knows that his life is in immediate jeopardy, stuns or murders his victim lest he should be killed himself. The great evil which a family sustains by a robbery is often not the loss, but the terror and the danger; and these are the evils which, by the exercise of forbearance, would be diminished. So that, if some bad men are prevented from committing robberies by the fear of death, the public gains in other ways by the forbearance: nor is it by any means certain that the balance of advantages is in favour of the more violent course.- -The argument which we are opposing proceeds on the supposition that our own lives are endangered. Now it is a fact that this very danger results, in part, from the want of habits of forbearance. We publicly profess that we would kill an assailant; and the assailant, knowing this, prepares to kill us when otherwise he would forbear. And after all, if it were granted that a person is at liberty to take an assailant's life in order to preserve his own, how is he to know, in the majority of instances, whether his own would be taken? When a man breaks into a person's house, and this person, as soon as he comes up with the robber, takes out a pistol and shoots him, we are not to be told that this man was killed "in defence of life." Or go a step further, and a step further still, by which the intention of the robber to commit personal violence or inflict death is more and more probable:-you must at last shoot him in uncertainty whether your life was endangered or not. Besides, you can withdraw -you can fly. None but the predetermined murderer wishes to commit murder. But perhaps you exclaim" Fly! Fly, and leave your property unprotected!" Yes-unless you mean to say that preservation of property, as well as preservation of life, makes it lawful to kill an offender. This were to adopt a new and a very different proposition; but a proposition which I suspect cannot be separated in practice from the former. He who affirms that he may kill another in order to preserve his life, and that he may endanger his life in order to protect his property, does in reality affirm that he may kill another in order to preserve his property. But such a proposition, in an unconditional form, no one surely will tolerate. The laws of the land do not admit it, nor do they even admit the right of taking another's life simply because he is attempting to take ours. They require that we should be tender even of the murderer's life, and that we should fly rather than destroy it.* We say that the proposition that we may take life in order to preserve our property is intolerable. To preserve how much? five hundred pounds, or fifty, or ten, or a shilling, or a sixpence? It has actually been declared that the rights of self-defence "justify a man in taking all forcible methods which are necessary, in order to procure the restitution of the freed m or the property of which he had been unjustly deprived."+ All forcible methods to obtain restitution of property! No limit to the nature or effects of the force! No limit to the insignificance of the amount of the property! Apply, then, the rule. A boy snatches a bunch of grapes from a fruiterer's stall. The fruiterer runs after the thief, but finds that he is too light of foot to be overtaken. Moreover, the boy eats as he runs. "All forcible methods," reasons the fruiterer, "are justifiable to obtain restitution of property. I may fire after the plunderer, and when he falls regain my grapes." All this is just and right, if Gisborne's proposition is true. It is a dangerous thing to lay down maxims in morality. The conclusion, then, to which we are led by these Blackstone: Com. v. 4, c. 4. + Gisborne Moral Philosophy. enquiries is, that he who kills another, even upon the plea of self-defence, does not do it in the predominance nor in the exercise of Christian dispositions; and if this is true, is it not also true, that his life cannot be thus taken in conformity with the Christian law? But this is very far from concluding that no resistance may be made to aggression. We may make, and we ought to make, a great deal. It is the duty of the civil magistrate to repress the violence of one mau towards another, and by consequence it is the duty of the individual, when the civil power cannot operate, to endeavour to repress it himself. I perceive no reasonable exception to the rule--that whatever Christianity permits the magistrate to do in order to restrain violence, it permits the individual, under such circumstances, to do also. I know the consequences to which this rule leads in the case of the punishment of death, and of other questions. These questions will hereafter be discussed. In the mean time, it may be an act of candour to the reader to acknowledge, that our chief motive for the discussions of the present chapter, has been to pioneer the way for a satisfactory investigation of the Punishment of Death, and of other modes by which human life is taken away. Many kinds of resistance to aggression come strictly within the fulfilment of the law of benevolence. He who, by securing, or temporarily disabling a man, prevents him from committing an act of great turpitude, is certainly his benefactor; and if he be thus reserved for justice, the benevolence is great both to him and to the public. It is an act of much kindness to a bad man to secure him for the penalties of the law or it would be such, if penal law were in the state in which it ought to be, and to which it appears to be making some approaches. It would then be very probable that the man would be reformed and this is the greatest benefit which can be conferred upon him and upon the community. The exercise of Christian forbearance towards violent men is not tantamount to an