have a right to destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the subjects. The obligations of the law of nature cease not in society, but only in many cases are drawn closer, and have by human laws known penalties annexed to them, to enforce their observation. Thus the law of nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other men’s actions, must, as well as their own and other men’s actions, be conformable to the laws of nature, i.e. to the will of God, of which that is a declaration; and the “fundamental law of nature being the preservation of mankind,” no human sanction can be good or valid against it.

Secondly, 10