Chapter XIV
Of Prerogative
159. WHERE the legislative and executive power are in distinct
hands, as they are in all moderated monarchies and well-framed
governments, there the good of the society requires that several
things should be left to the discretion of him that has the
executive power. For the legislators not being able to foresee and
provide by laws for all that may be useful to the community, the
executor of the laws, having the power in his hands, has by the common
law of Nature a right to make use of it for the good of the society,
in many cases where the municipal law has given no direction, till the
legislative can conveniently be assembled to provide for it; nay, many
things there are which the law can by no means provide for, and
those must necessarily be left to the discretion of him that has the
executive power in his hands, to be ordered by him as the public
good and advantage shall require; nay, it is fit that the laws
themselves should in some cases give way to the executive power, or
rather to this fundamental law of Nature and government- viz., that as
much as may be all the members of the society are to be preserved.
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