invitation of outrage. Cowardice is one thing; this forbearance is another. The man of true forbearance is of all men the least cowardly. It requires courage in a greater degree and of a higher order to practise it when life is threatened, than to draw a sword or fire a pistol. -No: It is the peculiar privilege of Christian virtue to approve itself even to the bad. There is something in the nature of that calmness, and self-possession, and forbearance, that religion effects, which obtains, nay which almost commands regard and respect. How different the effect upon the violent tenants of Newgate, the hardihood of a turnkey and the mild courage of an Elizabeth Fry! Experience, incontestable experience, has proved, that the minds of few men are so depraved or desperate as to prevent them from being influenced by real Christian conduct. Let him therefore who advocates the taking the life of an agressor, first show that all other means of safety are vain; let him show that bad men, notwithstanding the exercise of true Christian forbearance, persist in their purposes of death :— when he has done this he will have adduced an argument in favour of taking their lives which will not, indeed, be conclusive, but which will approach nearer to conclusiveness than any that has yet been adduced. Of the consequences of forbearance, even in the case of personal attack, there are some examples: Archbishop Sharpe was assaulted by a footpad on the highway, who presented a pistol and demanded his money. The Archbishop spoke to the robber in the language of a fellow man and of a Christian. The man was really in distress, and the prelate gave G him such money as he had, and promised that, if he would call at the palace, he would make up the amount to fifty pounds. This was the sum of which the robber had said he stood in the utmost need. The man called and received the money. About a year and a half afterwards, this man again came to the palace and brought back the same sum. He said that his circumstances had become improved, and that, through the "astonishing goodness" of the Archbishop, he had become "the most penitent, the most grateful, and happiest of his species."-Let the reader consider how different the Archbishop's feelings were, from what they would have been if, by his hand, this man had been cut off. * Barclay, the Apologist, was attacked by a highwayman. He substituted for the ordinary modes of resistance, a calm expostulation. The felon dropped his presented pistol, and offered no further violence. A Leonard Fell was similarly attacked, and from him the robber took both his money and his horse, and then threatened to blow out his brains. Fell solemnly spoke to the man on the wickedness of his life. The robber was astonished: he had expected, perhaps, curses, or perhaps a dagger. He declared he would not keep either the horse or the money, and returned both. "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head."†-The tenor of the short narrative that follows is somewhat different. Ellwood, who is known to the literary world as the suggester to Milton of Paradise Regained, was attending his father in his coach. Two men waylaid them in the dark and stopped the carriage. Young Ellwood got out, and on going up to the nearest, the ruffian raised a heavy club, "when," says Ellwood, "I See Lond. Chron. Aug. 12, 1785. See also life of Granville Sharpe, Esq., p. 13. +"Select Anecdotes, &c." by John Barclay. whipt out my rapier and made a pass upon him. I could not have failed running him through up to the hilt," but the sudden appearance of the bright blade terrified the man so, that he stepped aside, avoided the thrust, and both he and the other fled. "At that time," proceeds Ellwood, "and for a good while after, I had no regret upon my mind for what I had done." This was whilst he was young, and when the forbearing principles of Christianity had little influence upon him. But afterwards, when this influence became powerful, 66 a sort of horror," he says, "seized on me when I considered how near I had been to the staining of my hands with human blood. And whensoever afterwards I went that way, and indeed as often since as the matter has come into my remembrance, my soul has blessed Him who preserved and withheld me from shedding man's blood."* That those over whom, as over Ellwood, the influence of Christianity is imperfect and weak, should think themselves at liberty upon such occasions to take the lives of their fellow-men, needs to be no subject of wonder. Christianity, if we would rightly estimate its obligations, must be felt in the heart. They in whose hearts it is not felt, or felt but little, cannot be expected perfectly to know what its obligations are. I know not therefore that more appropriate advice can be given to him who contends for the lawfulness of taking another man's life in order to save his own, than that he would first enquire whether the influence of religion is dominant in his mind. If it is not, let him suspend his decision until he has attained to the fulness of the stature of a Christian man. Then, as he will be of that number who do the Will of Heaven, he may hope to "know of this doctrine whether it be of God." Ellwood's Life ESSAY III.* POLITICAL RIGHTS AND OBLIGATIONS. CHAPTER I. PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL TRUTH, AND OF POLITICAL RECTITIUDE. I.