207. Thirdly, Supposing a government wherein the
person of the chief magistrate is not thus sacred; yet this
doctrine of the lawfulness of resisting all unlawful exercises of
his power, will not upon every slight occasion indanger him, or
imbroil the government: for where the injured party may be
relieved, and his damages repaired by appeal to the law, there
can be no pretence for force, which is only to be used where a
man is intercepted from appealing to the law: for nothing is to
be accounted hostile force, but where it leaves not the remedy of
such an appeal; and it is such force alone, that puts him that
uses it into a state of war, and makes it lawful to resist him.
A man with a sword in his hand demands my purse in the high-way,
when perhaps I have not twelve pence in my pocket: this man I may
lawfully kill. To another I deliver lool. to hold only whilst I
alight, which he refuses to restore me, when I am got up again,
but draws his sword to defend the possession of it by force, if I
endeavour to retake it. The mischief this man does me is a
hundred, or possibly a thousand times more than the other perhaps
intended me (whom I killed before he really did me any); and yet
I might lawfully kill the one, and cannot so much as hurt the
other lawfully. The reason whereof is plain; because the one
using force, which threatened my life, I could not have time to
appeal to the law to secure it: and when it was gone, it was too
late to appeal.
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