at the taking of a single town, than had been committed in the state
of nature during ages together upon the whole face of the earth. Such
are the first effects we may conceive to have arisen from the division
of mankind into different societies. Let us return to their
institution.

I know that several writers have assigned other origins of political
society; as for instance, the conquests of the powerful, or the union
of the weak; and it is no matter which of these causes we adopt in
regard to what I am going to establish; that, however, which I have
just laid down, seems to me the most natural, for the following
reasons: First, because, in the first case, the right of conquest
being in fact no right at all, it could not serve as a foundation for
any other right, the conqueror and the conquered ever remaining with
respect to each other in a state of war, unless the conquered,
restored to the full possession of their liberty, should freely choose
their conqueror for their chief. Till then, whatever capitulations
might have been made between them, as these capitulations were founded
upon violence, and of course _de facto_ null and void, there could not
have existed in this hypothesis either a true society, or a political
body, or any other law but that of the strongest. Second, because
these words strong and weak, are ambiguous in the second case; for
during the interval between the establishment of the right of property
or prior occupation and that of political government, the meaning of
these terms is better expressed by the words poor and rich, as before
the establishment of laws men in reality had no other means of
reducing their equals, but by invading the property of these equals,
or by parting with some of their own property to them. Third, because
the poor having nothing but their liberty to lose, it would have been
the height of madness in them to give up willingly the only blessing