For
all the power the government has, being only for the good of the
society, as it ought not to be arbitrary and at pleasure, so it
ought to be exercised by established and promulgated laws, that both
the people may know their duty, and be safe and secure within the
limits of the law, and the rulers, too, kept within their due
bounds, and not be tempted by the power they have in their hands to
employ it to purposes, and by such measures as they would not have
known, and own not willingly.
138. Thirdly, the supreme power cannot take from any man any part of
his property without his own consent. For the preservation of property
being the end of government, and that for which men enter into
society, it necessarily supposes and requires that the people should
have property, without which they must be supposed to lose that by
entering into society which was the end for which they entered into
it; too gross an absurdity for any man to own. Men, therefore, in
society having property, they have such a right to the goods, which by
the law of the community are theirs, that nobody hath a right to
take them, or any part of them, from them without their own consent;
without this they have no property at all.
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