livered upon the first; any more than, in the two consultations above described, it could be known beforehand what I would say in the latter, from the answer which I gave the former. highest. The divine right of kings is, like the divine right of other magistrates,-the law of the land, or even actual and quiet possession of their office; a right ratified, we humbly presume, by the divine approbation, so long as obedience to their authority appears to be necessary or condu ed of God by virtue only of that general decree by which he assents, and adds the sanction of his will, to every law of society which promotes his own purpose, the communication of human Lappiness; according to which idea of their origin and constitution (and without any repugnancy to the words of St. Paul,) they are by St. Peter denominated the ordinance of man. CHAPTER V. CIVIL LIBERTY is the not being restrained by any law, but what conduces in a greater degree to the public welfare. To do what we will, is natural liberty to do what we will, consistently with the interest of the community to which we belong, is civil liberty; that is to say, the only liberty to be desired in a state of civil society. piness, but my liberty, would be less, than whilst the whole community were subject to the dominion of equal laws. The only defect to this account is, that neither the Scriptures, nor any subsequent history of the early ages of the Church, furnish any direct at-cive to the common welfare. Princes are ordaintestation of the existence of such disaffected sentiments amongst the primitive converts. They supply indeed some circumstances which render probable the opinion, that extravagant notions of the political rights of the Christian state were at that time entertained by many proselytes to the religion-From the question proposed unto Christ, "Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar?" it may be presumed that doubts had been started in the Jewish schools concerning the obligation, or even the lawfulness, of submission to the Roman yoke. The accounts delivered by Josephus, of various insurrections of the Jews of that and the following age, excited by this principle, or upon this pretence, confirm the presumption. Now, as the Christians were at first chiefly taken from the Jews, confounded with them by the rest of the world, and, from the affinity of the two religions, apt to intermix the doctrines of both, it is not to be wondered at, that a tenet, so flattering to the self-importance of those who embraced it, should have been communicated to the new institution. Again, the teachers of Christianity, amongst the I should wish, no doubt, to be allowed to act in privileges which their religion conferred upon its every instance as I pleased, but I reflect that the professors, were wont to extol the "liberty into rest also of mankind would then do the same; in which they were called,"-" in which Christ had which state of universal independence and selfmade them free." This liberty, which was in- direction, I should meet with so many checks and tended of a deliverance from the various servitude, obstacles to my own will, from the interference and in which they had heretofore lived, to the domina-opposition of other men's, that not only my hap tion of sinful passions, to the superstition of the Gentile idolatry, or the encumbered ritual of the Jewish dispensation, might by some be interpreted to signify an emancipation from all restraint which was imposed by an authority merely human. At least, they might be represented by their enemies as maintaining notions of this dangerous tendency. To some error or calumny of this kind, the words of St. Peter seem to allude:-"For so is the will of God, that with well-doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: as free, and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness (i. e. sedition,) but as the servants of God." After all, if any one think this conjecture too feebly supported by testimony, to be relied upon in the interpretation The definition of civil liberty above laid down, imof Scripture, he will then revert to the consider- ports that the laws of a free people impose no reations alleged in the preceding part of this chapter. straints upon the private will of the subject, which After so copious an account of what we appre- do not conduce in a greater degree to the public hend to be the general design and doctrine of happiness; by which it is intimated, 1st, that rethese much-agitated passages, little need be added straint itself is an evil; 2dly, that this evil ought to an explanation of particular clauses. St. Paul be overbalanced by some public advantage; 3dly, has said, "Whosoever resisteth the power, re-that the proof of this advantage lies upon the lesisteth the ordinance of God." This phrase, "the gislature; 4thly, that a law being found to proordinance of God," is by many so interpreted as duce no sensible good effects, is a sufficient reason to authorise the most exalted and superstitious for repealing it, as adverse and injurious to the ideas of the regal character. But surely, such rights of a free citizen, without demanding speinterpreters have sacrificed truth to adulation. For, cific evidence of its bad effects. This maxim in the first place, the expression, as used by might be remembered with advantage in a revision St. Paul, is just as applicable to one kind of of many laws of this country; especially of the government, and to one kind of succession, as to game-laws; of the poor-laws, so far as they lay another;-to the elective magistrates of a pure restrictions upon the poor themselves; of the laws