1690
Sect. 197. AS conquest may be called a
foreign usurpation, so usurpation is a kind of domestic conquest,
with this difference, that an usurper can never have right on his side, it
being no usurpation, but where one is got into the
possession of what another has right to. This, so far as it is usurpation,
is a change only of persons, but not of the forms and rules of the
government: for if the usurper extend his power beyond what of right
belonged to the lawful princes, or governors of the commonwealth, it is tyranny
added to usurpation.
Sect. 198. In all lawful governments, the
designation of the persons, who are to bear rule, is as natural and
necessary a part as the form of the government itself, and is that which
had its establishment originally from the people; the anarchy being much
alike, to have no form of government at all; or to agree, that it shall be
monarchical, but to appoint no way to design the person that shall have
the power, and be the monarch. Hence all commonwealths, with the form of
government established, have rules also of appointing those who are to
have any share in the public authority, and settled methods of conveying
the right to them: for the anarchy is much alike, to have no form of
government at all; or to agree that it shall be monarchical, but to
appoint no way to know or design the person that shall have the power, and
be the monarch. Whoever gets into the exercise of any part of the power,
by other ways than what the laws of the community have prescribed, hath no
right to be obeyed, though the form of the commonwealth be still
preserved; since he is not the person the laws have appointed, and
consequently not the person the people have consented to. Nor can such an usurper,
or any deriving from him, ever have a title, till the people are both at
liberty to consent, and have actually consented to allow, and confirm in
him the power he hath till then usurped.