nifter in the government of men, in which they ftand in the person of God himself, fhould have high and worthy notions of their function and destination; that their hope fhould be full of immortality; that they should not look to the paltry pelf of the moment, nor to the temporary and tranfient praise of the vulgar, but to a folid, permanent existence, in the permanent part of their nature, and to a permanent fame and glory, in the example they leave as a rich inheritance to the world.

Such fublime principles ought to be infused into perfons of exalted fituations; and religious establishments provided, that may continually revive and enforce them. Every fort of moral, every fort of civil, every fort of politic inftitution, aiding the rational and natural ties that connect the human understanding and affections to the divine, are not more than neceffary, in order to build up that wonderful ftructure, Man; whose prerogative it is, to be in a great degree a creature of his own making; and who when made as he ought to be made, is destined to hold no trivial place in the creation. But whenever man is put over men, as the better nature ought ever to prefide, in that cafe more particularly, he should as nearly as poffible be approximated to his perfection.

The confecration of the ftate, by a state religipus establishment, is neceffary also to operate with an wholesome awe upon free citizens; because, in order to fecure their freedom, they must enjoy fome determinate portion of power.

Το

them

them therefore a religion connected with the ftate, and with their duty towards it, becomes even more neceffary than in fuch focieties, where the people by the terms of their fubjection are confined to private fentiments, and the management of their own family concerns. All perfons poffeffing any portion of power ought to be ftrongly and awefully impreffed with an idea that they act in trust; and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great master, author and founder of fociety.

This principle ought even to be more ftrongly impreffed upon the minds of thofe who compose the collective fovereignty than upon those of fingle princes. Without inftruments, these princes can do nothing. Whoever ufes inftruments, in finding helps, finds alfo impediments. Their power is therefore by no means compleat; nor are they fafe in extreme abuse. Such perfons, however elevated by flattery, arrogance, and felf-opinion, must be fenfible that, whether covered or not by positive law, in fome way or other they are accountable even here for the abuse of their truft. If they are not cut off by a rebellion of their people, they may be ftrangled by the very Janiffaries kept for their fecurity against all other rebellion. Thus we

have feen the king of France fold by his foldiers for an encrease of pay. But where popular authority is abfolute and unrestrained, the people have an infinitely greater, because a far better founded confidence in their own power. They are themselves, in a great mea

fure,

4

fure, their own inftruments. They are nearer to their objects. Befides, they are lefs under refponfibility to one of the greateft controlling powers on earth, the fenfe of fame and eftimamation. The fhare of infamy that is likely to fall to the lot of each individual in public acts, is fmall indeed; the operation of opinion being in the inverfe ratio to the number of those who abufe power. Their own approbation of their own acts has to them the appearance of a public judgment in their favour. A perfect democracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the world. As it is the moft fhameless, it is alfo the most fearless. No man apprehends in his perfon he can be made fubject to punishment. Certainly the people at large never ought: for as all punishments are for example towards the confervation of the people at large, the people at large can never become the fubject of punishment by any human hand*. It is therefore of infinite importance that they fhould not be fuffered to imagine that their will, any more than that of kings, is the ftandard of right and wrong. They ought to be perfuaded that they are full as little entitled, and far lefs qualified, with fafety to themselves, to ufe any arbitrary power whatfoever; that therefore they are not, under à false fhew of liberty, but, in truth, to exercife an unnatural inverted domination, tyrannically to exact, from those who officiate in the ftate, not an entire devotion to their intereft, which is their right,

Quicquid multis peccatur inultum.

but

but an abject fubmiffion to their occafional will extinguishing thereby, in all thofe who ferve them, all moral principle, all fenfe of dignity, all ufe of judgment, and all confiftency of character, whilst by the very fame procefs they give themselves up a proper, a fuitable, but a moft contemptible prey to the fervile ambition of popular fycophants or courtly flatterers.

When the people have emptied themselves of all the luft of felfifh will, which without religion it is utterly impoffible they ever fhould, when they are confcious that they exercise, and exercife perhaps in an higher link of the order of delegation, the power, which to be legitimate must be according to that eternal immutable law, in which will and reafon are the fame, they will be more careful how they place power in bafe and incapable hands. In their nomination to office, they will not appoint to the exercise of authority, as to a pitiful job, but as to an holy function; not according to their fordid selfish intereft, nor to their wanton caprice, nor to their arbitrary will; but they will confer that power (which any man may well tremble to give or to receive) on thofe only, in whom they may difcern that predominant proportion of active virtue and wisdom, taken together and fitted to the charge, fuch, as in the great and inevitable mixed mass of human imperfections and infirmities, is to be found.

When they are habitually convinced that no evil can be acceptable, either in the act or the permiffion, to him whofe effence is good, they

will

will be better able to extirpate out of the mintis of all magistrates, civil, ecclefiaftical, or military, any thing that bears the leaft refemblance to a proud and lawless domination.

But one of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and the laws are confecrated, is left the temporary poffeffors and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their pofterity, fhould act as if they were the entire mafters; that they fhould not think it amongst their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their fociety; hazarding to leave to those who come after them, a ruin instead of an habitation-and teaching thefe fucceffors as little to refpect their contrivances, as they had themselves respected the inftitutions of their forefathers. By this unprincipled facility of changing the ftate as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a fummer.

And first of all the fcience of jurifprudence, the pride of the human intellect, which, with all its defects, redundancies, and errors, is the collected reafon of ages, combining the principles of original juftice with the infinite variety of human concerns, as a heap of old exploded errors, would be no longer ftudied.

Perfonal