judges, counsellors, and ministers of state. For without that power, no act of sovereignty, or government, can be performed. Lastly, and generally, whosoever by his own authority independent, can do any act, which another of the same commonwealth may not, must needs be understood to have the sovereign power. For by nature men have equal right. This inequality therefore must proceed from the power of the commonwealth. He therefore that doth any act lawfully by his own authority, which another may not, doth it by the power of the commonwealth in himself, which is absolute sovereignty. ------- CHAPTER II. 1. Democracy precedeth all other, &c. 2.. The sovereign people covenanteth not with the subjects. 3. The sovereign, &c. cannot, &c. do injury, &c. 4. The faults of the sovereign people, &c. 5. Democracy, &c. an aristocracy of orators. 6. Aristocracy how made. 7. The body of the _optimates_ not properly said to injure the subjects. 8. The election of the _optimates_, &c. 9. An elective king, &c. 10. A conditional king, &c. 11. The word people equivocal. 12. Obedience discharged by release, &c. 13. How such releases are to be understood. 14. Obedience discharged by exile: 15. By conquest: 16. By ignorance of the right of succession. [Sidenote: Democracy precedeth all other, &c.] 1. Having spoken in general concerning instituted policy in the former chapter, I come in this, to speak of the sorts thereof in special, how every of them is instituted. The first in order of time of these three sorts, is democracy; and it must be so of necessity, because an aristocracy and a monarchy, require nomination of persons agreed upon, which agreement in a great multitude of men, must consist in the consent of the major part; and where the votes of the major part involve the votes of the rest, there is actually a democracy. [Sidenote: The sovereign people covenanteth not with the subjects.]