If then all dominion of man over man is the effect of the
divine disposition, it is bound by the eternal laws of Him that gave it,
with which no human authority can dispense; neither he that exercises
it, nor even those who are subject to it. And if they were mad enough to
make an express compact that should release their magistrate from his
duty, and should declare their lives, liberties, and properties
dependent upon, not rules and laws, but his mere capricious will, that
covenant would be void.
This arbitrary power is not to be had by conquest. Nor can any
sovereign have it by succession; for no man can succeed to fraud,
rapine, and violence. Those who give and those who receive arbitrary
power are alike criminal; and there is no man but is bound to resist it
to the best of his power, wherever it shall show its face to the world.
Law and arbitrary power are in eternal enmity. Name me a magistrate, and
I will name property; name me power, and I will name protection. It is a
contradiction in terms; it is blasphemy in religion, it is wickedness in
politics, to say that any man can have arbitrary power.
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