Chapter XI
Of the Extent of the Legislative Power
134. THE great end of men's entering into society being the
enjoyment of their properties in peace and safety, and the great
instrument and means of that being the laws established in that
society, the first and fundamental positive law of all commonwealths
is the establishing of the legislative power, as the first and
fundamental natural law which is to govern even the legislative.
Itself is the preservation of the society and (as far as will
consist with the public good) of every person in it. This
legislative is not only the supreme power of the commonwealth, but
sacred and unalterable in the hands where the community have once
placed it. Nor can any edict of anybody else, in what form soever
conceived, or by what power soever backed, have the force and
obligation of a law which has not its sanction from that legislative
which the public has chosen and appointed; for without this the law
could not have that which is absolutely necessary to its being a
law, the consent of the society, over whom nobody can have a power
to make laws* but by their own consent and by authority received
from them; and therefore all the obedience, which by the most solemn
ties any one can be obliged to pay, ultimately terminates in this
supreme power, and is directed by those laws which it enacts.
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