And he certainly can have
no absolute power over the whole family who has but a very limited one
over every individual in it. But how a family, or any other society of
men, differ from that which is properly political society, we shall
best see by considering wherein political society itself consists.
87. Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect
freedom and an uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges
of the law of Nature, equally with any other man, or number of men
in the world, hath by nature a power not only to preserve his
property- that is, his life, liberty, and estate, against the injuries
and attempts of other men, but to judge of and punish the breaches
of that law in others, as he is persuaded the offence deserves, even
with death itself, in crimes where the heinousness of the fact, in his
opinion, requires it. But because no political society can be, nor
subsist, without having in itself the power to preserve the
property, and in order thereunto punish the offences of all those of
that society, there, and there only, is political society where
every one of the members hath quitted this natural power, resigned
it up into the hands of the community in all cases that exclude him
not from appealing for protection to the law established by it.
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