§. 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.