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Locke, John

"Second Treatise Of Government"


Sec. 181. Though in all war there be usually a complication
of force and damage, and the aggressor seldom fails to harm the
estate, when he uses force against the persons of those he makes
war upon; yet it is the use of force only that puts a man into
the state of war: for whether by force he begins the injury, or
else having quietly, and by fraud, done the injury, he refuses to
make reparation, and by force maintains it, (which is the same
thing, as at first to have done it by force) it is the unjust use
of force that makes the war: for he that breaks open my house,
and violently turns me out of doors; or having peaceably got in,
by force keeps me out, does in effect the same thing; supposing
we are in such a state, that we have no common judge on earth,
whom I may appeal to, and to whom we are both obliged to submit:
for of such I am now speaking. It is the unjust use of force
then, that puts a man into the state of war with another; and
thereby he that is guilty of it makes a forfeiture of his life:
for quitting reason, which is the rule given between man and man,
and using force, the way of beasts, he becomes liable to be
destroyed by him he uses force against, as any savage ravenous
beast, that is dangerous to his being.
Sec. 182. But because the miscarriages of the father are no
faults of the children, and they may be rational and peaceable,
notwithstanding the brutishness and injustice of the father; the
father, by his miscarriages and violence, can forfeit but his own
life, but involves not his children in his guilt or destruction.


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