashes, their wives and children exposed to the
tyrant's lust and fury, and themselves and families reduced by their king to
ruin and all the miseries of want and oppression, and yet sit still — must
men alone be debarred the common privilege of opposing force with force, which
Nature allows so freely to all other creatures for their preservation from
injury? I answer: Self-defence is a part of the law of Nature; nor can it be
denied the community, even against the king himself; but to revenge themselves
upon him must, by no means, be allowed them, it being not agreeable to that
law. Wherefore, if the king shall show an hatred, not only to some particular
persons, but sets himself against the body of the commonwealth, whereof he is
the head, and shall, with intolerable ill-usage, cruelly tyrannise over the
whole, or a considerable part of the people; in this case the people have a
right to resist and defend themselves from injury; but it must be with this
caution, that they only defend themselves, but do not attack their prince. They
may repair the damages received, but must not, for any provocation, exceed the
bounds of due reverence and respect. They may repulse the present attempt, but
must not revenge past violences. For it is natural for us to defend life and
limb, but that an inferior should punish a superior is against nature. The
mischief which is designed them the people may prevent before it be done, but,
when it is done, they must not revenge it on the king, though author of the
villany. This, therefore, is the privilege of the people in general above what
any private person hath: That particular men are allowed, by our adversaries
themselves (Buchanan only excepted), to have no other remedy but patience; but
the body of the people may, with respect, resist intolerable tyranny, for when
it is but moderate they ought to endure it."
§. 234. Thus far that great advocate of monarchical power allows of
resistance.
§. 235. It is true, he has annexed two limitations to it, to no purpose:
First. He says it must be with reverence.
Secondly. It must be without retribution or punishment; and the reason he
gives is, "because an inferior cannot punish a superior."
First. How to resist force without striking again, or how to strike with
reverence, will need some skill to make intelligible. He that shall oppose an
assault only with a shield to receive the blows, or in any more respectful
posture, without a sword in his hand to abate the confidence and force of the
assailant, will quickly be at an end of his resistance, and will find such a
defence serve only to draw on himself the worse usage. This is as ridiculous a
way of resisting as Juvenal thought it of fighting: Ubi tu
pulsas, ego vapulo tantum. And the success of the combat will be
unavoidably the same he there describes it:
—Libertas pauperis hæc est;
Pulsatus rogat, & pugnis concisus, adorat,
Ut liceat paucis cum dentibus inde reverti.
This will always be the event of such an imaginary resistance, where men
may not strike again. He, therefore, who may resist must be allowed to strike.
And then let our author, or anybody else, join a knock on the head or a cut on
the face with as much reverence and respect as he thinks fit. He that can
reconcile blows and reverence may, for aught I know, deserve for his pains a
civil, respectful cudgelling wherever he can meet with it.
Secondly. As to his second — "An inferior cannot punish a
superior" — that is true, generally speaking, whilst he is his
superior. But to resist force with force, being the state of war that levels
the parties, cancels all former relation of reverence, respect, and
superiority; and then the odds that remains is — that he who opposes the
unjust aggressor has this superiority over him, that he has a right, when he
prevails, to punish the offender, both for the breach of the peace and all the
evils that followed upon it. Barclay, therefore, in another place, more
coherently to himself, denies it to be lawful to resist a king in any case. But
he there assigns two cases whereby a king may unking himself. His words are:
"Quid ergo, nulline casus incidere possunt quibus populo sese erigere
atque in regem impotentius dominantem arma capere & invadere jure suo suaque
authoritate liceat? Nulli certe quamdiu rex manet. Semper enim ex divinis id
obstat, Regem honorificato, & qui potestati resistit, Dei ordinationi
resistit; non alias igitur in eum populo potestas est quam si id committat
propter quod ipso jure rex esse desinat. Tunc enim se ipse principatu exuit
atque in privatis constituit liber; hoc modo populus & superior efficitur,
reverso ad eum scilicet jure illo quod ante regem inauguratum in interregno
habuit. At sunt paucorum generum commissa ejusmodi quæ hunc effectum pariunt.
At ego cum plurima animo perlustrem, duo tantum invenio, duos, inquam, casus
quibus rex ipso facto ex rege non regem se facit & omni honore & dignitate
regali atque in subditos potestate destituit; quorum etiam meminit Winzerus.