-" Political Power is rightly exercised only when it is possessed by consent of the community"--Governors officers of the Public-Transfer of their rights by a whole people-The people hold the sovereign power-Right of Governors-A conciliating system. II." Political Power is rightly exercised only when it sub. serves the welfare of the community "-Interference with other nations-Present expedients for present occasionsProper business of Governments. III." Political Power is rightly exercised only when it subserves the welfare of the community by means which the Moral Law permits"-The Moral Law alike binding on nations and individuals-Deviation from rectitude impolitic-"The Holy Alliance"-Durable fame. THE fundamental principles which are deducible [This Essay the author did not live to revise, a circumstance which will account for a want of complete connexion of the different parts of a subject which the reader will sometimes meet with. There occur also in this part of the manuscript numerous memoranda, which the author intended to make use of in a future revision These are to be distinguished from the Notes, as the former refer, not to any particular passage, but only to the subject of the chapter or section. They were hastily, as the thought occurred, written in the margin or on a blank leaf of the manuscript, and they are here introduced at the bottom of the page, in those parts to which they appear to have the nearest reference.-ED.] Grotius argues that sovereign power may be possessed by governors, so that it shall not rightfully belong to the community. He says, "From the Jewish as well as the Roman law it appears, that any one might engage himself in private servitude to whom he pleased. Now if an individual may do so, why may not a whole people, for the benefit of better government and more certain protection, completely transfer their sovereign rights to one or more persons without reserving any portion to themselves?” * I answer, No individual may do this: and, If he might, it would not serve the doctrine in the case of nations. It never can be right for a man to resign the absolute direction of his conduct to another, because he must then do actions good or bad as that other might command-he must lie, or rob, or assassinate; and of this common sense would pronounce the impropriety, if the Moral Law did not. And if you say a man ought not so to resign himself to another, then I answer, he does not transfer soveends the argument. liberty, they are more happy than by retaining, or attempting to retain, the whole. Government, whatever be its form, is the agent by which the inexpedient portion of individual liberty is taken away. Men institute government for their own advantage, and because they find they are more happy with it than without it. This is the sole reason, in principle, how little soever it be adverted to in practice. Governors, therefore, are the officers of the public, in the proper sense of the word: not the slaves of the public; for if they do not incline to conform to the public will, they are at liberty, like other officers, to give up their office. They are servants, in the same manner, and for the same purpose, as a solicitor is the servant of his client, and the physician of his patient. These are employed by the patient or the client voluntarily for his own advantage, and for nothing else. A nation, (not an individual, but a nation,) is under no other obligation to obedience, than that which arises from the conviction that obedience is good for itself:-or rather, in more pro-reign power but retains it himself-which, in truth, per language, a nation is under no obligation to obedience at all. Obedience is voluntary. If they do not think it proper to obey—that is, if they are not satisfied with their officers-they are at liberty to discontinue their obedience, and to appoint other officers instead. That which is thus true as an universal proposition, is asserted with respect to this country by the present king: *" The powers and prerogatives of the crown are vested there as a trust for the benefit of the people; and they are sacred only as they are necessary to the preservation of that poise and balance of the constitution which experience has proved to be the best security of the liberty of the subject."+ It is incidental to the office of the First public servants, that they should exercise authority over those by whom they are selected; and hence, probably, it has happened that the terms "public offi cer, ," "public servant," have excited such strange controversies in the world. Men have not maintained sufficient discrimination of ideas. Seeing that governors are great and authoritative, a man imagines it cannot be proper to say they are servants. Seeing that it is necessary and right that individuals should obey, he cannot entertain the notion that they are the servants of those whom they govern. The truth is, that governors are not the servants of individuals but of the community. They are the masters of individuals, the servants of the public; and if this simple distinction had been sufficiently borne in mind, much perhaps of the vehement contention upon these matters had been avoided. But the idea of being a servant of the public, is quite consistent with the idea of exercising authority over them. The common language of a patient is founded upon similar grounds. He sends for a physician-the physician comes at his desire--is paid for his services-and then the patient says, I am ordered to adopt a regimen, I am ordered to Italy; -and he obeys, not because he may not refuse to obey if he chooses, but because he confides in the judgment of the physician, and thinks that it is more to his benefit to be guided by the physician's judgment than by his own. But it will be said the physician cannot enforce his orders upon the patient against his will neither I answer can the governor enforce his upon the public against theirs. No doubt Governors do sometimes so enforce them. What they do, however, and what they rightfully do, are separate considerations, and our business is only with the latter. But if the doctrine were sound