HAVING spoken of the generation,form,and power of a Commonwealth,I am in order to speak next of the parts thereof.And first of systems,which resemble the similar parts or muscles of a body natural.By systems,I understand any numbers of men joined in one interest or one business.Of which some are regular,and some irregular.Regular are those where one man,or assembly of men,is constituted representative of the whole number.All other are irregular.
Of regular,some are absolute and independent,subject to none but their own representative:such are only Commonwealths,of which I have spoken already in the five last precedent chapters.Others are 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 from the letters of the sovereign is the act of the sovereign,and therefore every member of the body is author of it.
But if the representative be an assembly,whatsoever that assembly shall decree,not warranted by their letters or the laws,is the act of the assembly,or body politic,and the act of every one by whose vote the decree was made;but not the act of any man that being present voted to the contrary;nor of any man absent,unless he voted it by procreation.It is the act of the assembly because voted by the major part;and if it be a crime,the assembly may be punished,as far forth as it is capable,as by dissolution,or forfeiture of their letters (which is to such artificial and fictitious bodies,capital)or,if the assembly have a common stock,wherein none of the innocent members have propriety,by pecuniary mulct.For from corporal penalties nature hath bodies politic.But they that gave not their vote are therefore innocent,because the assembly cannot represent any man in things unwarranted by their letters,and consequently are not involved in their votes.
If the person of the body politic,being in one man,borrow money of a stranger,that is,of one that is not of the same body (for no letters need limit borrowing,seeing it is left to men's own inclinations to limit lending),the debt is the representative's.