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 leavelittle or no distinction between them; whereas they are not onlydifferent, but have different origins. Society is produced by ourwants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes ourhappiness positively by uniting our affections, the latternegatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first a patron, the last apunisher.Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in itsbest state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state anintolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the samemiseries by a government, which we might expect in a country withoutgovernment, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnishthe means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badgeof lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins ofthe 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 apart 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 everyother case advises him out of two evils to choose the least.Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, itunanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likelyto ensure it to us, with the least expence and greatest benefit, ispreferable to all others.In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end ofgovernment, let us suppose a small number of persons settled in somesequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the rest, they willthen represent the first peopling of any country, or of the world.In this state of natural liberty, society will be their firstthought. A thousand motives will excite them thereto, the strengthof one man is so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted forperpetual solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek assistance andrelief of another, who in his turn requires the same. Four or fiveunited would be able to raise a tolerable dwelling in the midst of awilderness, but one man might labour out of the common period oflife without accomplishing any thing; when he had felled his timberhe could not remove it, nor erect it after it was removed; hunger inthe mean time would urge him from his work, and every different wantcall him a different way. Disease, nay even misfortune would bedeath, for though neither might be mortal, yet either would disablehim from living, and reduce him to a state in which he might ratherbe said to perish than to die.Thus necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newlyarrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessings of which, would supersede, and render the obligations of law and governmentunnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but asnothing but heaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidablyhappen, that in proportion as they surmount the first difficultiesof emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, theywill begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other; andthis remissness, will point out the necessity, of establishing someform of government to supply the defect of moral vir