measure, from the same persuasion of the efficacy of names and forms, jealous left the veneration paid to these, should add an influence to the new fettlement which might enfnare the liberty of the commonwealth.

3. Government may be too fecure. The greatest tyrants have been thofe, whofe titles were the moft unquestioned. Whenever therefore the opinion of right becomes too predominant and fuperftitious, is is abated by breaking the custom. Thus the revolution broke the custom of fucceffion, and thereby moderated, both in the prince and in the people, those lofty notions of hereditary right, which in the one were become a continual incentive to tyranny, and difpofed the other to invite fervitude, by undue compliances and dangerous conceffions.

4. As ignorance of union and want of communication appear amongst the principal prefervatives of civil authority, it behoves every ftate to keep its fubjects in this want and ignorance, not only by vigilance in guarding against actual confederacies and combinations, but by a timely care to prevent great collections of men

of any feparate party of religion, or of like occupation or profeffion, or in any way connected by

a participation of intereft or paffion, from being

affembled

affembled in the fame vicinity. A proteftant eftablishment in this country may have little to fear from its popish fubjects, fcattered as they are throughout the kingdom, and intermixed with the proteftant inhabitants, which yet might think them a formidable body, if they were gathered together into one country. The most frequent and defperate riots are those which break out amongst men of the fame profeffion, as weavers, miners, failors. This circumftance makes a mutiny of foldiers more to be dreaded than any other infurrection. Hence alfo one danger of an overgrown metropolis, and of thofe great cities and crowded diftricts, into which the inhabitants of trading countries are commonly collected. The worft effect of popular tumults confifts in this, that they discover to the infurgents the fecret of their own ftrength, teach them to depend upon it against a future occafion, and both produce and diffufe fentiments of confidence in one another, and affurances of mutual fupport. Leagues thus formed and ftrengthened, may overawe or overfet the power of any ftate; and the dan ger is greater, in proportion as, from the propinquity of habitation and intercourse of em ployment, the paffions and counfels of a party can be circulated with cafe and rapidity. It is by

thefe

thefe means, and in fuch fituations, that the minds of men are fo affected and prepared, that the most dreadful uproars often arise from the flightest provocations. When the train is laid, a fpark will produce the explosion,

VOL. II.

K

СНАР.

СНАР. III.

THE DUTY OF SUBMISSION TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT EXPLAINED.

TH

HE fubject of this chapter is fufficiently distinguished from the subject of the last, as the motives which actually produce civil obedience, may be, and often are, very different from the reasons which make that obedience a dutý.

In order to prove civil obedience to be a moral duty, and an obligation upon the conscience, it hath been usual with many political writers, at the head of whom we find the venerable name of Locke, to ftate a compact between the citizen and the ftate, as the ground and caufe of the relation between them; which compact, binding the parties for the fame general reafon that private contracts do, refolves the duty of fubmiffion to civil government into the univerfal obligation of fidelity in the performance of promifes. This compact is twofold:

First, An express compact by the primitive founders of the ftate, who are fuppofed to have

convened for the declared purpose of fettling the terms of their political union, and a future conftitution of government. The whole body is supposed, in the first place, to have unanimoufly confented to be bound by the refolutions of the majority; that majority, in the next place, to have fixed certain fundamental regulations; and then to have conftituted, either in one person, or in an affembly (the rule of fucceffion or appointment being at the fame time determined), a standing legislature, to whom, under these pre-established reftrictions, the government of the ftate was thenceforward committed, and whofe laws the feveral members of the convention were, by their first undertaking, thus perfonally engaged to obey.-This tranfaction is fometimes called the focial compact, and these supposed original regulations compose what are meant by the conflitution, the fundamental laws of the conftitution; and form, on one fide, the inherent indefeafible prerogative of the crown; and, on the other, the unalienable inprefcriptible birthright of the fubject.

Secondly, A tacit or implied compact, by all fucceeding members of the ftate, who, by accepting its protection, confent to be bound by its laws; in like manner as whoever voluntarily