Principles of western civilisation

492 WESTERN CIVILISATION EE eee as in the first and second particulars under the third Article ; also the certainty of a number for passing a law or preparatory debates, provided for in the fourth Article; the matter of the fifth Article, concerning the Council of State, and of the sixth, concerning the calling, sitting and ending of Representatives extraordinary ; also the power of Representatives to be, as in the eighth Article, and limited, as in the six reserves next following the same: likewise the second and third particulars under the ninth Article concerning religion, and the whole matter of the tenth Article ; all these we do account and declare to be fundamental to our common right, liberty, and safety ; and therefore do both agree thereunto, and resolve to maintain the same as God shall enable us. The rest of the matters in this Agreement we account to be useful and good for the public; and the particular circumstances of numbers, times, and places, expressed in the several Articles, we account not fundamental; but we find them necessary to be here determined, for the making the Agreement certain and practicable, and do hold these most convenient that are here set down; and therefore do positively agree thereunto. By the appointment of his Excellency the LordGeneral and his General Council of Officers.

JoHn RusHwortn, Sec.

7. Locke, ON THE EXTENT OF THE LEGISLATIVE POWER, 1690.

The great end of men’s entering into society being the enjoyment of their properties in peace and safety, and the great instrument and means of that being the laws established in that society, the first and fundamental positive law of all commonwealths is the establishing of the legislative power, as the first and fundamental natural law which is to govern even the legislative. Itself is the preservation of the society and (as far as will consist with the public good) of every person in it. This legislative is not only the supreme power of the commonwealth, but sacred and unalterable in the hands where the community have once placed it. Nor can any edict of anybody else, in what form soever conceived, or by what power soever backed, have the force and obligation of a law which has not its sanction from that legislative which the public has chosen and appointed ; for without this the law could not have that which is absolutely necessary to its being a law, the consent of the society, over whom nobody can have a power to make laws but by their own