right of assembling, and appointed certain times and places to that purpose, then are they sovereign still, and may call their conditional king to account at their pleasure, and deprive him of his government, if they judge he deserve it, either by breach of the condition set him, or otherwise. For the sovereign power can by no covenant with a subject be bound to continue him in the charge he undergoeth by their command, as a burden imposed not particularly for his good, but for the good of the sovereign people. [Sidenote: The word people equivocal] 11. The controversies that arise concerning the right of the people, proceed from the equivocation of the word. For the word people hath a double signification. In one sense it signifieth only a number of men, distinguished by the place of their habitation; as the _people_ of England, or the _people_ of France, which is no more, but the multitude of those particular persons that inhabit those regions, without consideration of any contracts or covenants amongst them, by which any one of them is obliged to the rest. In another sense, it signifieth a person civil, that is to say, either one man, or one council, in the will whereof, is included and involved the will of every one in particular. As for example, in this latter sense, the lower house of parliament is all the commons, as long as they sit there with authority and right thereto; but after they be dissolved, though they remain, they be no more the people, nor the commons, but only the aggregate, or multitude of the particular men there sitting, how well soever they agree, or concur, in opinions amongst themselves; whereupon, they that do not distinguish between these two significations, do usually attribute such rights to a dissolved multitude, as belong only to the people virtually contained in the body of the commonwealth or sovereignty. And when a great number of their own authority flock together in any nation, they usually give them the name of the whole nation. In which sense they say the people rebelleth, or the people demandeth, when it is no more than a dissolved multitude, of which though any one man may be said to demand or have right to something, yet the heap, or multitude, cannot be said to demand or have right to anything. For where every man hath his right distinct, there is nothing left for the multitude to have right unto: and when the particulars say, this is mine, this is thine, and this is his, and have shared all amongst them, there can be nothing whereof the multitude can say, this is mine; nor are they one body, as behoveth them to be, that demand anything under the name of mine, or his: and when they say ours, every man is understood to pretend in several, and not the multitude. On the other side, when the multitude is united into a body politic, and thereby are a people in the other signification, and their wills virtually in the sovereign, there the rights and demands of the