Paternal power is only where minority
makes the child incapable to manage his property; political where
men have property in their own disposal; and despotical over such as
have no property at all.
Chapter XVI
Of Conquest
175. THOUGH governments can originally have no other rise than
that before mentioned, nor polities be founded on anything but the
consent of the people, yet such have been the disorders ambition has
filled the world with, that in the noise of war, which makes so
great a part of the history of mankind, this consent is little taken
notice of; and, therefore, many have mistaken the force of arms for
the consent of the people, and reckon conquest as one of the originals
of government. But conquest is as far from setting up any government
as demolishing a house is from building a new one in the place.
Indeed, it often makes way for a new frame of a commonwealth by
destroying the former; but, without the consent of the people, can
never erect a new one.
176. That the aggressor, who puts himself into the state of war with
another, and unjustly invades another man's right, can, by such an
unjust war, never come to have a right over the conquered, will be
easily agreed by all men, who will not think that robbers and
pirates have a right of empire over whomsoever they have force
enough to master, or that men are bound by promises which unlawful
force extorts from them.
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