So that the children, whatever may have
happened to the fathers, are freemen, and the absolute power of
the conqueror reaches no farther than the persons of the men that
were subdued by him, and dies with them: and should he govern
them as slaves, subjected to his absolute arbitrary power, he has
no such right of dominion over their children. He can have no
power over them but by their own consent, whatever he may drive
them to say or do; and he has no lawfull authority, whilst force,
and not choice, compels them to submission.
Sec. 190. Every man is born with a double right: first, a
right of freedom to his person, which no other man has a power
over, but the free disposal of it lies in himself. Secondly, a
right, before any other man, to inherit with his brethren his
father's goods.
Sec. 191. By the first of these, a man is naturally free
from subjection to any government, tho' he be born in a place
under its jurisdiction; but if he disclaim the lawful government
of the country he was born in, he must also quit the right that
belonged to him by the laws of it, and the possessions there
descending to him from his ancestors, if it were a government
made by their consent.
Sec. 192. By the second, the inhabitants of any country,
who are descended, and derive a title to their estates from those
who are subdued, and had a government forced upon them against
their free consents, retain a right to the possession of their
ancestors, though they consent not freely to the government,
whose hard conditions were by force imposed on the possessors of
that country: for the first conqueror never having had a title to
the land of that country, the people who are the descendants of,
or claim under those who were forced to submit to the yoke of a
government by constraint, have always a right to shake it off,
and free themselves from the usurpation or tyranny which the
sword hath brought in upon them, till their rulers put them under
such a frame of government as they willingly and of choice
consent to.
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