They are ready to tell you, that it deserves death
only to ask after safety. Betwixt subject and subject, they will
grant, there must be measures, laws and judges, for their mutual
peace and security: but as for the ruler, he ought to be
absolute, and is above all such circumstances; because he has
power to do more hurt and wrong, it is right when he does it. To
ask how you may be guarded from harm, or injury, on that side
where the strongest hand is to do it, is presently the voice of
faction and rebellion: as if when men quitting the state of
nature entered into society, they agreed that all of them but
one, should be under the restraint of laws, but that he should
still retain all the liberty of the state of nature, increased
with power, and made licentious by impunity. This is to think,
that men are so foolish, that they take care to avoid what
mischiefs may be done them by pole-cats, or foxes; but are
content, nay, think it safety, to be devoured by lions.
Sec. 94. But whatever flatterers may talk to amuse people's
understandings, it hinders not men from feeling; and when they
perceive, that any man, in what station soever, is out of the
bounds of the civil society which they are of, and that they have
no appeal on earth against any harm, they may receive from him,
they are apt to think themselves in the state of nature, in
respect of him whom they find to be so; and to take care, as soon
as they can, to have that safety and security in civil society,
for which it was first instituted, and for which only they
entered into it.
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