republic, as to an absolute hereditary monarch. In against Fapists and Dissenters: and, amongst the next place, it is not affirmed of the supreme people enamoured to excess and jealous of their magistrate exclusively, that he is the ordinance of liberty, it seems a matter of surprise that this God: the title, whatever it imports, belongs to principle has been so imperfectly attended to. every inferior officer of the state as much as to the The boasted liberty of a state of nature exists only in a state of solitude. In every kind and degree of union and intercourse with his species, it is possible that the liberty of the individual may be augmented by the very laws which restrain it; because he may gain more from the limitation of other men's freedom than he suffers by the dimi nution of his own. Natural liberty is the right of common upon a waste; civil liberty is the safe, exclusive, unmolested enjoyment of a cultivated enclosure. The degree of actual liberty always bearing, be expected from the different form and composition of the legislature, constitutes the distinction, in respect of liberty, as well between these two extremes, as between all the intermediate modifications of civil government. according to this account of it, a reversed propor- their legislature; not their enjoyment, but their tion to the number and severity of the restrictions safety; not their present burthens, but their pros which are either useless, or the utility of which pects of future grievances; and this we pronounce does not outweigh the evil of the restraint, it fol- a change from the condition of freemen to that lows, that every nation possesses some, no nation of slaves. In like manner, in our own country, the perfect, liberty: that this liberty may be enjoyed act of parliament, in the reign of Henry the under every form of government: that it may be Eighth, which gave to the king's proclamation impaired indeed, or increased, but that it is neither the force of law, has properly been called a comgained, nor lost, nor recovered, by any single re- plete and formal surrender of the liberty of the gulation, change, or event whatever that conse-nation; and would have been so, although no quently, those popular phrases which speak of a proclamation were issued in pursuance of these free people; of a nation of slaves; which call one new powers, or none but what was recommended revolution the æra of liberty, or another the loss by the highest wisdom and utility. The security of it; with many expressions of a like absolute was gone. Were it probable that the welfare form; are intelligible only in a comparative sense. and accommodation of the people would be as stuHence also we are enabled to apprehend the diously, and as providently, consulted in the edicts distinction between personal and civil liberty. of a despotic prince, as by the resolutions of a A citizen of the freest republic in the world may popular assembly, then would an absolute form of be imprisoned for his crimes; and though his per- government be no less free than the purest demosonal freedom be restrained by bolts and fetters, so cracy. The different degree of care and knowlong as his confinement is the effect of a benefi-ledge of the public interest, which may reasonably cial public law, his civil liberty is not invaded. If this instance appear dubious, the following will be plainer. A passenger from the Levant, who, upon his return to England, should be conveyed to a lazaretto by an order of quarantine, with whatever impatience he might desire his enlargement, and though he saw a guard placed at the door to oppose his escape, or even ready to destroy his life if he attempted it, would hardly accuse government of encroaching upon his civil freedom; nay, might, perhaps, be all the while congratulating himself that he had at length set his foot again in a land of liberty. The manifest expediency of the measure not only justifies it, but reconciles the most odious confinement with the perfect possession, and the loftiest notions, of civil liberty. And if this be true of the coercion of a prison, that it is compatible with a state of civil freedom, it cannot with reason be disputed of those more moderate constraints which the ordinary operation of government imposes upon the will of the individual. It is not the rigour, but the inexpediency of laws and acts of authority, which makes them tyrannical. There is another idea of civil liberty, which, though neither so simple nor so accurate as the former, agrees better with the signification, which the usage of common discourse, as well as the example of many respectable writers upon the subject, has affixed to the term. This idea places liberty in security; making it to consist not merely in an actual exemption from the constraint of useless and noxious laws and acts of dominion, but in being free from the danger of having such hereafter imposed or exercised. Thus, speaking of the political state of modern Europe, we are accustomed to say of Sweden, that she hath lost her liberty by the revolution which lately took place in that country; and yet we are assured that the people continue to be governed by the same laws as before, or by others which are wiser, milder, and more equitable. What then have they lost? They have lost the power and functions of their diet; the constitution of their states and orders, whose deliberations and concurrence were required in the formation and establishment of every public law; and thereby have parted with the security which they possessed against any attempts of the crown to harass its subjects, by oppressive and useless exertions of prerogative. The