CHAP. XVII.

Of USURPATION.

Sec. 197. AS conquest may be called a foreign usurpation,
so usurpation is a kind of domestic conquest, with this
difference, that an usurper can never have right on his side, it
being no usurpation, but where one is got into the possession of
what another has right to. This, so far as it is usurpation, is
a change only of persons, but not of the forms and rules of the
government: for if the usurper extend his power beyond what of
right belonged to the lawful princes, or governors of the
commonwealth, it is tyranny added to usurpation.
Sec. 198. In all lawful governments, the designation of the
persons, who are to bear rule, is as natural and necessary a part
as the form of the government itself, and is that which had its
establishment originally from the people; the anarchy being much
alike, to have no form of government at all; or to agree, that it
shall be monarchical, but to appoint no way to design the person
that shall have the power, and be the monarch. Hence all
commonwealths, with the form of government established, have
rules also of appointing those who are to have any share in the
public authority, and settled methods of conveying the right to
them: for the anarchy is much alike, to have no form of
government at all; or to agree that it shall be monarchical, but
to appoint no way to know or design the person that shall have
the power, and be the monarch. Whoever gets into the exercise of
any part of the power, by other ways than what the laws of the
community have prescribed, hath no right to be obeyed, though the
form of the commonwealth be still preserved; since he is not the
person the laws have appointed, and consequently not the person
the people have consented to. Nor can such an usurper, or any
deriving from him, ever have a title, till the people are both at
liberty to consent, and have actually consented to allow, and
confirm in him the power he hath till then usurped.