All which distinct powers happening sometimes
together in the same man, if he be considered under these different
relations, it may help us to distinguish these powers one from
another, and show the difference betwixt a ruler of a commonwealth,
a father of a family, and a captain of a galley.
3. Political power, then, I take to be a right of making laws,
with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties for the
regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of
the community in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the
commonwealth from foreign injury, and all this only for the public
good.
Chapter II
Of the State of Nature
4. To understand political power aright, and derive it from its
original, we must consider what estate all men are naturally in, and
that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and
dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the
bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon
the will of any other man.
A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction
is reciprocal, no one having more than another, there being nothing
more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank,
promiscuously born to all the same advantages of Nature, and the use
of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another,
without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of
them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one
above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment,
an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.
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