2.1 OF THE IN AND DESIGN OF GOVER IN GENERAL.
WITH CISE REMARKS ON THE ENGLISH STITUTION
Some writers have so founded society with gover, as to leave little or no distin between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different ins.
Society is produced by our wants, and gover by our wiess; the former promotes our POSITIVELY by uniting our affes, the latter IVELY by restraining our vices. The one ences intercourse, the other creates distins.
The first a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but gover 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 GOVER, which we might expe a try WITHOUT GOVER, our calamity is heightened by refleg that we furnish the means by which we suffer.
Gover, like dress, is the badge of lost innoce; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of sce 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 prote of the rest; and this he is io do by the same prudence whi every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least. WHEREFORE, security being the true design and end of gover, it unanswerably follows, that whatever FORM thereof appears most likely to e to us, with the least expense and greatest be, is preferable to all others.
In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end of gover, let us suppose a small number of persoled in some sequestered part of the earth, unected with the rest, they will then represent the first peopling of any try, 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 assistand 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 of the on period of life without aplishing any thing; when he had felled his timber he could not remove it, 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 her 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.
Thus y, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessings of which, would supersede, and rehe obligations of law and gover unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but heaven is imprego vice, it will unavoidably happen, that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a on cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attat to each other; and this remissness will point out the y of establishing some form of govero supply the defeoral virtue.
Some veree will afford them a State-House, uhe branches of which, the whole ay assemble to deliberate on public matters.
It is more than probable that their first laws will have the title