9. A servant is by the same manner freed from his servitude, that a subject in an institutive government is freed from his subjection. First, if his lord enfranchise him; for the right which the servant transferred to his lord over himself, the same may the lord restore to the servant again. And this manner of bestowing of liberty is called _manumission_; which is just as if a city should permit a citizen to convey himself under the jurisdiction of some other city. Secondly, if the lord cast off his servant from him; which in a city is _banishment_; neither differs it from _manumission_ in effect, but in manner only. For there, liberty is granted as a favour, here, as a punishment: in both, the dominion is renounced. Thirdly, if the servant be taken prisoner, the old servitude is abolished by the new; for as all other things, so servants also are acquired by war, whom in equity the lord must protect, if he will have them to be his. Fourthly, the servant is freed for want of knowledge of a successor, the lord dying (suppose) without any testament or heir. For no man is understood to be obliged, unless he know to whom he is to perform the obligation. Lastly, the servant that is put in bonds, or by any other means deprived of his corporal liberty, is freed from that other obligation of contract. For there can be no contract where there is no trust, nor can that faith be broken which is not given. But the _lord_ who himself serves another, cannot so free his _servants_, but that they must still continue under the power of the supreme; for, as hath been shewed before, such servants are not his, but the supreme lord’s. [Sidenote: The dominion over beasts is by the right of nature.] 10. We get a right over irrational creatures, in the same manner that we do over the persons of men; to wit, by force and natural strength. For if in the state of nature it is lawful for every one, by reason of that war which is of all against all, to subdue and also to kill men as oft as it shall seem to conduce unto their good; much more will the same be lawful against brutes; namely, at their own discretion to reduce those to servitude, which by art may be tamed and fitted for use, and to persecute and destroy the rest by a perpetual war as dangerous and noxious. Our dominion therefore over beasts, hath its original from the _right of nature_, not from _divine positive right_. For if such a right had not been before the publishing of the Sacred Scriptures, no man by right might have killed a beast for his food, but he to whom the divine pleasure was made manifest by holy writ; a most hard condition for men indeed, whom the beasts might devour without injury, and yet they might not destroy them. Forasmuch therefore as it proceeds from the right of nature, that a beast may kill a man, it is also by the same right that a man may slay a beast. ------- CHAPTER IX.