unity may be said in this respect to be always
the supreme power, but not as considered under any form of government,
because this power of the people can never take place till the
government be dissolved.

Sect. 150. In all cases, whilst the government subsists, the legislative
is the supreme power: for what can give laws to another, must needs be
superior to him; and since the legislative is no otherwise legislative
of the society, but by the right it has to make laws for all the parts,
and for every member of the society, prescribing rules to their actions,
and giving power of execution, where they are transgressed, the
legislative must needs be the supreme, and all other powers, in any
members or parts of the society, derived from and subordinate to it.

Sect. 151. In some commonwealths, where the legislative is not always in
being, and the executive is vested in a single person, who has also a
share in the legislative; there that single person in a very tolerable
sense may also be called supreme: not that he has in himself all the
supreme power, which is that of law-making; but because he has in him
the supreme execution, from whom all inferior magistrates derive all
their several subordinate powers, or at least the greatest part of them:
having also no legislative superior to him, there being no law to be
made without his consent, which cannot be expected should ever subject
him to the other part of the legislative, he is properly enough in this
sense supreme. But yet it is to be observed, that tho' oaths of
allegiance and fealty are taken to him, it is not to him as supreme
legislator, but as supreme executor of the law, made by a joint power of
him with others; allegiance being nothing but an obedience according to
law, which when he violates, he has no right to obedience, nor can claim
it otherwise than as the public person vested with the power of the law,
and so is to be considered as the image, phantom, or representative of
the common-wealth, acted by the will of the society, declared in its
laws; and thus he has no will, no power, but that of the law. But when
he quits this representation, this public will, and acts by his own
private will, he degrades himself, and is but a single private person
without power, and without will, that has any right to obedience; the
members owing no obedience but to the public will of the society.

Sect. 152. The executive power, placed any where but in a person that
has al