loss of this security we denominate the loss of liberty. They have changed, not their laws, but The definitions which have been framed of civil liberty, and which have become the subject of much unnecessary altercation, are most of them adapted to this idea. Thus one political writer makes the very essence of the subject's liberty to consist in his being governed by no laws but those to which he hath actually consented; another is satisfied with an indirect and virtual consent; another, again, places civil liberty in the separation of the legislative and executive offices of government; another, in the being governed by law; that is, by known, preconstituted, inflexible rules of action and adjudication; a fifth, in the exclusive right of the people to tax themselves by their own representatives; a sixth, in the freedom and purity of elections of representatives; a seventh, in the control which the democratic party of the constitution possesses over the military establishment. Concerning which, and some other similar accounts of civil liberty, it may be observed, that they all labour under one inaccuracy, viz. that they describe not so much liberty itself, as the safeguards and preservatives of liberty: for example, a man's being governed by no laws but those to which he has given his consent, were it practicable, is no otherwise necessary to the enjoyment of civil liberty, than as it affords a probable security against the dictation of laws imposing superfluous restrictions upon his private will. This remark is applicable to the rest. The diversity of these definitions will not surprise us, when we consider that there is no contrariety or opposition amongst them whatever: for, by how many dif ferent provisions and precautions civil liberty is fenced and protected, so many different accounts of liberty itself, all sufficiently consistent with truth and with each other, may, according to this mode of explaining the term, be framed and adopted. Truth cannot be offended by a definition, but propriety may. In which view, those definitions of liberty ought to be rejected, which, by making that essential to civil freedom which is unattainable in experience, inflame expectations that can never be gratified, and disturb the public content with complaints, which no wisdom or benevolence of government can remove. It will not be thought extraordinary, that an | vernors, of the interests and accommodation of the ilea, which occurs so much oftener as the subject people, and a consequent deficiency of salutary of panegyric and careless declamation, than of just regulations; want of constancy and uniformity in reasoning or correct knowledge, should be attend- the rules of government, and, proceeding from ed with uncertainty and confusion; or that it thence, insecurity of person and property. should be found impossible to contrive a definition, which may include the numerous, unsettled, and ever-varying significations, which the term is made to stand for, and at the same time accord with the condition and experience of social life. Of the two ideas that have been stated of civil liberty, whichever we assume, and whatever reasoning we found upon them, concerning its extent, nature, value, and preservation, this is the conclusion-that that people, government, and constitution, is the freest, which makes the best provision for the enacting of expedient and salutary laws. CHAPTER VI. Of different Forms of Government. ARISTOCRACY The separate advantage of an consists in the wisdom which may be expected from experience and education:-a permanent council naturally possesses experience; and the members who succeed to their places in it by inheritance, will, probably, be trained and educated with a view to the stations which they are destined by their birth to occupy. The mischiefs of an ARISTOCRACY are, dissensions in the ruling orders of the state, which, from the want of a common superior, are liable to proceed to the most desperate extremities; oppression of the lower orders by the privileges of the higher, and by laws partial to the separate interest of the lawmakers. The advantages of a REPUBLIC are, liberty, or exemption from needless restrictions; equal laws; regulations adapted to the wants and circumstances of the people; public spirit, frugality, averseness to war; the opportunities which democratic assemblies afford to men of every description, of producing their abilities and counsels to public obserab-vation, and the exciting thereby, and calling forth to the service of the commonwealth, the faculties of its best citizens. As a series of appeals must be finite, there necessarily exists in every government a power from which the constitution has provided no appeal; and which power, for that reason, may be termed solute, omnipotent, uncontrollable, arbitrary, despotic; and is alike so in all countries. The person, or assembly, in whom this power resides, is called the sovereign, or the supreme power of the state. Since to the same power universally appertains the office of establishing public laws, it is called also the legislature of the state. A government receives its denomination from the form of the legislature; which form is likewise what we commonly mean by the constitution of a country. The evils of a REPUBLIC are, dissension, tumults, faction; the attempts of powerful citizens to possess themselves of the empire; the confusion, rage, and clamour, which are the inevitable consequences of assembling multitudes, and of propounding questions of state to the discussion of the people; the delay and disclosure of public counsels and designs; and the imbecility of