§. 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.
