allows their own consent to
be necessary to give the conqueror a title to rule over them. It remains
only to be considered, whether promises extorted by force, without
right, can be thought consent, and how far they bind. To which I shall
say, they bind not at all; because whatsoever another gets from me by
force, I still retain the right of, and he is obliged presently to
restore. He that forces my horse from me, ought presently to restore
him, and I have still a right to retake him. By the same reason, he that
forced a promise from me, ought presently to restore it, i.e. quit me of
the obligation of it; or I may resume it myself, i.e. chuse whether I
will perform it: for the law of nature laying an obligation on me only
by the rules she prescribes, cannot oblige me by the violation of her
rules: such is the extorting any thing from me by force. Nor does it at
all alter the case to say, I gave my promise, no more than it excuses
the force, and passes the right, when I put my hand in my pocket, and
deliver my purse myself to a thief, who demands it with a pistol at my
breast.

Sect. 187. From all which it follows, that the government of a
conqueror, imposed by force on the subdued, against whom he had no right
of war, or who joined not in the war against him, where he had right,
has no obligation upon them.

Sect. 188. But let us suppose, that all the men of that community, being
all members of the same body politic, may be taken to have joined in
that unjust war wherein they are subdued, and so their lives are at the
mercy of the conqueror.

Sect. 189. I say this concerns not their children who are in their
minority: for since a father hath not, in himself, a power over the life
or liberty of his child, no act of his can possibly forfeit it. So that
the children, whatever may have happened to the fathers, are freemen,
and the absolute power of the conqueror reaches no farther than the
persons of the men that were subdued by him, and dies with them: and
should he govern them as slaves, subjected to his absolute arbitrary
power, he has no such right of dominion over their children. He can have
no power over them but by their own consent, whatever he may drive them
to say or do; and he has no lawfull authority, whilst force, and not
choice, compels them to submission.

Sect. 190. Every man is born with a double right: first, a right of
freedom to his person, which no other man has a power over, but the free
disposal