Imatges de pàgina
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of thefe much agitated paffages, little need be added in explanation of particular clauses. St. Paul has faid, "Whofoever refifteth the power, "refifteth the ordinance of God." This phrafe, the ordinance of God," is by terpreted as to authorize the most exalted and fuperftitious ideas of the regal character. But, furely, fuch interpreters have facrificed truth to adulation. For, in the first place, the expreffion, as ufed by St. Paul, is juft as applicable to one kind of government, and to one kind of fucceffion, as to another-to the elective magiftrates of a pure republic, as to an abfolute hereditary monarch. In the next place, it is not affirmed of the fupreme magiftrate exclufively, that he is the ordinance of God; the title, whatever it imports, belongs to every inferior officer of the ftate as much as to the higheft. The divine right of Kings is, like the divine right of other magiftrates-the law of the land, or even actual and quiet poffeffion of their office; a right ratified, we humbly prefume, by the divine approbation, fo long as obedience to their authority appears to be neceffary or conducive to the common welfare. Princes are ordained of God by virtue only of that general decree, by which he aflents, and adds the fauction of his

will, to every law of fociety, which promotes his own purpose, the communication of human happiness according to which idea of their origin and conftitution, (and without any repugnancy to the words of St. Paul,) they are by St. Peter denominated the ordinance of man.

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CHAP. V.

OF CIVIL LIBERTY.

CIVIL Liberty is the not being restrained by any Law, but what conduces in a greater degree to the public welfare.

To do what we will, is natural liberty; to do what we will, confiflently with the interest of the community to which we belong, is civil liberty; that is to fay, the only liberty to be defired in a flate of civil fociety.

I fhould wish, no doubt, to be allowed to act in every inftance as I pleafed, but I reflect that the reft alfo of mankind would then do the fame; in which flate of univerfal independence and fulf-direction I fhould meet with fo many checks and obftacles to my own will, from the interference and oppofition of other men's, that not only my happinefs, but my liberty, would be lefs, than whilt the whole community were fubject to the dominion of equal laws.

The boafted liberty of a ftate of nature exifts

only

only in a state of folitude. In every kind and degree of union and intercourfe with his fpecies, it is poffible that the liberty of the individual may be augmented by the very laws which restrain it; because he may gain more from the limitation of other men's freedom than he fuffers by the diminution of his own. Natural liberty is the right of common upon a wafe; civil liberty is the fafe, exclufive, unmolefted enjoyment of a cultivated inclosure.

The definition of civil liberty above laid down, imports that the laws of a free people impofe no restraints upon the private will of the fubject, which do not conduce in a greater degree to the public happiness: by which it is intimated, ift, that reftraint itself is an evil; 2dly, that this evil ought to be overbalanced by fome public advantage; 3dly, that the proof of this advantage lies upon the legiflature; 4thly, that a law being found to produce no fenfible good effects, is a fufficient reason for repealing it, as adverfe and injurious to the rights of a free citizen, without demanding fpecific evidence of its bad effects. This maxim might be remembered with advantage in a revifion of many laws of this country; efp.cially of the game laws; of the poor laws, fo far as they lay reftrictions M 3

upon

upon the poor themselves; of the laws against papifts and diffenters: and, amongst people enamoured to excefs and jealous of their liberty, it feems a matter of furprife that this principle has been fo imperfectly attended to.

The degree of actual liberty always bearing, according to this account of it, a reversed proportion to the number and feverity of the reftrictions which are either ufelefs, or the utility of which does not outweigh the evil of the reftraint; it follows that every nation poffeffes fome, no nation perfect liberty; that this liberty may be enjoyed under every form of government; that it may be impaired indeed, or increased, but that it is neither gained, nor loft, nor recovered, by any single regulation, change, or event whatever; that, confequently, those popular phrafes which speak of a free people, of a nation of flaves; which call one revolution the æra of liberty, or another the lofs of it; with many expreffions of a like abfolute form, are intelligible only in a comparative fenfe.

Hence alfo we are enabled to apprehend the diftinction between perfonal and civil liberty. A citizen of the freeft republic in the world may be imprisoned for his crimes; and though his perfonal freedom be reftrained by bolts and fet

ters,

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