By what acts a monarchy is framed.
11. As an aristocracy, so also a monarchy is derived from the power of the people, transferring its right, that is, its authority on one man. Here also we must understand, that some one man, either by name or some other token, is propounded to be taken notice of above all the rest; and that by a plurality of voices the whole right of the people is conveyed on him; insomuch as whatsoever the people could do before he were elected, the same in every respect may he by right now do, being elected. Which being done, the people is no longer one person, but a rude multitude, as being only one before by virtue of the supreme command, whereof they now have made a conveyance from themselves on this one man.
That the monarch is by compact obliged to none for the authority he hath received.
12. And therefore neither doth the monarch oblige himself to any for the command he receives. For he receives it from the people; but as hath been shewed above, the people, as soon as that act is done, ceaseth to be a person; but the person vanishing, obligation to the person vanisheth. The subjects therefore are tied to perform obedience to the monarch, by those compacts only by which they mutually obliged themselves to the observation of all that the people should command them, that is, to obey that monarch, if he were made by the people.
A monarch is ever in the readier capacity to exercise all those acts which are requisite to well governing.
13. But a monarchy differs as well from an aristocracy as a democracy, in this chiefly; that in those there must be certain set times and places for deliberation and consultation of affairs, that is, for the actual exercise of it in all times and places. For the people or the nobles not being one natural person, must necessarily have their meetings. The monarch, who is one by nature, is always in a present capacity to execute his authority.
What kind of sin that is, and what sort of men are guilty of it, when the city performs not its office to the citizens, nor the citizens towards the city.
14. Because we have declared above, (in art. [7], [9], [12]), that they who have gotten the supreme command, are by no compacts obliged to any man, it necessarily follows, that they can do no injury to the subjects. For injury, according to the definition made in chap. III. [art. 3], is nothing else but a breach of contract; and therefore where no contracts have part, there can be no injury. Yet the people, the nobles, and the monarch may diverse ways transgress against the other laws of nature, as by cruelty, iniquity, contumely, and other like vices, which come not under this strict and exact notion of injury. But if the subject yield not obedience to the supreme, he will in propriety of speech be said to be injurious, as well to his fellow-subjects, because each man hath compacted with the other to obey; as to his chief ruler, in resuming that right which he hath given him, without his consent. And in a democracy or aristocracy, if anything be decreed against any law of nature, the city itself, that is, the civil person sins not, but those subjects only by whose votes it was decreed; for sin is a consequence of the natural express will, not of the political, which is artificial. For if it were otherwise, they would be guilty by whom the decree was absolutely disliked. But in a monarchy, if the monarch make any decree against the laws of nature, he sins himself; because in him the civil will and the natural are all one.
A monarch made without limitation of time, may elect his successors.
15. The people who are about to make a monarch, may give him the supremacy either simply without limitation of time, or for a certain season and time determined. If simply, we must understand that he who receives it, hath the self-same power which they had who gave it. On the same grounds, therefore, that the people by right could make him a monarch[monarch], may he make another monarch. Insomuch as the monarch to whom the command is simply given, receives a right not of possession only, but of succession also; so as he may declare whom he pleaseth for his successor.