after some interval of fruitless attempts, still brought us back 
again to our old legislative of king, lords and commons: and 
whatever provocations have made the crown be taken from some of 
our princes heads, they never carried the people so far as to 

place it in another line.

     Sec. 224.  But it will be said, this hypothesis lays a 
ferment for frequent rebellion.  To which I answer,

     First, No more than any other hypothesis: for when the 
people are made miserable, and find themselves exposed to the ill 
usage of arbitrary power, cry up their governors, as much as you 
will, for sons of Jupiter; let them be sacred and divine, 
descended, or authorized from heaven; give them out for whom or 
what you please, the same will happen.  The people generally ill 
treated, and contrary to right, will be ready upon any occasion 
to ease themselves of a burden that sits heavy upon them.  They 
will wish, and seek for the opportunity, which in the change, 
weakness and accidents of human affairs, seldom delays long to 
offer itself.  He must have lived but a little while in the 
world, who has not seen examples of this in his time; and he must 
have read very little, who cannot produce examples of it in all 
sorts of governments in the world.

     Sec. 225.  Secondly, I answer, such revolutions happen not 
upon every little mismanagement in public affairs.  Great 
mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, 
and all the slips of human frailty, will be born by the people 
without mutiny or murmur.  But if a long train of abuses, 
prevarications and artifices, all tending the same way, make the 
design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel what they 
lie under, and see whither they are going; it is not to be 
wondered, that they should then rouze themselves, and endeavour 
to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends 
for which government was at first erected; and without which, 
ancient names, and specious forms, are so far from being better, 
that they are much worse, than the state of nature, or pure 
anarchy; the inconveniencies being all as great and as near, but 
the remedy farther off and more difficult.

     Sec. 226.  Thirdly, I answer, that this doctrine of a power 
in the people of providing for their safety a-new, by a new 
legislative, when their legislators have acted contrary to their 
trust, by invading their property, is the best fence against 
rebellion, and the probablest means to hinder it: for rebellion 
being an opposition, not to persons, but authority, which is 
founded only in the constitutions and laws of the government; 
those, whoever they be, who by force break through, and by force 
justify their violation of them, are truly and properly rebels: 
for when men, by entering into society and civil-government, have 
excluded force, and introduced laws for the preservation of 
property, peace, and unity amongst themselves, those who set up 
force again in opposition to the laws, do rebellare, that is, 
bring back again the state of war, and are properly rebels: which 
they who are in power, (by the pretence they have to authority, 
the temptation of force they have in their hands, and the 
flattery of those about them) being likeliest to do; the 
properest way to prevent the evil, is to shew them the danger and 
injustice of it, who are under the greatest temptation to run 
into it.

     Sec. 227.  In both the fore-mentioned cases, when either the 
legislative is changed, or the legislators act contrary to the 
end for which they were constituted; those who are guilty are 
guilty of rebellion: for if any one by force takes away the 
established legislative of any society, and the laws by them 
made, pursuant to their trust, he thereby takes away the 
umpirage, which every one had consented to, for a peaceable 
decision of all their controversies, and a bar to the state of 
war amongst them.  They, who remove, or change the legislative, 
take away this decisive power, which no body can have, but by the 
appointment and consent of the people; and so destroying the 
authority which the people did, and no body else can set up, and 
introducing a power which the people hath not authorized, they 
actually introduce a state of war, which is that of force without 

authority: and thus, by removing the legislative established by 
the society, (in whose decisions the people acquiesced and 
united, as to that of their own will) they untie the knot, and 
expose the people a-new to the state of war, And if those, who by 
force take away the legislative, are rebels, the legislators 
themselves, as has been shewn, can be no less esteemed so; when 
they, who were set up for the protection, and preservation of the 
people, their liberties and properties, shall by force invade and 
endeavour to take them away; and so they putting themselves into 
a state of war with those who made them the protectors and 
guardians of their peace, are properly, and with the greatest 
aggravation, rebellantes, rebels.

     Sec. 228.  But if they, who say it lays a foundation for 
rebellion, mean that it may occasion civil wars, or intestine 
broils, to tell the people they are absolved from obedience when 
illegal attempts are made upon their liberties or properties, and 
may oppose the unlawful violence of those who were their 
magistrates, when they invade their properties contrary to the 
trust put in them; and that therefore this doctrine is not to be 
allowed, being so destructive to the peace of the world: they may 
as well say, upon the same ground, that honest men may not oppose 
robbers or pirates, because this may occasion disorder or