CHAP. XVIII.

Of TYRANNY.

Sec. 199. AS usurpation is the exercise of power, which
another hath a right to; so tyranny is the exercise of power
beyond right, which no body can have a right to. And this is
making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the
good of those who are under it, but for his own private separate
advantage. When the governor, however entitled, makes not the
law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and actions are not
directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but
the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or
any other irregular passion.
Sec. 200. If one can doubt this to be truth, or reason,
because it comes from the obscure hand of a subject, I hope the
authority of a king will make it pass with him. King James the
first, in his speech to the parliament, 1603, tells them thus, I
will ever prefer the weal of the public, and of the whole
commonwealth, in making of good laws and constitutions, to any
particular and private ends of mine; thinking ever the wealth and
weal of the commonwealth to be my greatest weal and worldly
felicity; a point wherein a lawful king doth directly differ from
a tyrant: for I do acknowledge, that the special and greatest
point of difference that is between a rightful king and an
usurping tyrant, is this, that whereas the proud and ambitious
tyrant doth think his kingdom and people are only ordained for
satisfaction of his desires and unreasonable appetites, the
righteous and just king doth by the contrary acknowledge himself
to be ordained for the procuring of the wealth and property of
his people, And again, in his speech to the parliament, 1609, he
hath these words, The king binds himself by a double oath, to the
observation of the fundamental laws of his kingdom; tacitly, as
by being a king, and so bound to protect as well the people, as
the laws of his kingdom; and expressly, by his oath at his
coronation, so as every just king, in a settled kingdom, is bound
to observe that paction made to his people, by his laws, in
framing his government agreeable thereunto, according to that
paction which God made with Noah after the deluge. Hereafter,
seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter,
and day and night, shall not cease while the earth remaineth.
And therefore a king governing in a settled kingdom, leaves to be
a king, and degenerates into a tyrant, as soon as he leaves off
to rule according to his laws, And a little after, Therefore all
kings that are not tyrants, or perjured, will be glad to bound
themselves within the limits of their laws; and they that
persuade them the contrary, are vipers, and pests both against
them and the commonwealth. Thus that learned king, who well
understood the notion of things, makes the difference betwixt a
king and a tyrant to consist only in this, that one makes the
laws the bounds of his power, and the good of the public, the end
of his government; the other makes all give way to his own will
and appetite.
Sec. 201. It is a mistake, to think this fault is proper
only to monarchies; other forms of government are liable to it,
as well as that: for wherever the power, that is put in any hands
for the government of the people, and the preservation of their
properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to
impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the arbitrary and irregular
commands of those that have it; there it presently becomes
tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many. Thus we
read of the thirty tyrants at Athens, as well as one at Syracuse;
and the intolerable dominion of the Decemviri at Rome was
nothing better.
Sec. 202. Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law
be transgressed to another's harm; and whosoever in authority
exceeds the power given him by the law, and makes use of the
force he has under his command, to compass that upon the subject,
which the law allows not, ceases in that to be a magistrate; and,
acting without authority, may be opposed, as any other man, who
by force invades the right of another. This is acknowledged in
subordinate magistrates. He that hath authority to seize my
person in the street, may be opposed as a thief and a robber, if
he endeavours to break into my house to execute a writ,
notwithstanding that I know he has such a warrant, and such a
legal authority, as will impower him to arrest me abroad. And
why this should not hold in the highest, as well as in the most
inferior magistrate, I would gladly be informed. Is it
reasonable, that the eldest brother, because he has the greatest
part of his father's estate, should thereby have a right to take
away any of his younger brothers portions? or that a rich man,
who possessed a whole country, should from thence have a right to
seize, when he pleased, the cottage and garden of his poor
neighbour? The being rightfully possessed of great power and
riches, exceedingly beyond the greatest part of the sons of Adam,
is so far from being an excuse, much less a reason, for rapine
and oppression, which the endamaging another without authority
is, that it is a great aggravation of it: for the exceeding the
bounds of authority is no more a right in a great, than in a
petty officer; no more justifiable in a king than a constable;
but is so much the worse in him, in that he has more trust put in
him, has already a much greater share than the rest of his
brethren, and is supposed, from the advantages of his education,
employment, and counsellors, to be more knowing in the measures
of right and wrong.
Sec. 203. May the commands then of a prince be opposed? may
he be resisted as often as any one shall find himself aggrieved,
and but imagine he has not right done him? This will unhinge and
overturn all polities, and, instead of government and order,
leave nothing but anarchy and confusion.
Sec. 204. To this I answer, that force is to be opposed to
nothing, but to unjust and unlawful force; whoever makes any
opposition in any other case, draws on himself a just
condemnation both from God and man; and so no such danger or
confusion will follow, as is often suggested: for,
Sec. 205. First, As, in some countries, the person of the
prince by the law is sacred; and so, whatever he commands or
does, his person is still free from all question or violence, not
liable to force, or any judicial censure or condemnation. But
yet opposition may be made to the illegal acts of any inferior
officer, or other commissioned by him; unless he will, by
actually putting himself into a state of war with his people,
dissolve the government, and leave them to that defence which
belongs to every one in the state of nature: for of such things
who can tell what the end will be? and a neighbour kingdom has
shewed the world an odd example. In all other cases the
sacredness of the person exempts him from all inconveniencies,
whereby he is secure, whilst the government stands, from all
violence and harm whatsoever; than which there cannot be a wiser
constitution: for the harm he can do in his own person not being
likely to happen often, nor to extend itself far; nor being able
by his single strength to subvert the laws, nor oppress the body
of the people, should any prince have so much weakness, and ill
nature as to be willing to do it, the inconveniency of some
particular mischiefs, that may happen sometimes, when a heady
prince comes to the throne, are well recompensed by the peace of
the public, and security of the government, in the person of the
chief magistrate, thus set out of the reach of danger: it being
safer for the body, that some few private men should be sometimes
in danger to suffer, than that the head of the republic should be
easily, and upon slight occasions, exposed.
