In bodies politic, the power of the representative is always limited: and that which prescribeth the limits thereof, is the power sovereign. For power unlimited is absolute sovereignty. And the sovereign in every commonwealth is the absolute representative of all the subjects; and therefore no other can be representative of any part of them, but so far forth as he shall give leave. And to give leave to a body politic of subjects, to have an absolute representative to all intents and purposes, were to abandon the government of so much of the commonwealth, and to divide the dominion contrary to their peace and defence; which the sovereign cannot be understood to do by any grant that does not plainly and directly discharge them of their subjection. For consequences of words, are not the signs of his will, when other consequences are signs of the contrary; but rather signs of error and misreckoning; to which all mankind is too prone.

The bounds of that power, which is given to the representative of a body politic, are to be taken notice of from two things. One is their writ, or letters from the sovereign: the other is the law of the commonwealth.