John
Locke: The Nature and Origin of
Tyranny
Concerning Civil
Government, Second Essay, Chap.
XVII
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.
Concerning Civil
Government, Second Essay, Chap.
XVIII
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
intitled, 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.
Concerning Civil
Government, Second Essay, Chap.
XIX
239. In these cases Barclay, the great champion
of absolute monarchy, is forced to allow, that a
king may be resisted, and ceases to be a king. That
is, in short, not to multiply cases, in whatsoever
he has no authority, there he is no king, and may
be resisted: for wheresoever the authority ceases,
the king ceases too, and becomes like other men who
have no authority. And these two cases he instances
in, differ little from those above mentioned, to be
destructive to governments, only that he has
omitted the principle from which his doctrine
flows: and that is, the breach of trust, in not
preserving the form of government agreed on, and in
not intending the end of government itself, which
is the public good and preservation of property.
When a king has dethroned himself, and put himself
in a state of war with his people, what shall
hinder them from prosecuting him who is no king, as
they would any other man, who has put himself into
a state of war with them, Barclay, and those of his
opinion, would do well to tell us. This farther I
desire may be taken notice of out of Barclay, that
he says, The mischief that is designed them, the
people may prevent before it be clone: whereby he
allows resistance when tyranny is but in
design. Such designs as these (says he) when any
king harbours in his thoughts and seriously
promotes, he immediately gives up all care and
thought of the commonwealth; so that, according to
him, the neglect of the public good is to be taken
as an evidence of such design, or at least for a
sufficient cause of resistance. And the reason of
all, he gives in these words, Because he betrayed
or forced his people, whose liberty he ought
carefully to have preserved. What he adds, into the
power and dominion of a foreign nation, signifies
nothing, the fault and forfeiture lying in the loss
of their liberty, which he ought to have preserved,
and not in any distinction of the persons to whose
dominion they were subjected. The peoples right is
equally invaded, and their liberty lost, whether
they are made slaves to any of their own, or a
foreign nation; and in this lies the injury, and
against this only have they the right of defence.
And there are instances to be found in all
countries, which shew, that it is not the change of
nations in the persons of their governors, but the
change of government, that gives the offence.
Bilson, a bishop of our church, and a great
stickler for the power and prerogative of princes,
does, if I mistake not, in his treatise of
Christian subjection, acknowledge, that princes may
forfeit their power, and their title to the
obedience of their subjects; and if there needed
authority in a case where reason is so plain, I
could send my reader to Bracton, Fortescue, and the
author of the Mirrour, and others, writers that
cannot be suspected to be ignorant of our
government, or enemies to it. But I thought Hooker
alone might be enough to satisfy those men, who
relying on him for their ecclesiastical polity, are
by a strange fate carried to deny those principles
upon which he builds it. Whether they are herein
made the tools of cunninger workmen, to pull down
their own fabric, they were best look. This I am
sure, their civil policy is so new, so dangerous,
and so destructive to both rulers and people, that
as former ages never could bear the broaching of
it; so it may be hoped, those to come, redeemed
from the impositions of these Egyptian
under-task-masters, will abhor the memory of such
servile flatterers, who, whilst it seemed to serve
their turn, resolved all government into absolute
tyranny, and would have all men born to,
what their mean souls fitted them for, slavery.
Tyranny
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