What a civil person is.
10. But although every city be a civil person, yet every civil person is not a city; for it may happen that many citizens, by the permission of the city, may join together in one person, for the doing of certain things. These now will be civil persons; as the companies of merchants, and many other convents. But cities they are not, because they have not submitted themselves to the will of the company simply and in all things, but in certain things only determined by the city, and on such terms as it is lawful for any one of them to contend in judgment against the body itself of the sodality; which is by no means allowable to a citizen against the city. Such like societies, therefore, are civil persons subordinate to the city.
What it is to have the supreme power, what to be subject.
11. In every city, that man or council, to whose will each particular man hath subjected his will so as hath been declared, is said to have the supreme power, or chief command, or dominion. Which power and right of commanding, consists in this, that each citizen hath conveyed all his strength and power to that man or council; which to have done, because no man can transfer his power in a natural manner, is nothing else than to have parted with his right of resisting. Each citizen, as also every subordinate civil person, is called the subject of him who hath the chief command.
Two kinds of cities, natural, and by institution.
12. By what hath been said, it is sufficiently showed in what manner and by what degrees many natural persons, through desire of preserving themselves and by mutual fear, have grown together into a civil person, whom we have called a city. But they who submit themselves to another for fear, either submit to him whom they fear, or some other whom they confide in for protection. They act according to the first manner, who are vanquished in war, that they may not be slain; they according to the second, who are not yet overcome, that they may not be overcome. The first manner receives its beginning from natural power, and may be called the natural beginning of a city; the latter from the council and constitution of those who meet together, which is a beginning by institution. Hence it is that there are two kinds of cities; the one natural, such as the paternal and despotical; the other institutive, which may be also called political. In the first, the lord acquires to himself such citizens as he will; in the other, the citizens by their own wills appoint a lord over themselves, whether he be one man or one company of men, endued with the command in chief. But we will speak, in the first place, of a city political or by institution; and next, of a city natural.
CHAPTER VI.
OF THE RIGHT OF HIM, WHETHER COUNCIL OR ONE MAN
ONLY, WHO HATH THE SUPREME POWER IN THE CITY.
[1.] There can no right be attributed to a multitude out of civil society, nor any action to which they have not under seal consented. [2.] The right of the greater number consenting, is the beginning of a city. [3.] That every man retains a right to protect himself according to his own free will, so long as there is no sufficient regard had to his security. [4.] That a coercive power is necessary to secure us. [5.] What the sword of justice is. [6.] That the sword of justice belongs to him, who hath the chief command. [7.] That the sword of war belongs to him also. [8.] All judicature belongs to him too. [9.] The legislative power is his only. [10.] The naming of magistrates and other officers of the city belongs to him. [11] Also the examination of all doctrines. [12.] Whatsoever he doth is unpunishable. [13.] That the command his citizens have granted is absolute, and what proportion of obedience is due to him. [14.] That the laws of the city bind him not. [15.] That no man can challenge a propriety to anything against his will. [16.] By the laws of the city only we come to know what theft, murder, adultery, and injury is. [17.] The opinion of those who would constitute a city, where there should not be any one endued with an absolute power. [18.] The marks of supreme authority. [19.] If a city be compared with a man, he that hath the supreme power is in order to the city, as the human soul is in relation to the man. [20.] That the supreme command cannot by right be dissolved through their consents, by whose compacts it was first constituted.
There can no right be attributed to a multitude, considered out of civil society; nor any action, to which they have not given their particular consents.