to revert to them again; when it is so reverted, the community may
dispose of it again anew into what hands they please, and so constitute
a new form of government: for the form of government depending upon the
placing the supreme power, which is the legislative, it being impossible
to conceive that an inferior power should prescribe to a superior, or
any but the supreme make laws, according as the power of making laws is
placed, such is the form of the common-wealth.

Sect. 133. By common-wealth, I must be understood all along to mean, not
a democracy, or any form of government, but any independent community,
which the Latines signified by the word civitas, to which the word which
best answers in our language, is common-wealth, and most properly
expresses such a society of men, which community or city in English does
not; for there may be subordinate communities in a government; and city
amongst us has a quite different notion from common-wealth: and
therefore, to avoid ambiguity, I crave leave to use the word
common-wealth in that sense, in which I find it used by king James the
first; and I take it to be its genuine signification; which if any body
dislike, I consent with him to change it for a better.

CHAPTER. XI.

OF THE EXTENT OF THE LEGISLATIVE POWER.

Sect. 134. THE great end of men's entering into society, being the
enjoyment of their properties in peace and safety, and the great
instrument and means of that being the laws established in that society;
the first and fundamental positive law of all commonwealths is the
establishing of the legislative power; as the first and fundamental
natural law, which is to govern even the legislative itself, is the
preservation of the society, and (as far as will consist with the public
good) of every person in it. This legislative is not only the supreme
power of the common-wealth, but sacred and unalterable in the hands
where the community have once placed it; nor can any edict of any body
else, in what form soever conceived, or by what power soever backed,
have the force and obligation of a law, which has not its sanction from
that legislative which the public has chosen and appointed: for without
this the law could not have that, which is absolutely necessary to its
being a law,* the consent of the society, over whom no body can have a
power to make laws, but by their own consent, and by authority received
from them; and therefore all the obedience, which by