A fifth doctrine that tendeth to the dissolution of a commonwealth is, “that every private man has an absolute propriety in his goods; such as excludeth the right of the sovereign.” Every man has indeed a propriety that excludes the right of every other subject: and he has it only from the sovereign power; without the protection whereof every other man should have equal right to the same. But if the right of the sovereign also be excluded, he cannot perform the office they have put him into; which is, to defend them both from foreign enemies, and from the injuries of one another; and consequently there is no longer a commonwealth.

And if the propriety of subjects exclude not the right of the sovereign representative to their goods; much less to their offices of judicature or execution, in which they represent the sovereign himself.