CHAPTER VIII.. Of the Rights of Lords Over Their Servants.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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