Sovereign power is attained either by acquisition or institution. By acquisition, when a man makes his children and their children, or a conqueror his enemies, to submit under fear of death. By institution, when men agree among themselves to submit to some man or assembly 'on confidence to be protected against all others.' Hobbes speaks (II. 17, end) as if there were two ways by which a commonwealth and a sovereign defined as above could be brought into existence, but clearly a sovereign by acquisition is not a sovereign in the sense explained. He does not 'carry a person of whose acts a great multitude by _mutual covenant_ one with another, have made themselves everyone the author, to the end he may use the strength and means of them all, as he shall think expedient, for their peace and common defence.' And what Hobbes describes in the sequel (c. 18) are, as he expressly says, rights of sovereigns by institution; but he seems tacitly to assume that every sovereign may claim the same, though he could hardly have supposed that the existing sovereignties were in their origin other than sovereignties by acquisition. 'A commonwealth is said to be instituted, when a multitude of men covenant, everyone with everyone, that to whatsoever man or assembly of men shall be given by the major part the right to represent the person of them all, everyone, as well he that voted for it as he that voted against it, shall authorise all the actions and judgments of that man or assembly of men, in the same manner as if they were his own, to the end to live peaceably amongst themselves, and to be protected against other men' (c. 18). Here a distinction is drawn between the covenant of all with all to be bound by the act of the majority in appointing a sovereign, and that act of appointment itself which is not a covenant of all with all. The natural conclusion would be that it was no violation of the covenant if the majority afterwards transferred the sovereign power to other hands. But in the sequel Hobbes expressly makes out such a transference to be a violation of the original compact. This is an instance of his desire to vindicate the absolute right of a _de facto_ monarch.