139. But government, into whosesoever hands it is put, being as I
have before shown, entrusted with this condition, and for this end,
that men might have and secure their properties, the prince or senate,
however it may have power to make laws for the regulating of
property between the subjects one amongst another, yet can never
have a power to take to themselves the whole, or any part of the
subjects' property, without their own consent; for this would be in
effect to leave them no property at all. And to let us see that even
absolute power, where it is necessary, is not arbitrary by being
absolute, but is still limited by that reason and confined to those
ends which required it in some cases to be absolute, we need look no
farther than the common practice of martial discipline. For the
preservation of the army, and in it of the whole commonwealth,
requires an absolute obedience to the command of every superior
officer, and it is justly death to disobey or dispute the most
dangerous or unreasonable of them; but yet we see that neither the
sergeant that could command a soldier to march up to the mouth of a
cannon, or stand in a breach where he is almost sure to perish, can
command that soldier to give him one penny of his money; nor the
general that can condemn him to death for deserting his post, or not
obeying the most desperate orders, cannot yet with all his absolute
power of life and death dispose of one farthing of that soldier's
estate, or seize one jot of his goods; whom yet he can command
anything, and hang for the least disobedience.
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