CHAPTER X
Of the Forms of a Common-wealth
Sec. 132. THE majority having, as has been shewed, upon
men's first uniting into society, the whole power of the
community naturally in them, may employ all that power in making
laws for the community from time to time, and executing those
laws by officers of their own appointing; and then the form of
the government is a perfect democracy: or else may put the power
of making laws into the hands of a few select men, and their
heirs or successors; and then it is an oligarchy: or else into
the hands of one man, and then it is a monarchy: if to him and
his heirs, it is an hereditary monarchy: if to him only for life,
but upon his death the power only of nominating a successor to
return to them; an elective monarchy. And so accordingly of
these the community may make compounded and mixed forms of
government, as they think good. And if the legislative power be
at first given by the majority to one or more persons only for
their lives, or any limited time, and then the supreme power to
revert to them again; when it is so reverted, the community may
dispose of it again anew into what hands they please, and so
constitute a new form of government: for the form of government
depending upon the placing the supreme power, which is the
legislative, it being impossible to conceive that an inferior
power should prescribe to a superior, or any but the supreme make
laws, according as the power of making laws is placed, such is
the form of the common-wealth.
Sec. 133. By common-wealth, I must be understood all along
to mean, not a democracy, or any form of government, but any
independent community, which the Latines signified by the word
civitas, to which the word which best answers in our language, is
common-wealth, and most properly expresses such a society of men,
which community or city in English does not; for there may be
subordinate communities in a government; and city amongst us has
a quite different notion from common-wealth: and therefore, to
avoid ambiguity, I crave leave to use the word common-wealth in
that sense, in which I find it used by king James the first; and
I take it to be its genuine signification; which if any body
dislike, I consent with him to change it for a better.
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