Horum unus est, si regnum disperdat, quemadmodum de Nerone fertur, quod is
nempe senatum populumque Romanum atque adeo urbem ipsam ferro flammaque
vastare, ac novas sibi sedes quærere decrevisset. Et de Caligula, quod palam
denunciarit se neque civem neque principem senatui amplius fore, inque animo
habuerit, interempto utriusque ordinis electissimo, quoque Alexandriam
commigrare, ac ut populum uno ictu interimeret, unam ei cervicem optavit. Talia
cum rex aliquis meditatur & molitur serio, omnem regnandi curam & animum
ilico abjicit, ac proinde imperium in subditos amittit, ut dominus servi pro
derelicto habiti, dominium.
§. 236. "Arlter casus est, si rex in
alicujus clientelam se contulit, ac regnum quod liberum a majoribus et
populo traditum accepit, alienæ ditioni mancipavit. Nam tunc quamvis
forte non eâ mente id agit populo plane ut incommodet; tamen quia quod
præcipuum est regiæ dignitatis amisit, ut summus scilicet in regno
secundum Deum sit, & solo Deo inferior, atque populum etiam totum
ignorantem vel invitum, cujus libertatem sartam & tectam conservare
debuit, in alterius gentis ditionem & potestatem dedidit; hâc velut
quadam rengi abalienatione effecit, ut nec quod ipse in regno imperium
habuit retineat, nec in eum cui collatum voluit, juris quicquam
transferat, atque ita eo facto liberum jam & suæ potestatis populum
relinquit, cujus rei exemplum unum annales Scotici suppeditant."
— Barclay, Contra Monarchomachos, I. iii., c. 16.
Which in English runs thus:
§. 237. "What, then, can there no case happen wherein the people may of
right, and by their own authority, help themselves, take arms, and set upon
their king, imperiously domineering over them? None at all whilst he remains a
king. 'Honour the king,' and 'he that resists the power, resists the ordinance
of God,' are Divine oracles that will never permit it. The people, therefore,
can never come by a power over him unless he does something that makes him
cease to be a king; for then he divests himself of his crown and dignity, and
returns to the state of a private man, and the people become free and superior;
the power which they had in the interregnum, before they crowned him king,
devolving to them again. But there are but few miscarriages which bring the
matter to this state. After considering it well on all sides, I can find but
two. Two cases there are, I say, whereby a king, ipso facto, becomes no king,
and loses all power and regal authority over his people, which are also taken
notice of by Winzerus. The first is, if he endeavour to overturn the government
— that is, if he have a purpose and design to ruin the kingdom and
commonwealth, as it is recorded of Nero that he resolved to cut off the senate
and people of Rome, lay the city waste with fire and sword, and then remove to
some other place; and of Caligula, that he openly declared that he would be no
longer a head to the people or senate, and that he had it in his thoughts to
cut off the worthiest men of both ranks, and then retire to Alexandria; and he
wished that the people had but one neck that he might dispatch them all at a
blow. Such designs as these, when any king harbours in his thoughts, and
seriously promotes, he immediately gives up all care and thought of the
commonwealth, and, consequently, forfeits the power of governing his subjects,
as a master does the dominion over his slaves whom he hath abandoned.
§. 238. "The other case is, when a king makes himself the dependent of
another, and subjects his kingdom, which his ancestors left him, and the people
put free into his hands, to the dominion of another. For however, perhaps, it
may not be his intention to prejudice the people, yet because he has hereby
lost the principal part of regal dignity — viz., to be next and
immediately under God, supreme in his kingdom; and also because he betrayed or
forced his people, whose liberty he ought to have carefully preserved, into the
power and dominion of a foreign nation. By this, as it were, alienation of his
kingdom, he himself loses the power he had in it before, without transferring
any the least right to those on whom he would have bestowed it; and so by this
act sets the people free, and leaves them at their own disposal. One example of
this is to be found in the Scotch annals."
