The law always limits every power it gives.

Taken at face value, the sentence expresses a constitutionalist idea: legal authority is never unlimited, because the very act of granting power through law also defines its scope and conditions. In other words, law is not merely an instrument that empowers rulers or institutions; it is also a framework of restraint that specifies what may be done, by whom, and under what procedures. Read in a Humean key, it aligns with his skepticism about unchecked authority and his emphasis on conventions and rules as stabilizing devices in political life. The maxim implies that legitimate power is inseparable from limitation—without boundaries, “power” ceases to be a legal competence and becomes mere force.