Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

express promise, because he is one whose power perhaps is not
considerable; yet if he live under their protection openly, he is
understood to submit himself to the government: but if he live there
secretly, he is liable to anything that may be done to a spy and enemy
of the state. I say not, he does any injustice (for acts of open
hostility bear not that name); but that he may be justly put to death.
Likewise, if a man, when his country is conquered, be out of it, he is
not conquered, nor subject: but if at his return he submit to the
government, he is bound to obey it. So that conquest, to define it, is
the acquiring of the right of sovereignty by victory. Which right is
acquired in the people's submission, by which they contract with the
victor, promising obedience, for life and liberty.
In the twenty-ninth Chapter I have set down for one of the causes of
the dissolutions of Commonwealths their imperfect generation,
consisting in the want of an absolute and arbitrary legislative power;
for want whereof, the civil sovereign is fain to handle the sword of
justice unconstantly, and as if it were too hot for him to hold: one
reason whereof (which I have not there mentioned) is this, that they
will all of them justify the war by which their power was at first
gotten, and whereon, as they think, their right dependeth, and not
on the possession. As if, for example, the right of the kings of
England did depend on the goodness of the cause of William the
Conqueror, and upon their lineal and directest descent from him; by
which means, there would perhaps be no tie of the subjects'
obedience to their sovereign at this day in all the world: wherein
whilst they needlessly think to justify themselves, they justify all
the successful rebellions that ambition shall at any time raise
against them and their successors. Therefore I put down for one of the
most effectual seeds of the death of any state, that the conquerors
require not only a submission of men's actions to them for the future,
but also an approbation of all their actions past; when there is
scarce a Commonwealth in the world whose beginnings can in
conscience be justified.
And because the name of tyranny signifieth nothing more nor less
than the name of sovereignty, be it in one or many men, saving that
they that use the former word are understood to be angry with them
they call tyrants; I think the toleration of a professed hatred of
tyranny is a toleration of hatred to Commonwealth in general, and
another evil seed, not differing much from the former. For to the
justification of the cause of a conqueror, the reproach of the cause
of the conquered is for the most part necessary: but neither of them
necessary for the obligation of the conquered. And thus much I have
thought fit to say upon the review of the first and second part of
this discourse.
In the thirty-fifth Chapter, I have sufficiently declared out of the
Scripture that in the Commonwealth of the Jews, God Himself was made
the Sovereign, by pact with the people; who were therefore called
His "peculiar people," to distinguish them from the rest of the world,
over whom God reigned, not by their consent, but by His own power: and
that in this kingdom Moses was God's lieutenant on earth; and that
it was he that told them what laws God appointed them to be ruled
by. But I have omitted to set down who were the officers appointed
to do execution; especially in capital punishments; not then
thinking it a matter of so necessary consideration as I find it since.
We know that generally in all Commonwealths, the execution of
corporeal punishments was either put upon the guards, or other
soldiers of the sovereign power, or given to those in whom want of