rce of our
obedience to it. This interest I find to consist in the security and
protection, which we enjoy in political society, and which we can never
attain, when perfectly free and independent. As interest, therefore, is
the immediate sanction of government, the one can have no longer being
than the other; and whenever the civil magistrate carries his oppression
so far as to render his authority perfectly intolerable, we are no
longer bound to submit to it. The cause ceases; the effect must cease
also.

So far the conclusion is immediate and direct, concerning the natural
obligation which we have to allegiance. As to the moral obligation, we
may observe, that the maxim would here be false, that when the cause
ceases, the effect must cease also. For there is a principle of human
nature, which we have frequently taken notice of, that men are mightily
addicted to general rules, and that we often carry our maxims beyond
those reasons, which first induced us to establish them. Where cases
are similar in many circumstances, we are apt to put them on the same
footing, without considering, that they differ in the most material
circumstances, and that the resemblance is more apparent than real. It
may, therefore, be thought, that in the case of allegiance our moral
obligation of duty will not cease, even though the natural obligation of
interest, which is its cause, has ceased; and that men may be bound by
conscience to submit to a tyrannical government against their own and
the public interest. And indeed, to the force of this argument I so far
submit, as to acknowledge, that general rules commonly extend beyond
the principles, on which they are founded; and that we seldom make any
exception to them, unless that exception have the qualities of a general
rule, and be founded on very numerous and common instances. Now this I
assert to be entirely the present case. When men submit to the authority
of others, it is to procure themselves some security against the
wickedness and injustice of men, who are perpetually carried, by their
unruly passions, and by their present and immediate interest, to the
violation of all the laws of society. But as this imperfection is
inherent in human nature, we know that it must attend men in all their
states and conditions; and that these, whom we chuse for rulers, do not
immediately become of a superior nature to the rest of mankind, upon
account of their superior power and authority. What we ex