And thus the community may be said in this respect to
be always the supreme power, but not as considered under any form
of government, because this power of the people can never take
place till the government be dissolved.
Sec. 150. In all cases, whilst the government subsists, the
legislative is the supreme power: for what can give laws to
another, must needs be superior to him; and since the legislative
is no otherwise legislative of the society, but by the right it
has to make laws for all the parts, and for every member of the
society, prescribing rules to their actions, and giving power of
execution, where they are transgressed, the legislative must
needs be the supreme, and all other powers, in any members or
parts of the society, derived from and subordinate to it.
Sec. 151. In some commonwealths, where the legislative is
not always in being, and the executive is vested in a single
person, who has also a share in the legislative; there that
single person in a very tolerable sense may also be called
supreme: not that he has in himself all the supreme power, which
is that of law-making; but because he has in him the supreme
execution, from whom all inferior magistrates derive all their
several subordinate powers, or at least the greatest part of
them: having also no legislative superior to him, there being no
law to be made without his consent, which cannot be expected
should ever subject him to the other part of the legislative, he
is properly enough in this sense supreme.
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