150. In all cases whilst the government subsists, the legislative is
the supreme power. For what can give laws to another must needs be
superior to him, and since the legislative is no otherwise legislative
of the society but by the right it has to make laws for all the parts,
and every member of the society prescribing rules to their actions,
they are transgressed, the legislative must needs be the supreme,
and all other powers in any members or parts of the society derived
from and subordinate to it.
151. In some commonwealths where the legislative is not always in
being, and the executive is vested in a single person who has also a
share in the legislative, there that single person, in a very
tolerable sense, may also be called supreme; not that he has in
himself all the supreme power, which is that of law-making, but
because he has in him the supreme execution from whom all inferior
magistrates derive all their several subordinate powers, or, at least,
the greatest part of them; having also no legislative superior to him,
there being no law to be made without his consent, which cannot be
expected should ever subject him to the other part of the legislative,
he is properly enough in this sense supreme.
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