Wesley Corpus

This celebrated instance occurred at Naples, in the middle of the last century; where the people, properly speaking, that is, men, women, and children, claimed and exerted their natural right in favour of Thomas Aniello, (vulgarly called Masanello,) a young fisherman. But will any one say, he was the only Governor for these thousand years, who has had a proper right to the supreme power? I believe not; nor, I apprehend, does any one desire that the people should take the same steps in London. 20. So much both for reason and matter of fact. But one single consideration, if we dwell a little upon it, will bring the question to a short issue. It is allowed, no man can dispose of another's life but by his own consent. I add, No, nor with his consent; for no man has a right to dispose of his own life. The Creator of man has the sole right to take the life which he gave. Now, it is an indisputable truth, Nihil dat quod non habet, “none gives what he has not.” It plainly follows, that no man can give to another a right which he never had himself; a right which only the Governor of the world has, even the wiser Heathens being judges; but which no man upon the face of the earth either has or can have. No man therefore can give the power of the sword, any such power as implies a right to take away life. Wherever it is, it must descend from God alone, the sole disposer of life and death. 21. The supposition, then, that the people are the origin. of power, is every way indefensible. It is absolutely over turned by the very principle on which it is supposed to stand; namely, that a right of choosing his Governors belongs to THoUGHTs on THE PRESENT scARCITY of PRovisions. 53 every partaker of human nature. If this be so, then it belongs to every individual of the human species; conse quently, not to freeholders alone, but to all men; not to men only, but to women also; nor only to adult men and women, to those who have lived one-and-twenty years, but to those who have lived eighteen or twenty, as well as those who have lived threescore. But none did ever maintain this, nor probably ever will.