CHAP. XVIII.
Of TYRANNY.
Sec. 199. AS usurpation is the exercise of power, which
another hath a right to; so tyranny is the exercise of power
beyond right, which no body can have a right to. And this is
making use of the power any one has in his hands, not for the
good of those who are under it, but for his own private separate
advantage. When the governor, however intitled, makes not the
law, but his will, the rule; and his commands and actions are not
directed to the preservation of the properties of his people, but
the satisfaction of his own ambition, revenge, covetousness, or
any other irregular passion.
Sec. 200. If one can doubt this to be truth, or reason,
because it comes from the obscure hand of a subject, I hope the
authority of a king will make it pass with him. King James the
first, in his speech to the parliament, 1603, tells them thus, I
will ever prefer the weal of the public, and of the whole
commonwealth, in making of good laws and constitutions, to any
particular and private ends of mine; thinking ever the wealth and
weal of the commonwealth to be my greatest weal and worldly
felicity; a point wherein a lawful king doth directly differ from
a tyrant: for I do acknowledge, that the special and greatest
point of difference that is between a rightful king and an
usurping tyrant, is this, that whereas the proud and ambitious
tyrant doth think his kingdom and people are only ordained for
satisfaction of his desires and unreasonable appetites, the
righteous and just king doth by the contrary acknowledge himself
to be ordained for the procuring of the wealth and property of
his people, And again, in his speech to the parliament, 1609, he
hath these words, The king binds himself by a double oath, to the
observation of the fundamental laws of his kingdom; tacitly, as
by being a king, and so bound to protect as well the people, as
the laws of his kingdom; and expressly, by his oath at his
coronation, so as every just king, in a settled kingdom, is bound
to observe that paction made to his people, by his laws, in
framing his government agreeable thereunto, according to that
paction which God made with Noah after the deluge.
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