for the individual, it is unsound for a community. What is meant by the "transfer of their sovereign rights by a whole people?" Is every man, woman, and child, in the country formally to sign the transfer? If not, how shall a whole people transfer it? At any rate, if they did, their resignation could not bind their children or successors. Besides, there is the same objection to this transfer of the sovereign power on the part of a nation as on the part of an individual. The thing is absurd in reason, and criminal in morals. Grotius illustrates his argument by "that authority to which a woman submits when she gives herself to her husband." But she does not submit to sovereign authority. He says again, "some powers are conferred for the sake of the governor, as the right of a master over a slave." But such powers are never justly conferred. After all, these arguments do but establish, in reality, the fundamental position. They assume that a people can resign the sovereign power; which is the same thing as to acknowledge that they rightfully possess it. Grotius himself says, "A state is a perfect body of free men, united together in order to enjoy common rights and advantages." † It gives some anxiety to the mind of the writer, lest the reader should identify his principles with those of many who have asserted the "sovereignty of the people." This doctrine has been insisted upon by persons who have mingled with it, or deduced from it, principles which the writer not merely rejects, but abhors. A doctrine is not unsound because it has been abvocated or perverted by bad men; and it is neither rational nor honest to reprobate a truth because it has been viciously associated. Gifford, in his life of Pitt, complains of Fox, who by a strange perversion of terms, and a confusion of intellect that would have disgraced even a schoolboy, called his sovereign the servant of the people." "This," says Gifford, "was a servile imitation of the French regicides, and a direct encouragement to all the theoretical reveries of all the disaffected in England." This is the species of association which I would deprecate: French regicides taught the doctrine, and disaffected theorists taught it. sorry that a truth should be so connected; but it is not the less a truth. The "confusion of intellect of which Gifford speaks, probably subsisted more in the writer than in Fox-for reasons which the reader has just seen, and because the biographer * Rights of War and Peace, b. 1. c. 3, s. 8, f Rights of War and Peace. I am had probably confounded the doctrine with the conduct of some who supported it. The reader should practise a little of the power of abstraction, and detach accidental associations from truth itself. In reality, it cannot be asserted that the people do not rightfully possess the supreme power, without asserting that governors may do what they will, and be as tyrannical as they will. Who may prevent them? The people? Then the people hold the Sovereign power. Many political constitutions have existed in which the governor was held to be absolutely the supreme power. The antiquity of such constitutions, or the regular succession of the existing governor, does not make his pretensions to this power just, because the principles on which it is ascertained that the people are supreme, are antecedent to all questions of usage, and superior to them. No injustice, therefore, is done-nothing wrong is done-in diminishing or taking away the power of an absolute monarch, notwithstanding the regularity of his pretensions to it. Yet other principles have been held: and it was said of Louis the Sixteenth, that as he "was the sole maker and executor of the laws," and as this power "had been exercised by him and by his ancestors for centuries without question or control, it was not in the power of the states to deprive him of any portion of it without his own consent." So that we are told that many millions of persons ought to be subject for ever to the vices or caprices of one man, in compliment to the fact that their predecessors had been subject before them. * He who maintains such doctrine, surely forgets for what purpose government is instituted at all. The rule that "Political Power is rightly possed only when it is possessed by consent of the community," necessarily applies to the choice of the person who is to exercise it. No man, and no set of men, rightly govern unless they are preferred by the public to others. It is of no consequence that a people should formally select a president or a king. They continually act upon the principle without this. A people who are satisfied with their governor make, day by day, the choice of which we speak. They prefer him to all others; they choose to be served by him rather than by any other; and he, therefore, is virtually, though not formally, selected by the public. But, when we speak of the right of a particular person or family to govern a people, we speak, as of all other rights, in conditional language. The right consists in the preference which is given to him; and exists no longer than that preference exists. If any governor were fully conscious that the community preferred another man or another kind of government, he ought to regard himself in the light of an usurper if he nevertheless continues to retain his power. Not that every government ought to dissolve itself, or every governor to abdicate his office, because there is a general but temporary clamour against it. This is one thing-the steady deliberate judgment of the people is another. Is it too much to hope that the time may come when governments will so habitually refer to the purposes of government, and be regulated by them, that they will not even wish to hold the reins longer than the We