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  • CHAPTER 1 OF THE ORIGIN AND DESIGN OF GOVERNMENT IN

  • GENERAL, WITH CONCISE REMARKS ON THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION

  • SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no

  • distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different

  • origins.

  • Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former

  • promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter

  • NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices.

  • The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions.

  • The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

  • Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a

  • necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are

  • exposed to the same miseries BY A

  • GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is

  • heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

  • Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are

  • built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.

  • For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would

  • need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to

  • surrender up a part of his property to

  • furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the

  • same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the

  • least.

  • WHEREFORE, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably

  • follows that whatever FORM thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the

  • least expence and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.

  • In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end of government, let us

  • suppose a small number of persons settled in some sequestered part of the earth,

  • unconnected with the rest, they will then

  • represent the first peopling of any country, or of the world.

  • In this state of natural liberty, society will be their first thought.

  • A thousand motives will excite them thereto, the strength of one man is so

  • unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual solitude, that he is

  • soon obliged to seek assistance and relief

  • of another, who in his turn requires the same.

  • Four or five united would be able to raise a tolerable dwelling in the midst of a

  • wilderness, but ONE man might labour out the common period of life without

  • accomplishing any thing; when he had felled

  • his timber he could not remove it, nor erect it after it was removed; hunger in

  • the mean time would urge him from his work, and every different want call him a

  • different way.

  • Disease, nay even misfortune would be death, for though neither might be mortal,

  • yet either would disable him from living, and reduce him to a state in which he might

  • rather be said to perish than to die.

  • This necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly arrived emigrants

  • into society, the reciprocal blessing of which, would supersede, and render the

  • obligations of law and government

  • unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but

  • heaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen, that in proportion as

  • they surmount the first difficulties of

  • emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will begin to relax in

  • their duty and attachment to each other; and this remissness, will point out the

  • necessity, of establishing some form of

  • government to supply the defect of moral virtue.

  • Some convenient tree will afford them a State-House, under the branches of which,

  • the whole colony may assemble to deliberate on public matters.

  • It is more than probable that their first laws will have the title only of

  • REGULATIONS, and be enforced by no other penalty than public disesteem.

  • In this first parliament every man, by natural right, will have a seat.

  • But as the colony increases, the public concerns will increase likewise, and the

  • distance at which the members may be separated, will render it too inconvenient

  • for all of them to meet on every occasion

  • as at first, when their number was small, their habitations near, and the public

  • concerns few and trifling.

  • This will point out the convenience of their consenting to leave the legislative

  • part to be managed by a select number chosen from the whole body, who are

  • supposed to have the same concerns at stake

  • which those have who appointed them, and who will act in the same manner as the

  • whole body would act were they present.

  • If the colony continues increasing, it will become necessary to augment the number of

  • the representatives, and that the interest of every part of the colony may be attended

  • to, it will be found best to divide the

  • whole into convenient parts, each part sending its proper number; and that the

  • ELECTED might never form to themselves an interest separate from the ELECTORS,

  • prudence will point out the propriety of

  • having elections often; because as the ELECTED might by that means return and mix

  • again with the general body of the ELECTORS in a few months, their fidelity to the

  • public will be secured by the prudent

  • reflexion of not making a rod for themselves.

  • And as this frequent interchange will establish a common interest with every part

  • of the community, they will mutually and naturally support each other, and on this

  • (not on the unmeaning name of king) depends

  • the STRENGTH OF GOVERNMENT, AND THE HAPPINESS OF THE GOVERNED.

  • Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered

  • necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design

  • and end of government, viz. freedom and security.

  • And however our eyes may be dazzled with snow, or our ears deceived by sound;

  • however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our understanding, the

  • simple voice of nature and of reason will say, it is right.

  • I draw my idea of the form of government from a principle in nature, which no art

  • can overturn, viz. that the more simple any thing is, the less liable it is to be

  • disordered, and the easier repaired when

  • disordered; and with this maxim in view, I offer a few remarks on the so much boasted

  • constitution of England. That it was noble for the dark and slavish

  • times in which it was erected, is granted.

  • When the world was over run with tyranny the least remove therefrom was a glorious

  • rescue.

  • But that it is imperfect, subject to convulsions, and incapable of producing

  • what it seems to promise, is easily demonstrated.

  • Absolute governments (tho' the disgrace of human nature) have this advantage with

  • them, that they are simple; if the people suffer, they know the head from which their

  • suffering springs, know likewise the

  • remedy, and are not bewildered by a variety of causes and cures.

  • But the constitution of England is so exceedingly complex, that the nation may

  • suffer for years together without being able to discover in which part the fault

  • lies, some will say in one and some in

  • another, and every political physician will advise a different medicine.

