Where there is no longer the administration of justice for
the securing of men's rights, nor any remaining power within the
community to direct the force, or provide for the necessities of the
public, there certainly is no government left. Where the laws cannot
be executed it is all one as if there were no laws, and a government
without laws is, I suppose, a mystery in politics inconceivable to
human capacity, and inconsistent with human society.
220. In these, and the like cases, when the government is dissolved,
the people are at liberty to provide for themselves by erecting a
new legislative differing from the other by the change of persons,
or form, or both, as they shall find it most for their safety and
good. For the society can never, by the fault of another, lose the
native and original right it has to preserve itself, which can only be
done by a settled legislative and a fair and impartial execution of
the laws made by it. But the state of mankind is not so miserable that
they are not capable of using this remedy till it be too late to
look for any. To tell people they may provide for themselves by
erecting a new legislative, when, by oppression, artifice, or being
delivered over to a foreign power, their old one is gone, is only to
tell them they may expect relief when it is too late, and the evil
is past cure.
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