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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 leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they
are not only different, but have different origins. Society is
produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former
promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections,
the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one
encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The
first is a patron, the last a punisher.Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in
its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an
intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same
miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country
without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting
that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like
dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are
built on the ruins of the 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 a part 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 every other case
advises him out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore,
security being the true design and end of government, it
unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most
likely to ensure it to us, with the least expence and greatest
benefit, is preferable to all others.In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end
of government, let us suppose a small number of persons settled
in some sequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the
rest, they will then represent the first peopling of any
country, or of the world. In this state of natural liberty,
society will be their first thought. A thousand motives will
excite them thereto, the strength of one man is so unequal to
his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual solitude,
that he is soon obliged to seek assistance and relief of
another, who in his turn requires the same. Four or five united
would be able to raise a tolerable dwelling in the midst of a
wilderness, but one man might labour out the common period of
life without accomplishing any thing; when he had felled his
timber he could not remove it, nor erect it after it was
removed; hunger in the mean time would urge him from his work,
and every different want call him a different way. Disease, nay
even misfortune would be death, for though neither might be
mortal, yet either would disable him from living, and reduce
him to a state in which he might rather be said to perish than
to die.[from Common Sense by Thomas Paine]
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John Bazik