do not here defend the conduct of the states, or censure that of Louis: we speak merely of the political Truth. That atrocious course of wickedness, the French Revolution, was occasioned by the abuses of the old government and its ramifications. The French people, unhappily, had neither virtue enough nor political knowledge enough, to reform these abuses by proper means. A revolution of some kind, and at some period, awaits, I doubt not, every despotic government in Europe and in the world. Happy will it be for those rulers who timely and wisely regard the irresistible progress of Public Opinion! And happy for those communities which endeavour reformation only by virtuous means. people desire it; and that nothing more will be needed for a quiet alteration than that the public judgment should be quietly expressed? Political revolutions are not often favourable to the accurate illustration of political truth; because, such is the moral condition of mankind, that they have seldom acted in conformity with it. Revolutions have commonly been the effect of the triumph of a party, or of the successes of physical power. Yet, if the illustration of these principles has not been accurate, the general position of the right of the people to select their own rulers has often been illustrated. In our own country, when James II. left the throne, the people filled it with another person, whose real title consisted in the choice of the people. James continued to talk of his rights to the crown; but if William was preferred by the public, James was, what his son was afterwards called, a Pretender. The nonjurors appear to have acted upon erroneous principles, (except indeed on the score of former oaths to James; which, however, ought never to have been taken.) If we acquit them of motives of party, they will appear to have entertained some notions of the rights of governors independently of the wishes of the people. William's death, the nation preferred James's daughter to his son; thus again elevating their judgments above all considerations of what the Pretender called his rights. Anne had then a right to the throne, and her brother had not. At the death of Anne, or rather in contemplation of her death, the public had again to select their governor; and they chose, not the immediate representative of the old family, but the Elector of Hanover; and it is in virtue of the same choice, tacitly expressed at the present hour, that the heir of the Elector now fills the throne. At [The habitual consciousness on the part of a legislature, that its authority is possessed in order to make it an efficient guardian and promoter of the general welfare and the general satisfaction, would induce a more mild and conciliating system of internal policy than that which frequently obtains. Whether it has arisen from habit resulting from the violent and imperious character of international policy, or from that tendency to unkindness and overbearing which the consciousness of power induces, it cannot be doubted that measures of government are frequently adopted and conducted with such a high hand as impairs the satisfaction of the governed, and diminishes, by example, that considerate attention to the claims of others, upon which much of the harmony, and therefore the happiness, of society consists. Governments are too much afraid of conciliation. They too habitually suppose that mildness or concession indicates want of courage or want of power-that it invites unreasonable demands, and encourages encroachment and violence on the part of the governed. Man is not so intractable a being, or so insensible of the influence of candour and justice. In private life, he does not the most easily guide the conduct of his neighbours, who assumes an imperious, but he who assumes a temperate and mild demeanour. The best mode of governing, and the most powerful mode too, is to recommend state measures to the judgment and the affections of a people. If this had been sufficiently done in periods of tranquillity, some of those conflicts which have arisen between governments and the people had doubtless been prevented; and governments had been spared the mortification of conceding that to violence which they refused to concede in periods of quiet. We should not wait for times of agitation to do that which Fox advised even at such a time, because at other periods it may be done with greater advantage, and with a better grace. "It may be asked," says Fox, "what I would propose to do in times of agitation like the present? I will answer openly :-If there is a tendency in the Dissenters to discontent, what should I do? I would instantly repeal the corporation and test acts, and take from them thereby all cause of complaint. If there were any persons tinctured with a republican spirit, I would endeavour to amend the representation of the Commons, and to prove that the House of Commons, though not chosen by all, should have no other interest than to prove itself the representative of all. If men were dissatisfied on account of disabilities or exemptions, &c., I would repeal the penal statutes, which are a disgrace to our law-books. If there were other complaints of grievance, I would redress them where they were really proved; but, above all, I would constantly, cheerfully, patiently listen; I would make it known, that if any man felt, or thought he felt, a grievance, he might come freely to the bar of this House and bring his proofs. And it should be made manifest to all the world that where they did exist they should be redressed; where not, it should be made manifest." We need not consider the particular examples and measures which the statesman instanced. The temper and spirit is the thing. A government should do that of which