pons

blishment of his own order in different kingdoms; or as a cardinal, under the poffibility, or even expectancy of the tiara, would not have armed fubjects with fuch powerful weaof freedom, felf-defence, and resistance against abfolute monarchy. The application of these general and fundamental principles of government to the English conftitution my plan will lead me hereafter to confider. *"Civil government (as I have before observed) is an institution of human prudence for guarding our perfons, our property, and our name, against invafion; and for fecuring to the members of a community that liberty, to which all have an equal right, as far as they do not by any overt act, ufe it to injure the liberty of others. Civil laws are regulations agreed upon by the community for gaining these ends; and civil magiftrates are officers appointed by the community for executing thefe laws. Obedience, therefore, to the laws and to magiftrates, is a neceffary expreffion of our regard to the community. Without it a community muft fall into a state of anarchy, that will destroy those rights, and fubvert that liberty, which it is the end of government to protect."

• Dr. Price's Difcourfe, delivered on the 4th Nov. 1789, p. 20, 21,

Intended

I

The advantages ment.

of civil govern

Intended malice fometimes confers an un→ intended benefit. So the malicious application of the general principles of principles of government by fome modern authors, may, by bringing on a thorough and impartial investigation of them, have removed the probability of their abuse being in future productive of any serious mifchief to the state. Truth courts investigation, and lives by difcuffion. Upon this principle Dr. Price is very emphatic in recommending free difcuffion. *« In short, we may, in this inftance, learn our duty from the conduct of the oppreffors of the world. They know, that light is hoftile to them, and therefore they labour to keep men in the dark. Remove the darkness, in which they invelope the world, and their ufurpations will be expofed, their power. will be fubverted, and the world emancipated." Every one will not perhaps agree with Dr. Price, that the whole world is enflaved, and that it therefore wants emancipation; yet no one certainly can differ from him in maintaining, that the cause of truth will be better fupported and maintained by the publication, than the fuppreffion of its principles. This motive encourages me in my progrefs.

The fubftantial ground of difference be

Dr. Price's Difcourfe, delivered on the 4th Nov. 1789, p. 14, 15.

tween

The danger of

extreme propo

fitions.

tween the diffenting parties, appears to me to arife in great measure from the generality of the propofitions, about which they differ. *« In a fubject, where truth and error lie arguing upon fo near to each other, divided by a line in many cafes not to be difcerned without care and attention, and where preingagements of intereft to one fide or the other are apt to bend and corrupt the judgment, it is no wonder to find great perplexity in men's notions and difputes, or that thofe, who lie in wait to deceive or embroil mankind, should choose a field of controverfy, in which there is fuch room for all the arts of sophistry. While they keep in generalities, (as fuch disputants always do) fome truth will be in their affertions, for the fake of which they cannot abfolutely be denied. To this they retreat for cover whenever they are preffed. By a little aggravation of the conclufions they oppose, they can easily reprefent them as exceffes, with popular topics for declamation and invective. While the minds of men are thus amused with generalities, and by artificial terrors of one extreme driven towards the other, the real point of truth is eafily kept out of fight, and the dispute between liberty and authority

• Dr. Roger's Vindication of the Civil Establishment of Religion, printed in 1728, p. 2 and 3.

How certain propofitions

commonly fup

pofed contra

dictory are re

concileable.

may on these terms be carried on for ever; but if we can fix the proper limits of each, we shall foon make them friends, and put an end to all confufion about them."

It is much to be lamented, that most of the writers upon thefe political fubjects have fet out, and continued through their whole career, upon the treacherous extremities of their respective doctrines. Under this exceffive tenfion, the different partizans view their antagonists in the lowest degree of depravity, and reprefent them in the groffeft terms of degradation. Thus this political maxim, falus populi fuprema lex," the welfare of the people is the first of all laws," is oppofed by one party to another maxim, omnis poteftas a Deo, "all power is from God;" and the abettors of each, from mifconceiving or misapplying them, run into the oppofite extremes, of attributing to individuals a jure divino indefeasible right to power, and of denying the existence of any monarchical right or power upon earth. Whereas if thefe two principles are but fairly reprefented, and rightly understood, they are not only confiftent with each other, but one effentially flows from the other; for as I have before obferved, fociety is effential to the phyfical nature of man; and power and govern

ment

ment are effential to the fubfiftence of fociety: thefe, therefore, like our existence, proceed immediately from God. In this generical and original fenfe of power, no one, I apprehend, will deny that the existence of all temporal or civil power proceeds from God; and in this fenfe I may cite the authority of the Apoftle; There is no power, but of God, and avail myself of the deduction, which Milton and others draw from it, that the inftitution of magiftracy is jure divino. But as our benevolent Creator has conftituted us free agents in this world, fo what particular form of government each nation fhould live under, and what perfons should be entrusted with the magiftracy, without doubt, was left to the choice of each nation. But ftill each particular form of government, adopted by different focieties or nations, must all tend ultimately to one and the fame end.

"The great end of men's entering into fociety being the enjoyment of their properties in peace and fafety, and the great inftrument and means of that being the laws eftablished in that society, the firft and fundamental positive law of all commonwealths is the establishing of the legislative power; as

* Locke of Civil Government, c. xi. p. 204.

E 2

the