Chapter X
Of the Forms of a Commonwealth
132. THE
majority having, as has been showed, upon men's first uniting into society, the
whole power of the community naturally in them, may employ all that power in
making laws for the community from time to time, and executing those laws by
officers of their own appointing, and then the form of the government is a
perfect democracy; or else may put the power of making laws into the hands of a
few select men, and their heirs or successors, and then it is an oligarchy; or
else into the hands of one man, and then it is a monarchy; if to him and his
heirs, it is a hereditary monarchy; if to him only for life, but upon his death
the power only of nominating a successor, to return to them, an elective
monarchy. And so accordingly of these make compounded and mixed forms of
government, as they think good. And if the legislative power be at first given
by the majority to one or more persons only for their lives, or any limited
time, and then the supreme power to revert to them again, when it is so reverted
the community may dispose of it again anew into what hands they please, and so
constitute a new form of government; for the form of government depending upon
the placing the supreme power, which is the legislative, it being impossible to
conceive that an inferior power should prescribe to a superior, or any but the
supreme make laws, according as the power of making laws is placed, such is the
form of the commonwealth.
133. By "commonwealth" I must be understood all along to
mean not a democracy, or any form of government, but any independent community
which the Latins signified by the word civitas, to which the word which best
answers in our language is "commonwealth," and most properly expresses such a
society of men which "community" does not (for there may be subordinate
communities in a government), and "city" much less. And therefore, to avoid
ambiguity, I crave leave to use the word "commonwealth" in that sense, in which
sense I find the word used by King James himself, which I think to be its
genuine signification, which, if anybody dislike, I consent with him to change
it for a better.
Chapter 11