Sect. 11. From these two distinct rights, the one of
punishing the crime for restraint, and preventing the like
offence, which right of punishing is in every body; the other of
taking reparation, which belongs only to the injured party,
comes it to pass that the magistrate, who by being magistrate
hath the common right of punishing put into his hands, can
often, where the public good demands not the execution of the
law, remit the punishment of criminal offences by his own
authority, but yet cannot remit the satisfaction due to any
private man for the damage he has received. That, he who has
suffered the damage has a right to demand in his own name, and he
alone can remit: the damnified person has this power of
appropriating to himself the goods or service of the offender,
by right of self-preservation, as every man has a power to
punish the crime, to prevent its being committed again, by the
right he has of preserving all mankind, and doing all reasonable
things he can in order to that end: and thus it is, that every
man, in the state of nature, has a power to kill a murderer, both
to deter others from doing the like injury, which no reparation
can compensate, by the example of the punishment that attends it
from every body, and also to secure men from the attempts of a
criminal, who having renounced reason, the common rule and
measure God hath given to mankind, hath, by the unjust violence
and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against
all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or a
tyger, one of those wild savage beasts, with whom men can have
no society nor security: and upon this is grounded that great law
of nature, Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be
shed.
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