_P._ Seeing then that a just action, according to your definition, is that which is not against the law; it is manifest that before there was a law, there could be no injustice; and therefore laws are in their nature antecedent to justice and injustice. And you cannot deny but there must be law-makers, before there were any laws, and consequently before there was any justice, (I speak of human justice); and that law-makers were before that which you call _own_, or property of goods or lands, distinguished by _meum_, _tuum_, _alienum_. _L._ That must be granted; for without statute-laws, all men have right to all things; and we have had experience, when our laws were silenced by civil war, there was not a man, that of any goods could say assuredly they were his own. _P._ You see then that no private man can claim a propriety in any lands, or other goods, from any title from any man but the King, or them that have the sovereign power; because it is in virtue of the sovereignty, that every man may not enter into and possess what he pleaseth; and consequently to deny the sovereign anything necessary to the sustaining of his sovereign power, is to destroy the propriety he pretends to. The next thing I will ask you is, how you distinguish between law and right, or _lex_ and _jus_. _L._ Sir Edward Coke in divers places makes _lex_ and _jus_ to be the same, and so _lex communis_ and _jus communis_, to be all one; nor do I find that he does in any place distinguish them. _P._ Then will I distinguish them, and make you judge whether my distinction be not necessary to be known by every author of the common-law. For law obligeth me to do, or forbear the doing of something; and therefore it lays upon me an obligation. But my right is a liberty left me by the law to do any thing which the law forbids me not, and to leave undone any thing which the law commands me not. Did Sir Edward Coke see no difference between being bound and being free? _L._ I know not what he saw, but he has not mentioned it. Though a man may dispense with his own liberty, he cannot do so with the law.