every person would see the propriety in a private man; if misconduct was charged upon him, show that the charge was unfounded; or, being substantiated, amend his conduct.] This proposition is consequent of the truth of the last. The community, which has the right to withhold power, delegates it, of course, for its own advantage. If in any case its advantage is not consulted, then the object for which it was delegated is frustrated; or, in simple words, the measure which does not promote the public welfare is not right. It matters nothing whether the community have delegated specifically so much power for such and such purposes; the power, being possessed, entails the obligation. Whether a sovereign derives absolute authority by inheritance, or whether a president is entrusted with limited authority for a year, the principles of their duty are the same. The obligation to employ it only for the public good, is just as real and just as great in one case as in the other. The Russian and the Turk have the same right to require that the power of their rulers shall be so employed as the Englishman or American. They may not be able to assert this right, but that does not affect its existence nor the ruler's duty, nor his responsibility to that Almighty Being before whom he must give an account of his stewardship. These reasonings, if they needed confirmation, derive it from the fact that the Deity imperatively requires us, according to our opportunities, to do good to man. But, how ready soever men are to admit the truth of this proposition, as a proposition, it is very commonly disregarded in practice; and a vast variety of motives and objects direct the conduct of governments which have no connexion with the public weal. Some pretensions of consulting the public weal are, indeed, usual. It is not to be supposed that when public officers are pursuing their own schemes and Fell's Memoirs of the Public Life of C. J. Fox. | interests, they will tell the people that they disregard theirs. When we look over the history of a Christian nation, it is found that a large proportion of these measures which are most prominent in it, had little tendency to subserve, and did not subserve the public good. In practice, it is very often forgotten for what purpose governments are instituted. If a man were to look over twenty treaties, he would probably find that a half of them had very little to do with the welfare of the respective communities. He might find a great deal about Charles's rights, and Frederick's honour, and Louis's possessions, and Francis's interests, as if the proper subjects of international arrangements were those which respected rulers rather than communities. If a man looks over the state papers which inform him of the origin of a war, he will probably find that they agitate questions about Most Christian and Most Catholic Kings, and High Mightinesses, and Imperial Majesties-questions, however, in which Frenchmen, and Spaniards, and Dutch, and Austrians, are very little interested or concerned, or at any rate much less interested than they are in avoiding the quarrel. Governments commonly trouble themselves unnecessarily and too much with the politics of other nations. A prince should turn his back towards other countries and his face towards his own-just as the proper place of a landholder is upon his own estates and not upon his neighbour's. If governments were wise, it would erelong be found that a great portion of the endless and wearisome succession of treaties, and remonstrances, and embassies, and alliances, and memorials, and subsidies, might be dispensed with, with so little inconvenience and so much benefit, that the world would wonder to think to what futile ends they had been busying, and how needlessly they had been injuring themselves. No doubt, the immoral and irrational system of international politics which generally obtains, makes the path of one government more difficult than it would otherwise be; and yet it is probable that the most efficacious way of inducing another government to attend to its proper business, would be to attend to our own. It is not sufficiently considered, nor indeed is it sufficiently known, how powerful is the influence of uprightness and candour in conciliating the good opinion and the good offices of other men. Overreaching and chicanery in one person, induce overreaching and chicanery in another. Men distrust those whom they perceive to be unworthy of confidence. Real integrity is not without its voucher in the hearts of others; and they who maintain it are treated with confidence, because it is seen that confidence can be safely reposed. Besides, he who busies himself with the politics of foreign countries, like the busy bodies in a petty community, does not fail to offend. In the last century, our own country was so much of a busy body, and had involved itself in such a multitude of treaties and alliances, that it was found, I believe, quite impossible to fulfil one, without, by that very act, violating another. This, of course, would offend. In private life, that man passes through the world with the least annoyance and the greatest satisfaction, who confines his attention to its proper business, that is, generally, to his own: and who can tell why the experience of nations should in this case be different from that of private men? In a rectified state of international affairs, half a dozen princes on a continent would have little more occasion to meddle with one another than half a dozen neighbours in a street. But indeed, Communities frequently contribute to their own injury. If governors are ambitious, or resentful, or proud, so, often, are the people;-and the public good has often been sacrificed by the public, with |