§. 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.