measures retarded by the necessity of obtaining the consent of numbers: lastly, the oppression of the provinces which are not adPolitical writers enumerate three principal mitted to a participation in the legislative power. forms of government, which, however, are to be A mixed government is composed by the comregarded rather as the simple forms, by some combination of two or more of the simple forms of gobination and intermixture of which all actual government above described:--and in whatever provernments are composed, than as any where ex-portion each form enters into the constitution of a isting in a pure and elementary state. These forms are, I. Despotism, or absolute MONARCHY, where the legislature is in a single person. government, in the same proportion may both the advantages and evils, which we have attributed to that form, be expected: that is, those are the uses to be maintained and cultivated in each part of the constitution, and these are the dangers to be provided against in each. Thus, if secrecy and despatch be truly enumerated amongst the separate excellencies of regal government, then a mixed government, which retains monarchy in one part of its constitution, should be careful that the other III. A REPUBLIC, or democracy, where the peo-estates of the empire do not, by an officious and ple at large, either collectively or by representation, constitute the legislature. II. An ARISTOCRACY, where the legislature is in a select assembly, the members of which either fill up by election the vacancies in their own body, or succeed to their places in it by inheritance, property, tenure of certain lands, or in respect of some personal right, or qualification. inquisitive interference with the executive functions, which are, or ought to be, reserved to the The separate advantages of MONARCHY, are, administration of the prince, interpose delays, or unity of counsel, activity, decision, secrecy, de- divulge what it is expedient to conceal. On the spatch; the military strength and energy which other hand, if profusion, exaction, military domiresult from these qualities of government; the ex-nation, and needless wars, be justly accounted natuclusion of popular and aristrocratical contentions; the preventing, by a known rule of succession, of all competition for the supreme power; and thereby repressing the hopes, intrigues, and dangerous ambition of aspiring citizens. The mischiefs, or rather the dangers, of MoNARCHY are, tyranny, expense, exaction, military domination: unnecessary wars, waged to gratify the passions of an individual; risk of the character of the reigning prince; ignorance, in the go ral properties of monarchy, in its simple unqualified form; then are these the objects to which, in a mixed government, the aristrocratic and popular part of the constitution ought to direct their vigilance; the dangers against which they should raise and fortify their barriers; these are departments of sovereignty, over which a power of inspection and control ought to be deposited with the people. The same observation may be repeated of all the other advantages and inconveniences which have been ascribed to the several simple forms of government; and affords a rule whereby to direct the construction, improvements, and administration, of mixed governments-subjected however to this remark, that a quality sometimes results from the conjunction of two simple forms of government, which belongs not to the separate existence of either: thus corruption, which has no place in an absolute monarchy, and little in a pure republic, is sure to gain admission into a constitution which divides the supreme power between an executive magistrate and a popular council. An hereditary MONARCHY is universally to be preferred to an elective monarchy. The confession of every writer on the subject of civil government, the experience of ages, the example of Poland, and of the papal dominions, seem to place this amongst the few indubitable maxims which the science of politics admits of. A crown is too splendid a prize to be conferred upon merit: the passions or interests of the electors exclude all consideration of the qualities of the competitors. The same observation holds concerning the appointments to any office which is attended with a great share of power or emolument. Nothing is gained by a popular choice, worth the dissensions, tumults, and interruption of regular industry, with which it is inseparably attended. Add to this, that a king, who owes his elevation to the event of a contest, or to any other cause than a fixed rule of succession, will be apt to regard one part of his subjects as the associates of his fortune, and the other as conquered foes. Nor should it be forgotten, amongst the advantages of an hereditary monarchy, that, as plans of national improvement and reform are seldom brought to maturity by the exertions of a single reign, a nation cannot attain to the degree of happiness and prosperity to which it is capable of being carried, unless an uniformity of counsels, a consistency of public measures and designs, be continued through a succession of ages. This benefit may be expected with greater probability where the supreme power descends in the same race, and where each prince succeeds, in some sort, to the aim, pursuits, and disposition of his ancestor, than if the crown, at every change, devolve upon a stranger, whose first care will commonly be to pull down what his predecessor had built up; and to substitute sy stems of administration, which must, in their turn, give way to the more favour ite novelties of the next successor. ARISTOCRACIES are of two kinds.