intimate that they are chargeable on all or on most of the individuals belonging to it. If unguarded expreffions fhould occafionally occur (and I can by no means expect entirely to have avoided them), they will be interpreted, I trust, according to the explanation which I have now given.

СНАР.

CHAP. II.

GENERAL REMARKS ON THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION.

ATTRACTED by social affections and fympathies; drawn together by common weakneffes and wants; familiarized during childhood to habits of intercourse and subordination; discovering from reason and from experience, that the enjoyment of natural rights among unconnected individuals must be extremely limited and precarious; men have shewn the strongest difpofition in every age to unite in civil societies. So powerful has this propensity evinced itself, fo great and multifarious have been the acceffions of fecurity and happiness which have univerfally refulted from the union; that perhaps not a fingle inftance can be produced where men of honeft views and fober understandings, who have once been in poffeffion of the bleffings of social intercourse, have spontaneously renounced all connections

nections with their fellow-creatures. It has been the ruffian, prowling like the wild beaft for his prey, or the enthufiaft, dreaming that aufterity is holiness, who has infulated himself in caves and deferts. Whenever by external circumstances a fociety once formed has been feparated or diffolved; whether in patriarchal days the death of the common parent, or the deficiency of pafturage, induced the younger branches of the family to feek fresh habitations; whether in later times the calamities of inundations, of famine, of peftilence, or of war, the defire of foreign comforts, or the preffure of domeftic miferics, have influenced men to abandon their place of refidence, and broken afunder the ties by which they were united; the renewal of thofe ties in another land, or the eftablishment of fimilar connections, has always been the first and the darling object of those . who furvived the fubverted community. Like globules of quickfilver difperfed over a polished furface, they have ever been feen in conftant agitation and inquietude while diftinct; haftening together, and with a continually accelerated velocity, when they have come within the fphere of each other's attraction; and, whatever

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whatever be the fize of the maffes into which they have gradually been combined, arranging themselves in each round a common center.

The forms of government which have been inftituted in different nations have been severally decided by the operation of general causes powerfully affecting the human mind, as the climate and nature of the country; and by the influence of incidental circumftances, as foreign invasions, internal diffenfions, and the character and fortune of particular individuals. Hence, in different ages of the world, and in communities ftationed at different points in the fcale of civilization, almost every conceivable variety has found a place. If we examine the condition of rude and uncultivated tribes, and thence advance to the contemplation of focieties in fome degree more polished and enlightened, we may trace the marks of a gradual progrefs from the loweft ftage of union, to the regular and stable form of a body politic. We may obferve men held together by a tie fo flight, as to constitute the simplest arrangement under which any thing deferving the name of a focial connection can fubfift; an engagement

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gagement mutually to aid each other in repelling the attacks, and retaliating the incurfions. of enemies. But though focieties may have been originally established in various inftances. on the basis of this (a) inartificial contract; it

is

(a) Dr. Ferguson, in his History of Civil Society, furnishes examples of focieties precifely in this ftate. "Even "after nations have chofen a military leader, they do not "entruft him with any species of civil authority. The "captain among the Caribbees did not pretend to decide "in domeftic difputes; the terms jurisdiction and govern"ment were unknown in their tongue."-Ed. 5. p. 166.— "Among the Iroquois and other nations of the temperate "zone, the titles of magiftrate and fubject, of noble and mean, are as little known as those of rich and poor."If their concerts must be supposed to constitute a fpecies "of political government, it is one to which no language "of ours can be applied.”—P. 141.

Captain Carver (fee his Travels in the interior Parts of North America, 2d edit. p. 258) represents fome savage tribes which he vifited as in a fimilar ftate at prefent. "Among these no vifible form of government is efta"blished; they allow of no fuch distinction as magistrate "and fubject, every one appearing to enjoy an independ"ence that cannot be controlled. The object of govern"ment among them is rather foreign than domeftic; for "their attention feems more to be employed in preferving "fuch an union among the members of their tribe as will "enable them to watch the motions of their enemies, and