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Locke, John

"Second Treatise Of Government"


(*At first, when some certain kind of regiment was once
approved, it may be nothing was then farther thought upon for the
manner of governing, but all permitted unto their wisdom and
discretion which were to rule, till by experience they found this
for all parts very inconvenient, so as the thing which they had
devised for a remedy, did indeed but increase the sore which it
should have cured. They saw, that to live by one man's will,
became the cause of all men's misery. This constrained them to
come unto laws wherein all men might see their duty before hand,
and know the penalties of transgressing them. Hooker's Eccl.
Pol. l. i. sect. 10.)
Sec. 112. Thus we may see how probable it is, that people
that were naturally free, and by their own consent either
submitted to the government of their father, or united together
out of different families to make a government, should generally
put the rule into one man's hands, and chuse to be under the
conduct of a single person, without so much as by express
conditions limiting or regulating his power, which they thought
safe enough in his honesty and prudence; though they never
dreamed of monarchy being lure Divino, which we never heard of
among mankind, till it was revealed to us by the divinity of this
last age; nor ever allowed paternal power to have a right to
dominion, or to be the foundation of all government.


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