No man in civil society can be exempted from the laws of
it. For if any man may do what he thinks fit and there be no appeal on
earth for redress or security against any harm he shall do, I ask
whether he be not perfectly still in the state of Nature, and so can
be no part or member of that civil society, unless any one will say
the state of Nature and civil society are one and the same thing,
which I have never yet found any one so great a patron of anarchy as
to affirm.*(2)
* "At the first, when some certain kind of regimen was once
appointed, it may be that nothing was then further thought upon for
the manner of governing, but all permitted unto their wisdom and
discretion which were to rule till, by experience, they found this for
all parts very inconvenient, so as the thing which they had devised
for a remedy did indeed but increase the sore which it should have
cured. They saw that to live by one man's will became the cause of all
men's misery. This constrained them to come unto laws wherein all
men might see their duty beforehand, and know the penalties of
transgressing them." Hooker, Eccl. Pol. i. 10.
*(2) "Civil law, being the act of the whole body politic, doth
therefore overrule each several part of the same body.
Pages:
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97