that have smitten those walls once so glorious, and converted the splendour of a populous city into a mournful solitude and a scene of ruins!.... But, since all the evils that have afflicted the life of man, have had their source and commencement in his own bosom, it was there also that he ought to have looked for their proper remedies, where certainly they are alone to be found.

CHAP. IX.

ORIGIN OF GOVERNMENTS AND OF LAWS.

BUT, it was not long before the period arrived, when men, tired of the wrongs and sufferings they had mutually brought upon each other, sighed after peace; and, reflecting on the nature and causes of their misfortunes, they said to one another: "We mutually injure each other by our passions; and, from all of us grasping at every thing, we individually possess nothing. What one seizes by force to-day, another dispossesses him of by the same means to-morrow; and hence our greediness is constantly recoiling upon our own heads. Let us establish certain persons as arbitrators to decide upon our pretensions and claims, in order to conciliate and put an end to our disturbances. When the strong happens to rise up against the weak, the arbitrator shall check him, and shall hold every one at his disposal for the suppression of violence; and the life and property of each be

ing thus under a common guarantee and protection, we shall collectively enjoy all the blessings of nature."

Hence it was, that conventional compacts, tacit or expressed, were formed in different societies, and became the rule of action in individuals, the standard of their rights, and the law of their reciprocal relations. Particular persons were also deputed to enforce the observance of these compacts; and into the hands of these official characters, the people committed the scale of justice for the balancing of their rights, and the sword of power for the punishment of transgressions.

Thus, a happy equilibrium of power and of action, now became established among individuals, which constituted the public safety. The names of equity and of justice were acknowledged and revered in every quarter. Every man being thereby enabled to enjoy in perfect peace the fruits of his labour, gave himself up to the natural emotions of his soul; and the flame of activity, awakened and kept alive by real or expected enjoyments, called forth all the treasures both of art and nature. The fields were covered with crops, the valleys with flocks, the hills with fruitage, the sea with ships; and man himself became happy and powerful upon the earth.

Thus, the disorder which his own imprudence had occasioned, was remedied by his own wisdom. But this very wisdom was simply the effect of the operative laws of nature in the organization of his own being. For, it was to secure his own enjoyments, that he was

led to respect those of another, and his intemperate lust after his own personal aggrandizement, found its corrective in a more enlightened love of self.

Hence, love of self, the eternal spring of action in every individual, has become the necessary basis of all confederative association; and it is on the observance of this natural law, that the fate of every nation has actually depended. Have the conventional laws of human fabrication accorded in any instance with this law, and run parallel with its intentions? In every such case, each member of society, acting under the impulse of a vigourous instinct, has separately exerted all the powers of his nature, and the public felicity has been the resulting compound of all the sundry portions of individual felicity. Have these laws, on the contrary, impeded the efforts of man in his progress towards his own happiness? In every such case, his heart, bereft of its natural excitements, has drooped and sunk into languor and inaction; and the feeble and enervated state of individuals has consequently engendered universal debility in the aggregate body.

But, since love of self, by its occasional impetuosity and improvidence, is incessantly urging one man to encroach upon another, and, of course, perpetually tending towards the dissolution of society, the whole art of legislation, as well as the virtue of the executive ministers, have, in effect, consisted in regulating the conflict of greedy and contending passions, in keeping all the different branches

of power in a proper equipoise, and in securing to each individual his own welfare, so that in case of struggle or hostilities betwixt society and society, the members should all feel an equal interest in the preservation and defence of the commonweal.

Hence it follows, that the domestic splendour and prosperity of empires have been in proportion to the equity of their governments and laws; and their respective power and influence abroad entirely commensurate with the number of persons interested, and their degree of interest in the maintenance of the

common cause.

On the other hand, the circumstance of the popular body becoming gradually more numerous, and their consequent relations more complex, having rendered the exact delineation of their rights a point of difficult attainment; perpetual excursions of the passions having given rise to unforeseen incidents; the social compacts that were formed having proved faulty and inadequate, or become invalidated; the framers of the laws having, either from real or pretended indiscernment, misconceived the object and tenor of them, and the persons appointed to execute them, instead of curbing the licentious desires of others, having abandoned themselves to the same vicious propensities; in short, all these various causes co-operating, the peace of society at length degenerated into anarchy and wild disorder; and thus, false systems of law and unjust governments, the inevitable result of greediness and selfish ignorance, have sown

the seeds of all those thorns of political affliction, which have been the bane of public happiness, and the subversion of states.

CHAP. X.

GENERAL CAUSES OF THE PROSPERITY OF ANCIENI STATES.

SUCH, O man, who inquirest after wisdom, have been the causes of the revolutions of those ancient states, of which thou art contemplating the ruins! Upon whatever spot I fix my view, to whatever period my thoughts recur, the same principles of growth and decay, of rise and decline, present themselves to my mind. When a people at any time has been powerful, or an empire has flourished, it was because the conventional laws were conformable to those of nature; because the government granted to every man respectively the free use of his faculties, and an equal security of his person and property. When, on the contrary, an empire has sunk into ruin or dissolution, it is because the laws were radically bad or imperfect, or because a corrupt government had trampled upon them and checked their operation. And, when laws and governments, which at the outset were strictly rational and just, have afterwards degenerated and become depraved, it is because the alternative of good and evil, derives from the very nature of the heart of man, from the succession of his inclinations and propensi