XIX.
Of the Dissolution of Government.
Sec. 211. HE that will with any clearness speak of the
dissolution of government, ought in the first place to
distinguish between the dissolution of the society and the
dissolution of the government. That which makes the community,
and brings men out of the loose state of nature, into one politic
society, is the agreement which every one has with the rest to
incorporate, and act as one body, and so be one distinct common-
wealth. The usual, and almost only way whereby this union is
dissolved, is the inroad of foreign force mak
ing a conquest upon them: for in that case, (not being able to
maintain and support themselves, as one intire and independent
body) the union belonging to that body which consisted therein,
must necessarily cease, and so every one return to the state he
was in before, with a liberty to shift for himself, and provide
for his own safety, as he thinks fit, in some other society.
Whenever the society is dissolved, it is certain the government
of that society cannot remain. Thus conquerors swords often cut
up governments by the roots, and mangle societies to pieces,
separating the subdued or scattered multitude from the protection
of, and dependence on, that society which ought to have preserved
them from violence. The world is too well instructed in, and too
forward to allow of, this way of dissolving of governments, to
need any more to be said of it; and there wants not much argument
to prove, that where the society is dissolved, the government
cannot remain; that being as impossible, as for the frame of an
house to subsist when the materials of it are scattered and
dissipated by a whirl-wind, or jumbled into a confused heap by an
earthquake.
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