verish, harass, or subdue them to the
arbitrary and irregular commands of those that have it; there it
presently becomes tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or
many. Thus we read of the thirty tyrants at Athens, as well as one at
Syracuse; and the intolerable dominion of the Decemviri at Rome was
nothing better.

Sect. 202. Where-ever law ends, tyranny begins, if the law be
transgressed to another's harm; and whosoever in authority exceeds the
power given him by the law, and makes use of the force he has under his
command, to compass that upon the subject, which the law allows not,
ceases in that to be a magistrate; and, acting without authority, may be
opposed, as any other man, who by force invades the right of another.
This is acknowledged in subordinate magistrates. He that hath authority
to seize my person in the street, may be opposed as a thief and a
robber, if he endeavours to break into my house to execute a writ,
notwithstanding that I know he has such a warrant, and such a legal
authority, as will impower him to arrest me abroad. And why this should
not hold in the highest, as well as in the most inferior magistrate, I
would gladly be informed. Is it reasonable, that the eldest brother,
because he has the greatest part of his father's estate, should thereby
have a right to take away any of his younger brothers portions? or that
a rich man, who possessed a whole country, should from thence have a
right to seize, when he pleased, the cottage and garden of his poor
neighbour? The being rightfully possessed of great power and riches,
exceedingly beyond the greatest part of the sons of Adam, is so far from
being an excuse, much less a reason, for rapine and oppression, which
the endamaging another without authority is, that it is a great
aggravation of it: for the exceeding the bounds of authority is no more
a right in a great, than in a petty officer; no more justifiable in a
king than a constable; but is so much the worse in him, in that he has
more trust put in him, has already a much greater share than the rest of
his brethren, and is supposed, from the advantages of his education,
employment, and counsellors, to be more knowing in the measures of right
and wrong.

Sect. 203. May the commands then of a prince be opposed? may he be
resisted as often as any one shall find himself aggrieved, and but
imagine he has not right done him? This will unhinge and overturn all
polities, and, instead of gover