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40 lines
1.5 KiB
Plaintext
40 lines
1.5 KiB
Plaintext
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Nothing is to be accounted hostile force but where it leaves
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not the remedy of such an appeal [to the law], and it is such
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force alone that puts him that uses it into a state of war,
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and makes it lawful to resist him.
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A man with a sword in his hand demands my purse on the
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highway, when perhaps I have not 12 pennies in my pocket.
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This man I may lawfully kill.
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To another I deliver 100 pounds to hold only whilst I alight,
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which he refuses to restore to me when I am got up again,
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but draws his sword to defend the possession of it by force.
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I endeavour to retake it.
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The mischief this man does me is a hundred, or possibly
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a thousand times more than the other perhaps intended
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me (whom I killed before he really did me any); and yet
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I might lawfully kill the one and cannot so much as hurt
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the other lawfully.
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The reason whereof is plain to see; because the one using
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force which threatened my life, I could not have time to
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appeal to the law to secure it, and when it was gone it
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was too late to appeal.
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The law could not restore life to my dead carcass.
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The loss was irreparable; which to prevent, the law of
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Nature gave me a right to destroy him who had put himself
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into a state of war with me and threatened my destruction.
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But in the other case, my life not being in danger, I might
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have the benefit of appealing to the law, and have reparation
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for my 100 pounds in that way.
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-- John Locke, "An Essay Concerning the True Original Extent
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and End of Civil Government", Chapter 18 "Of Tyranny",
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#207, originally published in England, 1690.
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