Essay 5: The Origin of Government

A man, who born in a family, is compelled to maintain society from:

• necessity
• natural inclination, and
• habit

In his farther progress, he is engaged to establish political society in order to administer justice.

• Without justice, there can be no peace, safety, nor mutual intercourse among them.
• We therefore, look at the vast apparatus of our government, as having ultimately no other purpose but the distribution of justice, or, in other words, the support of the twelve judges.
• The following are all subordinate in their end to this part of administration:
  • kings and parliaments
  • fleets and armies
  • officers of the court and revenue
  • ambassadors
  • ministers
  • privy-counsellors
  • Even the clergy, as their duty leads them to inculcate morality, may [38] justly be thought, so far as regards this world, to have no other useful object of their institution.

All men are sensible of the necessity of justice to maintain peace and order.

• All men are sensible of the necessity of peace and order for the maintenance of society.
• Yet, notwithstanding this strong and obvious necessity, such is the frailty or perverseness of our nature! it is impossible to keep men, faithfully and unerringly, in the paths of justice.
• Some extraordinary circumstances may happen, in which a man finds his interests to be more promoted by fraud or rapine, than hurt by the breach which his injustice makes in the social union.
• But much more frequently, he is seduced from his great and important, but distant interests, by the allurement of present, though often very frivolous temptations.
• This great weakness is incurable in human nature.

Men must, therefore, endeavour to palliate° what they cannot cure.

• They must institute some persons, called magistrates, whose peculiar° job is to:
  • point out the decrees of equity
  • punish transgressors
  • correct fraud and violence
  • oblige men, however reluctant, to consult their own real and permanent interests.
• In a word, Obedience is a new duty which must be invented to support that of Justice
  • The tyes° of equity must be corroborated by those of allegiance.

But still, abstractly, nothing is gained by this alliance.

• The factitious° duty of obedience, from its very nature, lays as feeble a hold of the human mind, as the primitive and natural duty of justice.
• Peculiar interests and present temptations may overcome the one and the other.
• They are equally exposed to the same inconvenience.
• The bad neighbour must be led by the same motives to be a bad citizen and subject.
• The magistrate himself may often be negligent, partial, or unjust in his administration.

Experience, however, proves, that there is a great difference between the cases.

• Order in society, we find, is much [39] better maintained by means of government.
• Our duty to the magistrate is more strictly guarded by the principles of human nature, than our duty to our fellow-citizens.
• The love of dominion is so strong in the breast of man.
  • Many, not only submit to, but court all the dangers, and fatigues, and cares of government.
  • Men, once raised to that station, though often led astray by private passions, find, in ordinary cases, a visible interest in the impartial administration of justice.
  • The persons, who first attain this distinction by the consent, tacit or express, of the people, must be endowed with superior personal qualities of valour, force, integrity, or prudence, which command respect and confidence.
  • After government is established, a regard to birth, rank, and station has a mighty influence over men, and enforces the decrees of the magistrate.
  • The prince or leader exclaims° against every disorder.
    • He summons all his partizans and all men of probity° to aid him in correcting it.
    • He is readily followed by all indifferent persons in the execution of his office.
    • He soon acquires the power of rewarding these services.
    • In the progress of society, he establishes subordinate ministers and often a military force.
      • They find an immediate and a visible interest, in supporting his authority.
• Habit soon consolidates what other principles of human nature had imperfectly founded.
  • Once accustomed to obedience, men never think of departing from such a path that they and their ancestors have constantly trod.
    • This path confines them by so many urgent and visible motives.

But this progress of human affairs may appear certain and inevitable.

• The support which allegiance brings to justice is founded on obvious principles of human nature.
• However, it cannot be expected that men should beforehand be able to discover them, or foresee their operation.
  • Government commences more casually and more imperfectly.
  • It is probable, that the first ascendant° of one man over multitudes begun during a state of war; where:
    • the superiority of courage and genius discovers itself most visibly,
    • the unanimity and concert [40] are most needed and
    • the pernicious effects of disorder are most sensibly felt.
• War is common among savage tribes.
  • Its long continuance enured the people to submission.
  • If the chieftain possessed as much equity as prudence and valour, he became, even during peace, the arbiter of all differences.
  • He could gradually establish his authority by a mixture of force and consent.
• The benefit sensibly felt from his influence, made it be cherished by the people, at least by the peaceable and well disposed among them.
• If his son enjoyed the same good qualities, government advanced the sooner to maturity and perfection.
• but was still in a feeble state, till the farther progress of improvement procured the magistrate a revenue, and enabled him to bestow rewards on the several instruments of his administration, and to inflict punishments on the refractory° and disobedient.
• Before that period, each exertion of his influence must have been:
  • particular, and
  • founded on the peculiar circumstances.
• After it, submission was no longer a matter of choice in the community.
  • It was rigorously exacted by the authority of the supreme magistrate.

In all governments, there is a perpetual intestine° struggle, open or secret, between Authority and Liberty.

• Neither of them can ever absolutely prevail in the contest.
• A great sacrifice of liberty must necessarily be made in every government.
  • Yet even the authority, which confines liberty, can never and should never, in any constitution, to become quite entire and uncontrollable.
• The sultan is master of the life and fortune of any individual.
  • But he will not be permitted to impose new taxes on his subjects.
• A French monarch can impose taxes at pleasure.
  • But he would find it dangerous to attempt the lives and fortunes of individuals.
• In most countries, religion also is commonly a very intractable principle.
  • Other principles or prejudices frequently resist all the authority of the civil magistrate.
  • The civil magistrate’s power is founded on opinion.
  • It can never subvert other opinions, equally rooted with that of his title to dominion.
• A government is free if it splits power among several members, whose united authority is no less, or is commonly greater than that of any monarch.
  • but who, in the usual course of administration, must act by general and equal laws, that are previously known to all the members and to all their subjects.
  • In this sense, liberty is the perfection of civil society.
• but still authority must be acknowledged essential to its very existence:
• Contests so often take place between the one and the other.
• The latter may, on that account, challenge the preference.
• Unless perhaps one may say with some reason that a circumstance, which is essential to the existence of civil society, must always support itself, and needs be guarded with less jealousy, than one that contributes only to its perfection, which the indolence of men is so apt to neglect, or their ignorance to overlook.