Thus we
read of the thirty tyrants at Athens, as well as one at Syracuse;
and the intolerable dominion of the Decemviri at Rome was
nothing better.
Sec. 202. Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law
be transgressed to another's harm; and whosoever in authority
exceeds the power given him by the law, and makes use of the
force he has under his command, to compass that upon the subject,
which the law allows not, ceases in that to be a magistrate; and,
acting without authority, may be opposed, as any other man, who
by force invades the right of another. This is acknowledged in
subordinate magistrates. He that hath authority to seize my
person in the street, may be opposed as a thief and a robber, if
he endeavours to break into my house to execute a writ,
notwithstanding that I know he has such a warrant, and such a
legal authority, as will impower him to arrest me abroad. And
why this should not hold in the highest, as well as in the most
inferior magistrate, I would gladly be informed. Is it
reasonable, that the eldest brother, because he has the greatest
part of his father's estate, should thereby have a right to take
away any of his younger brothers portions? or that a rich man,
who possessed a whole country, should from thence have a right to
seize, when he pleased, the cottage and garden of his poor
neighbour? The being rightfully possessed of great power and
riches, exceedingly beyond the greatest part of the sons of Adam,
is so far from being an excuse, much less a reason, for rapine
and oppression, which the endamaging another without authority
is, that it is a great aggravation of it: for the exceeding the
bounds of authority is no more a right in a great, than in a
petty officer; no more justifiable in a king than a constable;
but is so much the worse in him, in that he has more trust put in
him, has already a much greater share than the rest of his
brethren, and is supposed, from the advantages of his education,
employment, and counsellors, to be more knowing in the measures
of right and wrong.
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