Of VSVRPATION.

197. AS Conquest may be called a foreign Usurpation; so Usurpation is a kind of domestick Conquest, with this difference, that an Usurper can never have Right on his side; it being no Usurpation but where one is got into the Possession of what another has Right to. This, so far as it is Usurpation, is a change only of Persons, but not of the Forms and Rules of the Government: for if the Usurper extend his Power beyond what, of Right, belonged to the lawful Princes, or Governours of the Commonwealth, 'tis Tyranny, added to Usurpation.

198. In all lawful Governments the designation of the Persons, who are to bear Rule, being as natural and necessary a part as the Form of the Government it self, and that which had its Establishment originally from the People. The Anarchy being much alike, to have no Form of Government at all, or to agree that it shall be Monarchical; but to appoint no way, to design the Person that shall have the Power, and be the Monarch. All Commonwealths therefore, with the Form of Government established, have Rules also of appointing and conveying the Right to those, who are to have any share in the publick Authority. And who-ever gets into the exercise of any part of the Power, by other ways, than what the Laws of the Community have prescribed, hath no Right to be obeyed, though the Form of the Commonwealth be still preserved; since he is not the Person the Laws have appointed, and consequently not the Person the People have consented to. Nor can such an Usurper, or any, deriving from him, ever have a Title, till the People are both at liberty to consent, and have actually consented to allow, and confirm in him the Power he hath, till then, Usurped.