OF THE RIGHTS OF LORDS OVER THEIR SERVANTS.
1. What lord and servant signify. 2. The distinction of servants,
into such as upon trust enjoy their natural liberty, and slaves,
or such as serve being imprisoned or bound in fetters. 3. The
obligation of a servant arises from the liberty of body allowed
him by his lord. 4. Servants that are bound, are not by any
compacts tied to their lords. 5. Servants have no propriety in
their goods against their lord. 6. The lord may sell his
servant, or alienate him by testament 7. The lord cannot injure
his servant. 8. He that is lord of the lord, is lord also of his
servants. 9. By what means servants are freed. 10. Dominion over
beasts belongs to the right of nature.
[Sidenote: What lord and servant are.]
1. In the two foregoing chapters we have treated of an _institutive_
or _framed_ government, as being that which receives its original
from the consent of many, who by contract and faith mutually given
have obliged each other. Now follows what may be said concerning a
_natural_ government; which may also be called _acquired_, because
it is that which is gotten by power and natural force. But we must
know in the first place, by what means the right of dominion may be
gotten over the persons of men. Where such a right is gotten, there
is a kind of a little kingdom; for to be a _king_, is nothing else
but to have dominion over many persons; and thus a great family is a
kingdom, and a little kingdom a family. Let us return again to the
state of nature, and consider men as if but even now sprung out of
the earth, and suddenly, like mushrooms, come to full maturity,
without all kind of engagement to each other. There are but three
ways only, whereby one can have a dominion over the person of
another; whereof the first is, if by mutual contract made between
themselves, for peace and self-defence’s sake, they have willingly
given up themselves to the power and authority of some man, or
council of men; and of this we have already spoken. The second is,
if a man taken prisoner in the wars, or overcome, or else
distrusting his own forces, to avoid death, promises the conqueror
or the stronger party his _service_, that is, to do all whatsoever
he shall command him. In which contract, the good which the
vanquished or inferior in strength doth receive, is the grant of his
life, which by the right of war in the natural state of men he might
have been deprived of; but the good which he promises, is his
service and obedience. By virtue therefore of this promise, there is
as absolute service and obedience due from the vanquished to the
vanquisher, as possibly can be, excepting what repugns the divine
laws; for he who is obliged to obey the commands of any man before
he knows what he will command him, is simply and without any
restriction tied to the performance of all commands whatsoever. Now
he that is thus tied, is called a _servant_; he to whom he is tied,
a _lord_. Thirdly, there is a right acquired over the person of a
man by generation; of which kind of acquisition somewhat shall be
spoken in the following chapter.
[Sidenote: The distinction of servants, into such as upon trust
enjoy their natural liberty, and slaves, or such as serve
being imprisoned or fettered.]
2. Every one that is taken in the war, and hath his life spared him,
is not supposed to have contracted with his lord; for every one is
not trusted with so much of his natural liberty, as to be able, if
he desired it, either to fly away, or quit his service, or contrive
any mischief to his lord. And these serve indeed, but within prisons
or bound within irons; and therefore they were called not by the
common name of _servant_ only, but by the peculiar name of _slave_;
even as now at this day, _un serviteur_, and _un serf_, or _un
esclave_ have diverse significations.
[Sidenote: The obligation of a servant ariseth from that freedom
which is granted him by his lord.]
3. The obligation therefore of a _servant_ to his _lord_, ariseth
not from a simple grant of his life; but from hence rather, that he
keeps him not bound or imprisoned. For all obligation derives from
contract; but where there is no trust, there can be no contract, as
appears by chap. ii. art. 9; where a compact is defined to be the
promise of him who is trusted. There is therefore a confidence and
trust which accompanies the benefit of pardoned life, whereby the
_lord_ affords him his corporal liberty; so that if no obligation
nor bonds of contract had happened, he might not only have made his
escape, but also have killed his lord who was the preserver of his
life.
[Sidenote: Servants that are bound, are not obliged to their lord by
any contract.]
4. Wherefore such kind of _servants_ as are restrained by
imprisonment or bonds, are not comprehended in that definition of
_servants_ given above; because those serve not for the contract’s
sake, but to the end they may not suffer. And therefore if they fly,
or kill their _lord_, they offend not against the laws of nature.
For to bind any man, is a plain sign that the binder supposes him
that is bound, not to be sufficiently tied by any other obligation.
[Sidenote: Servants have no propriety in their goods against their
lord.]
5. The lord therefore hath no less dominion over a servant that is
not, than over one that is bound; for he hath a supreme power over
both, and may say of his servant no less than of another thing,
whether animate or inanimate, _this is mine_. Whence it follows,
that whatsoever the servant had before his servitude, that
afterwards becomes the lord’s; and whatsoever he hath gotten, it was
gotten for his lord. For he that can by right dispose of the
_person_ of a man, may surely dispose of all those things which that
_person_ could dispose of. There is therefore nothing which the
servant may retain as his own against the will of his lord; yet hath
he, by his lord’s distribution, a propriety and dominion over his
own goods: insomuch as one servant may keep and defend them against
the invasion of his fellow-servant, in the same manner as hath been
shewed before, that a subject hath nothing properly _his own_
against the will of the supreme authority, but every subject hath a
propriety against his fellow-subject.
[Sidenote: The lord may sell his servant, or alienate him by
testament.]
6. Since therefore both the servant himself, and all that belongs to
him are his lord’s, and by the right of nature every man may dispose
of his own in what manner he pleases; the lord may either sell, lay
to pledge, or by testament convey the dominion he hath over his
servant, according to his own will and pleasure.
[Sidenote: The lord cannot be injurious to his servant.]
7. Furthermore, what hath before been demonstrated concerning
subjects in an _institutive_ government, namely, that he who hath
the supreme power can do his subject no injury; is true also
concerning _servants_, because they have subjected their will to the
will of the Lord. Wherefore, whatsoever he doth, it is done with
their will; but no injury can be done to him that willeth it.
[Sidenote: He that is lord of the lord, is lord also of his
servants.]
8. But if it happen that the _lord_, either by captivity or
voluntary subjection, doth become a _servant_ or _subject_ to
another, that other shall not only be lord of him, but also of his
_servants_; supreme lord over these, immediate lord over him. Now
because not the servant only, but also all he hath, are his lord’s;
therefore his servants now belong to this man, neither can the
mediate lord dispose otherwise of them than shall seem good to the
supreme. And therefore, if sometime in civil governments the lord
have an absolute power over his servants, that is supposed to be
derived from the right of nature, and not constituted, but slightly
passed over by the civil law.
[Sidenote: By what means servants are freed.]
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.
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