ong suspicions of
the evil intention of their governors, who is to be blamed for it? Who
can help it, if they, who might avoid it, bring themselves into this
suspicion? Are the people to be blamed, if they have the sense of
rational creatures, and can think of things no otherwise than as they
find and feel them? And is it not rather their fault, who put things
into such a posture, that they would not have them thought to be as they
are? I grant, that the pride, ambition, and turbulency of private men
have sometimes caused great disorders in commonwealths, and factions
have been fatal to states and kingdoms. But whether the mischief hath
oftener begun in the peoples wantonness, and a desire to cast off the
lawful authority of their rulers, or in the rulers insolence, and
endeavours to get and exercise an arbitrary power over their people;
whether oppression, or disobedience, gave the first rise to the
disorder, I leave it to impartial history to determine. This I am sure,
whoever, either ruler or subject, by force goes about to invade the
rights of either prince or people, and lays the foundation for
overturning the constitution and frame of any just government, is highly
guilty of the greatest crime, I think, a man is capable of, being to
answer for all those mischiefs of blood, rapine, and desolation, which
the breaking to pieces of governments bring on a country. And he who
does it, is justly to be esteemed the common enemy and pest of mankind,
and is to be treated accordingly.

Sect. 231. That subjects or foreigners, attempting by force on the
properties of any people, may be resisted with force, is agreed on all
hands. But that magistrates, doing the same thing, may be resisted, hath
of late been denied: as if those who had the greatest privileges and
advantages by the law, had thereby a power to break those laws, by which
alone they were set in a better place than their brethren: whereas their
offence is thereby the greater, both as being ungrateful for the greater
share they have by the law, and breaking also that trust, which is put
into their hands by their brethren.

Sect. 232. Whosoever uses force without right, as every one does in
society, who does it without law, puts himself into a state of war with
those against whom he so uses it; and in that state all former ties are
cancelled, all other rights cease, and every one has a right to defend
himself, and to resist the aggressor. This is so evident, that Bar