of arbitrary
power, cry up their governors, as much as you will, for sons of Jupiter;
let them be sacred and divine, descended, or authorized from heaven;
give them out for whom or what you please, the same will happen. The
people generally ill treated, and contrary to right, will be ready upon
any occasion to ease themselves of a burden that sits heavy upon them.
They will wish, and seek for the opportunity, which in the change,
weakness and accidents of human affairs, seldom delays long to offer
itself. He must have lived but a little while in the world, who has not
seen examples of this in his time; and he must have read very little,
who cannot produce examples of it in all sorts of governments in the
world.

Sect. 225. Secondly, I answer, such revolutions happen not upon every
little mismanagement in public affairs. Great mistakes in the ruling
part, many wrong and inconvenient laws, and all the slips of human
frailty, will be born by the people without mutiny or murmur. But if a
long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the same
way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel
what they lie under, and see whither they are going; it is not to be
wondered, that they should then rouze themselves, and endeavour to put
the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which
government was at first erected; and without which, ancient names, and
specious forms, are so far from being better, that they are much worse,
than the state of nature, or pure anarchy; the inconveniencies being all
as great and as near, but the remedy farther off and more difficult.

Sect. 226. Thirdly, I answer, that this doctrine of a power in the
people of providing for their safety a-new, by a new legislative, when
their legislators have acted contrary to their trust, by invading their
property, is the best fence against rebellion, and the probablest means
to hinder it: for rebellion being an opposition, not to persons, but
authority, which is founded only in the constitutions and laws of the
government; those, whoever they be, who by force break through, and by
force justify their violation of them, are truly and properly rebels:
for when men, by entering into society and civil-government, have
excluded force, and introduced laws for the preservation of property,
peace, and unity amongst themselves, those who set up force again in
opposition to the laws, do rebellare, that is, bring back