Note 1385 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
Hooker, Eccles. Polity, bk. i. chap. x. sect. 5: "At the first, it may be, that all was permitted unto their discretion which were to rule, till they saw that to live by one man's became the cause of all men's misery. This constrained them to unto laws."—Warton.
In the MS. there is this couplet after ver. 272:
For say what makes the liberty of man? 'Tis not in doing what he would but can.
The lines were intended to give the reason why law is not an infringement of liberty, and were probably cancelled because the reason was as applicable to cruel as to salutary laws. Upon Pope's principle the worst despotism would not interfere with the liberty of the subject, provided only that resistance was hopeless.