Sec. 206. Secondly, But this privilege, belonging only to
the king's person, hinders not, but they may be questioned,
opposed, and resisted, who use unjust force, though they pretend
a commission from him, which the law authorizes not; as is plain
in the case of him that has the king's writ to arrest a man,
which is a full commission from the king; and yet he that has it
cannot break open a man's house to do it, nor execute this
command of the king upon certain days, nor in certain places,
though this commission have no such exception in it; but they are
the limitations of the law, which if any one transgress, the
king's commission excuses him not: for the king's authority being
given him only by the law, he cannot impower any one to act
against the law, or justify him, by his commission, in so doing;
the commission, or command of any magistrate, where he has no
authority, being as void and insignificant, as that of any
private man; the difference between the one and the other, being
that the magistrate has some authority so far, and to such ends,
and the private man has none at all: for it is not the
commission, but the authority, that gives the right of acting;
and against the laws there can be no authority. But,
notwithstanding such resistance, the king's person and authority
are still both secured, and so no danger to governor or
government,
Sec. 207. Thirdly, Supposing a government wherein the
person of the chief magistrate is not thus sacred; yet this
doctrine of the lawfulness of resisting all unlawful exercises of
his power, will not upon every slight occasion indanger him, or
imbroil the government: for where the injured party may be
relieved, and his damages repaired by appeal to the law, there
can be no pretence for force, which is only to be used where a
man is intercepted from appealing to the law: for nothing is to
be accounted hostile force, but where it leaves not the remedy of
such an appeal; and it is such force alone, that puts him that
uses it into a state of war, and makes it lawful to resist him.
A man with a sword in his hand demands my purse in the high-way,
when perhaps I have not twelve pence in my pocket: this man I may
lawfully kill. To another I deliver lool. to hold only whilst I
alight, which he refuses to restore me, when I am got up again,
but draws his sword to defend the possession of it by force, if I
endeavour to retake it. The mischief this man does me is a
hundred, or possibly a thousand times more than the other perhaps
intended me (whom I killed before he really did me any); and yet
I might lawfully kill the one, and cannot so much as hurt the
other lawfully. The reason whereof is plain; because the one
using force, which threatened my life, I could not have time to
appeal to the law to secure it: and when it was gone, it was too
late to appeal. The law could not restore life to my dead
carcass: the loss was irreparable; which to prevent, the law of
nature gave me a right to destroy him, who had put himself into a
state of war with me, and threatened my destruction. But in the
other case, my life not being in danger, I may have the benefit
of appealing to the law, and have reparation for my lool. that
way.
Sec. 208. Fourthly, But if the unlawful acts done by the
magistrate be maintained (by the power he has got), and the
remedy which is due by law, be by the same power obstructed; yet
the right of resisting, even in such manifest acts of tyranny,
will not suddenly, or on slight occasions, disturb the
government: for if it reach no farther than some private men's
cases, though they have a right to defend themselves, and to
recover by force what by unlawful force is taken from them; yet
the right to do so will not easily engage them in a contest,
wherein they are sure to perish; it being as impossible for one,
or a few oppressed men to disturb the government, where the body
of the people do not think themselves concerned in it, as for a
raving mad-man, or heady malcontent to overturn a well settled
state; the people being as little apt to follow the one, as the
other.
Sec. 209. But if either these illegal acts have extended to
the majority of the people; or if the mischief and oppression has
lighted only on some few, but in such cases, as the precedent,
and consequences seem to threaten all; and they are persuaded in
their consciences, that their laws, and with them their estates,
liberties, and lives are in danger, and perhaps their religion
too; how they will be hindered from resisting illegal force, used
against them, I cannot tell. This is an inconvenience, I
confess, that attends all governments whatsoever, when the
governors have brought it to this pass, to be generally suspected
of their people; the most dangerous state which they can possibly
put themselves in. wherein they are the less to be pitied,
because it is so easy to be avoided; it being as impossible for a
governor, if he really means the good of his people, and the
preservation of them, and their laws together, not to make them
see and feel it, as it is for the father of a family, not to let
his children see he loves, and takes care of them.
Sec. 210. But if all the world shall observe pretences of
one kind, and actions of another; arts used to elude the law, and
the trust of prerogative (which is an arbitrary power in some
things left in the prince's hand to do good, not harm to the
people) employed contrary to the end for which it was given: if
the people shall find the ministers and subordinate magistrates
chosen suitable to such ends, and favoured, or laid by,
proportionably as they promote or oppose them: if they see
several experiments made of arbitrary power, and that religion
underhand favoured, (tho' publicly proclaimed against) which is
readiest to introduce it; and the operators in it supported, as
much as may be; and when that cannot be done, yet approved still,
and liked the better: if a long train of actions shew the
councils all tending that way; how can a man any more hinder
himself from being persuaded in his own mind, which way things
are going; or from casting about how to save himself, than he
could from believing the captain of the ship he was in, was
carrying him, and the rest of the company, to Algiers, when he
found him always steering that course, though cross winds, leaks
in his ship, and want of men and provisions did often force him
to turn his course another way for some time, which he steadily
returned to again, as soon as the wind, weather, and other
circumstances would let him?