§. 239. In these cases Barclay, the great champion of absolute monarchy, is
forced to allow that a king may be resisted, and ceases to be a king. That is
in short — not to multiply cases — in whatsoever he has no authority,
there he is no king, and may be resisted: for wheresoever the authority ceases,
the king ceases too, and becomes like other men who have no authority. And
these two cases that he instances differ little from those above mentioned, to
be destructive to governments, only that he has omitted the principle from
which his doctrine flows, and that is the breach of trust in not preserving the
form of government agreed on, and in not intending the end of government
itself, which is the public good and preservation of property. When a king has
dethroned himself, and put himself in a state of war with his people, what
shall hinder them from prosecuting him who is no king, as they would any other
man, who has put himself into a state of war with them, Barclay, and those of
his opinion, would do well to tell us. Bilson, a bishop of our Church, and a
great stickler for the power and prerogative of princes, does, if I mistake
not, in his treatise of "Christian Subjection," acknowledge that
princes may forfeit their power and their title to the obedience of their
subjects; and if there needed authority in a case where reason is so plain, I
could send my reader to Bracton, Fortescue, and the author of the
"Mirror," and others, writers that cannot be suspected to be ignorant
of our government, or enemies to it. But I thought Hooker alone might be enough
to satisfy those men who, relying on him for their ecclesiastical polity, are
by a strange fate carried to deny those principles upon which he builds it.
Whether they are herein made the tools of cunninger workmen, to pull down their
own fabric, they were best look. This I am sure, their civil policy is so new,
so dangerous, and so destructive to both rulers and people, that as former ages
never could bear the broaching of it, so it may be hoped those to come,
redeemed from the impositions of these Egyptian under-taskmasters, will abhor
the memory of such servile flatterers, who, whilst it seemed to serve their
turn, resolved all government into absolute tyranny, and would have all men
born to what their mean souls fitted them — slavery.
§. 240. Here it is like the common question will be made: Who shall be judge
whether the prince or legislative act contrary to their trust? This, perhaps,
ill-affected and factious men may spread amongst the people, when the prince
only makes use of his due prerogative. To this I reply, The people shall be
judge; for who shall be judge whether his trustee or deputy acts well and
according to the trust reposed in him, but he who deputes him and must, by
having deputed him, have still a power to discard him when he fails in his
trust? If this be reasonable in particular cases of private men, why should it
be otherwise in that of the greatest moment, where the welfare of millions is
concerned and also where the evil, if not prevented, is greater, and the
redress very difficult, dear, and dangerous?
§. 241. But, farther, this question, Who shall be judge? cannot mean that
there is no judge at all. For where there is no judicature on earth to decide
controversies amongst men, God in heaven is judge. He alone, it is true, is
judge of the right. But every man is judge for himself, as in all other cases
so in this, whether another hath put himself into a state of war with him, and
whether he should appeal to the supreme judge, as Jephtha did.
§. 242. If a controversy arise betwixt a prince and some of the people in a
matter where the law is silent or doubtful, and the thing be of great
consequence, I should think the proper umpire in such a case should be the body
of the people. For in such cases where the prince hath a trust reposed in him,
and is dispensed from the common, ordinary rules of the law, there, if any men
find themselves aggrieved, and think the prince acts contrary to, or beyond
that trust, who so proper to judge as the body of the people (who at first
lodged that trust in him) how far they meant it should extend? But if the
prince, or whoever they be in the administration, decline that way of
determination, the appeal then lies nowhere but to Heaven. Force between either
persons who have no known superior on earth or, which permits no appeal to a
judge on earth, being properly a state of war, wherein the appeal lies only to
heaven; and in that state the injured party must judge for himself when he will
think fit to make use of that appeal and put himself upon it.
§. 243. To conclude. The power that every individual gave the society when he
entered into it can never revert to the individuals again, as long as the
society lasts, but will always remain in the community; because without this
there can be no community — no commonwealth, which is contrary to the
original agreement; so also when the society hath placed the legislative in any
assembly of men, to continue in them and their successors, with direction and
authority for providing such successors, the legislative can never revert to
the people whilst that government lasts: because, having provided a legislative
with power to continue for ever, they have given up their political power to
the legislative, and cannot resume it. But if they have set limits to the
duration of their legislative, and made this supreme power in any person or
assembly only temporary; or else when, by the miscarriages of those in
authority, it is forfeited; upon the forfeiture of their rulers, or at the
determination of the time set, it reverts to the society, and the people have a
right to act as supreme, and continue the legislative in themselves or place it
in a new form, or new hands, as they think good.