  • I know it is difficult to get over local or long standing prejudices, yet if we will

  • suffer ourselves to examine the component parts of the English constitution, we shall

  • find them to be the base remains of two

  • ancient tyrannies, compounded with some new republican materials.

  • FIRST. The remains of monarchical tyranny in the

  • person of the king.

  • SECONDLY. The remains of aristocratical tyranny in

  • the persons of the peers. THIRDLY.

  • The new republican materials, in the persons of the commons, on whose virtue

  • depends the freedom of England.

  • The two first, by being hereditary, are independent of the people; wherefore in a

  • CONSTITUTIONAL SENSE they contribute nothing towards the freedom of the state.

  • To say that the constitution of England is a UNION of three powers reciprocally

  • CHECKING each other, is farcical, either the words have no meaning, or they are flat

  • contradictions.

  • To say that the commons is a check upon the king, presupposes two things.

  • FIRST.

  • That the king is not to be trusted without being looked after, or in other words, that

  • a thirst for absolute power is the natural disease of monarchy.

  • SECONDLY.

  • That the commons, by being appointed for that purpose, are either wiser or more

  • worthy of confidence than the crown.

  • But as the same constitution which gives the commons a power to check the king by

  • withholding the supplies, gives afterwards the king a power to check the commons, by

  • empowering him to reject their other bills;

  • it again supposes that the king is wiser than those whom it has already supposed to

  • be wiser than him. A mere absurdity!

  • There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of monarchy; it first

  • excludes a man from the means of information, yet empowers him to act in

  • cases where the highest judgment is required.

  • The state of a king shuts him from the world, yet the business of a king requires

  • him to know it thoroughly; wherefore the different parts, by unnaturally opposing

  • and destroying each other, prove the whole character to be absurd and useless.

  • Some writers have explained the English constitution thus; the king, say they, is

  • one, the people another; the peers are an house in behalf of the king; the commons in

  • behalf of the people; but this hath all the

  • distinctions of an house divided against itself; and though the expressions be

  • pleasantly arranged, yet when examined they appear idle and ambiguous; and it will

  • always happen, that the nicest construction

  • that words are capable of, when applied to the description of some thing which either

  • cannot exist, or is too incomprehensible to be within the compass of description, will

  • be words of sound only, and though they may

  • amuse the ear, they cannot inform the mind, for this explanation includes a previous

  • question, viz.

  • HOW CAME THE KING BY A POWER WHICH THE PEOPLE ARE AFRAID TO TRUST, AND ALWAYS

  • OBLIGED TO CHECK?

  • Such a power could not be the gift of a wise people, neither can any power, WHICH

  • NEEDS CHECKING, be from God; yet the provision, which the constitution makes,

  • supposes such a power to exist.

  • But the provision is unequal to the task; the means either cannot or will not

  • accomplish the end, and the whole affair is a felo de se; for as the greater weight

  • will always carry up the less, and as all

  • the wheels of a machine are put in motion by one, it only remains to know which power

  • in the constitution has the most weight, for that will govern; and though the

  • others, or a part of them, may clog, or, as

  • the phrase is, check the rapidity of its motion, yet so long as they cannot stop it,

  • their endeavors will be ineffectual; the first moving power will at last have its

  • way, and what it wants in speed is supplied by time.

  • That the crown is this overbearing part in the English constitution needs not be

  • mentioned, and that it derives its whole consequence merely from being the giver of

  • places and pensions is self-evident;

  • wherefore, though we have been wise enough to shut and lock a door against absolute

  • monarchy, we at the same time have been foolish enough to put the crown in

  • possession of the key.

  • The prejudice of Englishmen, in favour of their own government by king, lords and

  • commons, arises as much or more from national pride than reason.

  • Individuals are undoubtedly safer in England than in some other countries, but

  • the WILL of the king is as much the LAW of the land in Britain as in France, with this

  • difference, that instead of proceeding

  • directly from his mouth, it is handed to the people under the more formidable shape

  • of an act of parliament. For the fate of Charles the first, hath

  • only made kings more subtle--not more just.

  • Wherefore, laying aside all national pride and prejudice in favour of modes and forms,

  • the plain truth is, that IT IS WHOLLY OWING TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE PEOPLE, AND NOT

  • TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE GOVERNMENT that

  • the crown is not as oppressive in England as in Turkey.

  • An inquiry into the CONSTITUTIONAL ERRORS in the English form of government is at

  • this time highly necessary; for as we are never in a proper condition of doing

  • justice to others, while we continue under

  • the influence of some leading partiality, so neither are we capable of doing it to

  • ourselves while we remain fettered by any obstinate prejudice.

  • And as a man, who is attached to a prostitute, is unfitted to choose or judge

  • of a wife, so any prepossession in favour of a rotten constitution of government will

  • disable us from discerning a good one.

CHAPTER 1 OF THE ORIGIN AND DESIGN OF GOVERNMENT IN

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