Hobbes - Leviathan.pdf

dependent; that is to say, subordinate to some sovereign power, to
which every one, as also their representative, is subject.
Of systems subordinate, some are political, and some private.
Political (otherwise called bodies politic and persons in law) are
those which are made by authority from the sovereign power of the
Commonwealth. Private are those which are constituted by subjects
amongst themselves, or by authority from a stranger. For no
authority derived from foreign power, within the dominion of
another, is public there, but private.
And of private systems, some are lawful; some unlawful: lawful are
those which are allowed by the Commonwealth; all other are unlawful.
Irregular systems are those which, having no representative, consist
only in concourse of people; which if not forbidden by the
Commonwealth, nor made on evil design (such as are conflux of people
to markets, or shows, or any other harmless end), are lawful. But when
the intention is evil, or (if the number be considerable) unknown,
they are unlawful.
In bodies politic the power of the representative is always limited:
and that which prescribeth the limits thereof is the power
sovereign. For power unlimited is absolute sovereignty. And the
sovereign, in every Commonwealth, is the absolute representative of
all the subjects; and therefore no other can be representative of
any part of them, but so far forth as he shall give leave: and to give
leave to a body politic of subjects to have an absolute
representative, to all intents and purposes, were to abandon the
government of so much of the Commonwealth, and to divide the dominion,
contrary to their peace and defence, which the sovereign cannot be
understood to do, by any grant that does not plainly and directly
discharge them of their subjection. For consequences of words are
not the signs of his will, when other consequences are signs of the
contrary; but rather signs of error and misreckoning, to which all
mankind is too prone.
The bounds of that power which is given to the representative of a
body politic are to be taken notice of from two things. One is their
writ, or letters from the sovereign: the other is the law of the
Commonwealth.
For though in the institution or acquisition of a Commonwealth,
which is independent, there needs no writing, because the power of the
representative has there no other bounds but such as are set out by
the unwritten law of nature; yet in subordinate bodies, there are such
diversities of limitation necessary, concerning their businesses,
times, and places, as can neither be remembered without letters, nor
taken notice of, unless such letters be patent, that they may be
read to them, and withal sealed, or testified, with the seals or other
permanent signs of the authority sovereign.
And because such limitation is not always easy or perhaps possible
to be described in writing, the ordinary laws, common to all subjects,
must determine what the representative may lawfully do in all cases
where the letters themselves are silent. And therefore
In a body politic, if the representative be one man, whatsoever he
does in the person of the body which is not warranted in his
letters, nor by the laws, is his own act, and not the act of the body,
nor of any other member thereof besides himself: because further
than his letters or the laws limit, he representeth no man's person,
but his own. But what he does according to these is the act of every
one: for of the act of the sovereign every one is author, because he
is their representative unlimited; and the act of him that recedes not