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chiefs may be done them by pole-cats, or foxes; but are content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions. :

§. 94. But whatever flatterers may talk to amufe people's understandings, it hinders not men from feeling; and when they perceive, that any man, in what station soever, is out of the bounds of the civil fociety which they are of, and that they have no appeal on earth against any harm, they may receive from him, they are apt to think themselves in the ftate of nature, in refpect of him whom they find to be fo; and to take care, as foon as they can, to have that fafety and fecurity in civil fociety, for which it was first instituted, and for which only they entered into it. And therefore, though perhaps at first, (as fhall be shewed more at large hereafter in the following part of this difcourfe) fome one good and excellent man having got a pre-eminency amongst the reft, had this deference paid to his goodness and virtue, as to a kind of natural authority, that the chief rule, with arbitration of their differences, by a tacit confent devolved into This hands, without any other caution, but the affurance they had of his uprightness and wifdom; yet when time, giving authority, and (as fome men would perfuade us) sacredness of cuftoms, which the negligent, and unforefeeing innocence of the firft ages began, had brought in fucceffors of another ftamp, the people finding their properties not secure under -Tur liv blevou a T-3

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government, as then it was, (whereas government has no other end but the prefervation of property), could never be fafe nor at rest, nor think themselves in civil fociety, till the legislature was placed in collective bodies of men, call them fenate, parliament, or what you please. By which means every fingle perfon became fubject, equally with other the meanest men, to thofe laws, which he himself, as part of the legislative, had established; nor could any one, by his own authority, avoid the force of the law, when once made; nor by any pretence of fuperiority plead exemption, thereby to license his own, or the mifcarriages of any of his dependents. No + man in civil fociety can be exempted from the laws of it for if any man may do what he thinks fit, and there be no appeal on earth, for redrefs or fecurity against any harm he shall do; I afk, whether he be not perfectly ftill in the Aftate

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At the first, when fome certain kind of regiment was once appointed, it may be that nothing was then farther thought upon for the manner of governing, but all permitted. unto their wisdom and difcretion, which were to rule, till by experience they found this for all parts very inconvenient, fo as the thing which they had devifed for a remedy, did indeed but increase the fore, which it fhould have cured. They faw, that to live by one man's will, became the caufe of all men's mifery. This constrained them to come unto laws, wherein all men might fee their duty beforehand, and know the penalties of tranfgreffing them. Hooker's Eccl. Pol. 1. i. fec. 10.

+ Civil law being the act of the whole body politic, doth therefore over-rule each several part of the fame body. Hooker's Ibid.

ftate of nature, and fo can be no part or mem forcan • ber of that civil fociety; unless any one will fay, the state of nature and civil fociety are one and the fame thing, which I have never yet found any one fo great a patron of anarchy as to affirms stend

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of the Beginning of Political Societies.

§. 95. M

EN being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this eftate, and fubjected to the political power of another, without his own consent. The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil fociety, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community, for their comfortable, fafe, and peaceable living one amongst another, in a fecure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater fecurity against any, that are not of it. This any number of men may do, because it injures not the freedom of the reft; they are left as they were in the liberty of the ftate of nature. When any number of men have fo confented to make one community or government, they are thereby presently incorporated, and make one body politic, wherein the majority have a right to act and conclude the reft.

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sbi§ 96. For when any numbers of men have, by the confent ofvevery individual, made a bcommunity, they have thereby made that com-munity one body, with carpower to act as one body, which is only by the will and determination of the majority for that which acts any community, being only the confent of the individuals of it, and it being neceffary to that which is one body to move one way; Bit is neceffary the body fhould move that way whither the greater force carries it, which is the confent of the majority or elfe it is impoffible it fhould act or continue one body, ond community, which the confent of every individual that united into it, agreed that it fhould; and fo every one is bound by that confent to be concluded by the majority. And therefore we fee, that in affemblies, himpowered to act by pofitive laws, where no -number is fet by that pofitive law which impowers them, the act of the majority paffes for the act of the whole, and of courfe determines, as having, by the law of nature and reason, the power of the whole.

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§. 97. And thus every man, by confenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himfelf under an obligation, to every one of that fociety, to fubmit to the determination of the majority, and to be concluded by it; or elfe this original com pact, whereby he with others incorporates into one fociety, would fignify nothing, and

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be no compact, if he be deft free, and under no other ties than he was imsbefore in the ftate of nature. For what appearances would there be of any compact what new engage- ment if he were no farther tied by any decrees of the fociety, than he himself thought fit, tand did actually confent to This woulda be ftill as great a liberty, as he himself had before his compact, or any one elfe in the ftate vof nature hath, who may fubmit himself, and a confent to any acts of it if he thinks fit.dw

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§. 98. For if the confent of the majority fhall not, in reason, be received as the act of the whole, and conclude every individual; nothing but the confent of every individual can make any thing to be the act of the whole: but fuch a confent is next to impoffible ever to be had, if we confider the infirmities of health, and avocations of bufinefs, which in a num-ber, though much less than that of a common-wealth, will neceffarily keep many away from the public affembly. To which if we add the variety of opinions, and contrariety of interefts, which unavoidably happen in all collections of men, the coming into fociety upon fuch terms would be only like Cato's coming into the theatre, only to go out again. Such a conftitution as this would make the mighty Leviathan of a shorter duration, than the feebleft creatures, and not let it outlast the day it was born in which cannot be fuppofed, till we can think, that rational crea

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