-First, where the power of the nobility belongs to them in their collective capacity alone; that is, where, although the government reside in an assembly of the order, yet the members of that assembly separately and indvidually possess no authority or privilege beyond the rest of the community :-this describes the constitution of Venice. Secondly, where the nobles are severally invested with great personal power and immunities, and where the power of the senate is little more than the aggregated power of the individuals who compose it :-this is the constitution of Poland. Of these two forms of government, the first is more tolerable than the last; for, although the members of a senate should many, or even all of them, be profligate enough to abuse the authority of their stations in the prosecution of private designs, yet, not being all under a temptation to the same injustice, not having all the same end to gain, it would still be difficult to obtain the consent of a majority to any specific act of oppression which the iniquity of an individual might prompt him to propose : or if the will were the same, the power is more confined; one tyrant, whether the tyranny reside in a single person, or a senate, cannot exercise oppression at so many places, at the same time, as it may be carried on by the dominion of a numerous nobility over their respective vassals and dependants. Of all species of domination, this is the most odious: the freedom and satisfaction of private life are more constrained and harassed by it than by the most vexatious law, or even by the lawless will of an arbitrary monarch, from whose knowledge, and from whose injustice, the greatest part of his subjects are removed by their distance, or concealed by their obscurity. Europe exhibits more than one modern example, where the people, aggrieved by the exactions, or provoked by the enormities, of their immediate superiors, have joined with the reigning prince in the overthrow of the aristocracy, deliberately exchanging their condition for the miseries of despotism. About the middle of the last century, the commons of Denmark, weary of the oppressions which they had long suffered from the nobles, and exasperated by some recent insults, presented themselves at the foot of the throne with a formal offer of their consent to establish unlimited dominion in the king. The revolution in Sweden, still more lately brought about with the acquiescence, not to say the assistance, of the people, owed its success to the same cause, namely, to the prospect of deliverance that it afforded from the tyranny which their nobles exercised under the old constitution. In England, the people beheld the depression of the barons, under the house of Tudor, with satisfaction, although they saw the crown acquiring thereby a power which no limitations that the constitution had then provided were likely to confine. The lesson to be drawn from such events, is this: that a mixed government, which admits a patrician order into its constitution, ought to circumscribe the personal privileges of the nobility, especially claims of hereditary jurisdiction and local authority, with a jealousy equal to the solicitude with which it wishes its own preservation for nothing so alienates the minds of the people from the government under which they live, by a perpetual sense of annoyance and inconveniency, or so prepares them for the practices of an enterprising prince or a factious demagogue, as the abuse which almost always accompanies the existence of separate immunities. : Amongst the inferior, but by no means inconsiderable advantages of a DEMOCRATIC constitution, or of a constitution in which the people partake of the power of legislation, the following should not be neglected: I. The direction which it gives to the education, studies, and pursuits, of the superior orders of the community. The share which this has in forming the public manners and national character, is very important. In countries, in which the gentry are excluded from all concern in the government, scarcely any thing is left which leads to advancement, but the profession of arms. They who do not addict themselves to this profession (and miserable must that country be, which constantly employs the military service of a great proportion of any order of its subjects!) are II. Popular elections procure to the common people courtesy from their superiors. That contemptuous and overbearing insolence, with which the lower orders of the community are wont to be treated by the higher, is greatly mitigated where the people have something to give. The assiduity with which their favour is sought upon these occasions, serves to generate settled habits of condescension and respect; and as human life is more embittered by affronts than injuries, whatever contributes to procure mildness and civility of manners towards those who are most liable to suffer from a contrary behaviour, corrects, with the pride, in a great measure, the evil of inequality, and deserves to be accounted among the most generous institutions of social life. commonly lost by the mere want of object and des- 1.part of the nation, the folly of village-statesmen and tination: that is, they either fall, without reserve, coffee-house politicians: but I allow nothing to be into the more sottish habits of animal gratification, a trifle which ministers to the harmless gratificaor entirely devote themselves to the attainment of tion of multitudes; nor any order of men to be inthose futile arts and decorations which compose significant, whose number bears a respectable the business and recommendations of a court: on proportion