orfeit: his life is at the victor's mercy; and his service and goods he
may appropriate, to make himself reparation; but he cannot take the
goods of his wife and children; they too had a title to the goods he
enjoyed, and their shares in the estate he possessed: for example, I in
the state of nature (and all commonwealths are in the state of nature
one with another) have injured another man, and refusing to give
satisfaction, it comes to a state of war, wherein my defending by force
what I had gotten unjustly, makes me the aggressor. I am conquered: my
life, it is true, as forfeit, is at mercy, but not my wife's and
children's. They made not the war, nor assisted in it. I could not
forfeit their lives; they were not mine to forfeit. My wife had a share
in my estate; that neither could I forfeit. And my children also, being
born of me, had a right to be maintained out of my labour or substance.
Here then is the case: the conqueror has a title to reparation for
damages received, and the children have a title to their father's estate
for their subsistence: for as to the wife's share, whether her own
labour, or compact, gave her a title to it, it is plain, her husband
could not forfeit what was her's. What must be done in the case? I
answer; the fundamental law of nature being, that all, as much as may
be, should be preserved, it follows, that if there be not enough fully
to satisfy both, viz, for the conqueror's losses, and children's
maintenance, he that hath, and to spare, must remit something of his
full satisfaction, and give way to the pressing and preferable title of
those who are in danger to perish without it.

Sect. 184. But supposing the charge and damages of the war are to be
made up to the conqueror, to the utmost farthing; and that the children
of the vanquished, spoiled of all their father's goods, are to be left
to starve and perish; yet the satisfying of what shall, on this score,
be due to the conqueror, will scarce give him a title to any country he
shall conquer: for the damages of war can scarce amount to the value of
any considerable tract of land, in any part of the world, where all the
land is possessed, and none lies waste. And if I have not taken away the
conqueror's land, which, being vanquished, it is impossible I should;
scarce any other spoil I have done him can amount to the value of mine,
supposing it equally cultivated, and of an extent any way coming near
what I had overrun of his. The destr