What is Political Power?

Section 1. Permises

I have shown in the foregoing discourse that:

1. Adam had not any authority over his children, or dominion over the world either by:

• natural right of fatherhood, or
• positive donation from God

2. If Adam had parental authority then his heirs, yet, had no right to it

3. If his heirs had parental authority there is no law of nature nor positive law of God that determines which is the right heir in all cases.

And so the right of succession, and consequently of bearing rule, could not have been certainly determined

4. If even that had been determined, the knowledge of which is the eldest line of Adam’s posterity. It would so long since it was utterly lost.

In the races of mankind and families of the world, there remains not to one above another, the least pretence to be the eldest house, and to have the right of inheritance.

This means that it is impossible that the current rulers should get any authority from Adam’s private dominion and paternal jurisdiction as the fountain of all power.

so that he that will not give just occasion to think that all government in the world is the product only of force and violence, and that men live together by no other rules but that of beasts, where the strongest carries it, and so lay a foundation for perpetual disorder and mischief, tumult, sedition and rebellion, (things that the followers of that hypothesis so loudly cry out against) must of necessity find out another rise of government, another original of political power, and another way of designing and knowing the persons that have it, than what Sir Robert Filmer hath taught us.

Section 2. What is Political Power?

It is:

• the power of a MAGISTRATE over a subject.
• different from the power of:
  • a FATHER over his children
  • a MASTER over his servant
  • a HUSBAND over his wife
  • and a LORD over his slave

These distinct powers happen sometimes together in the same man.

These different relations help us distinguish the powers that are based on wealth, fatherhood, and leadership.

Section 3. POLITICAL POWER is a RIGHT of making laws with penalties for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community, in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the commonwealth from foreign injury all only for the public good.