to the sum of the whole community. the other hand, where the whole, or any effective We have been accustomed to an opinion, that portion, of civil power is possessed by a popular as- a REPUBLICAN form of government suits only with sembly, more serious pursuits will be encouraged; the affairs of a small state: which opinion is foundpurer morals, and in a more intellectual character, ed in the consideration, that unless the people, will engage the public esteem; those faculties in every district of the empire, be admitted to a which qualify men for deliberation and debate, share in the national representation, the governand which ar ne fruit of sober habits, of early ment is not, as to them, a republic; that elections, and long-continued application, will be roused where the constituents are numerous, and disand animated by the reward which, of all others, persed through a wide extent of country, are conmost readily awakens the ambition of the human ducted with difficulty, or rather, indeed, managed mind-political dignity and importance. by the intrigues and combinations of a few, who are situated near the place of election each voter considering his single suffrage as too minute a portion of the general interest to deserve his care or attendance, much less to be worth any opposition to influence and application; that whilst we contract the representation within a compass small enough to admit of orderly debate, the interest of the constituent becomes too small, of the representative too great. It is difficult also to maintain any connexion between thein. He who represents two hundred thousand, is necessarily a stranger to the greatest part of those who elect him: and when his interest amongst them ceases to depend upon an acquaintance with their persons and character, or a care or knowledge of their affairs; when such a representative finds the treasures and honours of a great empire at the disposal of a few, and himself one of the few, there is little reason to hope that he will not prefer to his public duty those temptations of personal aggrandisement which his situation offers, and which the price of his vote will always purchase. All appeal to the people is precluded by the impossibility of collecting a sufficient proportion of their force and numbers. The factions and the unanimity of the senate are equally dangerous. Add to these considerations, that in a democratic constitution the mechanism is too complicated, and the motions too slow, for the operations of a great empire; whose defence and government require execution and despatch, in proportion to the magnitude, extent, and variety, of its concerns. There is weight, no doubt, in these reasons; but much of the objection seems to be done away by the contrivance of a federal republic, which, distributing the country into districts of a commodious extent, and leaving to each district its internal legislation, reserves to a convention of the states the adjustment of their relative claims; the levying, direction, and government, of the common force of the confederacy; the requisition of subsidies for the support of this force; the making of peace and war; the entering into treaties; the regulation of foreign commerce; the equalization of duties upon imports, so as to prevent the defrauding the revenue of one province by smuggling articles of taxation from the borders of another; and likewise so as to guard against undue partialities in the encouragement of trade. To what limits such a republic might, without inconveniency, enlarge its dominions, by assuming neighbouring provinces into the confederation; or how far it is capable of uniting the liberty of a small commonwealth with the safety of a powerful empire; or whether, amongst co-ordinate III. The satisfactions which the people in free governments derive from the knowledge and agitation of political subjects; such as the proceedings and debates of the senate; the conduct and characters of ministers; the revolutions, intrigues, and contentions of parties; and, in general, from the discussion of public measures, questions, and occurrences. Subjects of this sort excite just enough of interest and emotion to afford a moderate engagement to the thoughts, without rising to any painful degree of anxiety, or ever leaving a fixed operation upon the spirits;-and what is this, but the end and aim of all those amusements which compose so much of the business of life and of the value of riches? For my part (and I believe it to be the case with most men who are arrived at the middle age, and occupy the middle classes of life,) had I all the money which I pay in taxes to government, at liberty to lay out upon amusement and diversion, I know not whether I could make choice of any in which I could find greater pleasure than what I receive from expecting, hearing, and relating public news; reading parliamentary debates and proceedings; canvass ing the political arguments, projects, predictions, and intelligence, which are conveyed by various channels, to every corner of the kingdom. These topics, exciting universal curiosity, and being such as almost every man is ready to form and prepared to deliver his opinion about, greatly promote, and, I think, improve conversation. They render it more rational and more innocent; they supply a substitute for drinking, gaming, scandal, and obscenity. Now the secrecy, the jealousy, the solitude, and precipitation, of despotic governments, exclude all this. But the loss, you say, is trifling. I know that it is possible to render even the mention of it ridiculous by representing it as the idle employment of the most insignificant |