Hobbes, but why, or on what principle, I never could understand, was not murdered. This was a capital oversight of the professional men in the seventeenth century; because in every light he was a fine subject for murder, except, indeed, that he was lean and skinny; for I can prove that he had money, and (what is very funny,) he had no right to make the least resistance; for, according to himself, irresistible power creates the very highest species of right, so that it is rebellion of the blackest die to refuse to be murdered, when a competent force appears to murder you. However, gentlemen, though he was not murdered, I am happy to assure you that (by his own account) he was three times very near being murdered.
Thomas de Quincey, On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts, in Miscellaneous Essays. Of course, it is not really what Thomas Hobbes says about "competent force" trying to murder you; Hobbes thinks you have a right to self-defense in the face of an immediate attempt to cause your death. But I, too, have wondered why, or on what principle, Hobbes was not murdered.
