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duty, perhaps with all of them together. Howevers if in general it be not easy to determine concerning the lawfulness of fuch devious proceedings, which must be ever on the edge of crimes, it is far from difficult to foresee the perilous confequences of the refuscitation of fuch a power in the people. The practical confequences of any political tenet go a great way in deciding upon its value. its value. Political Political problems do not primarily concern truth or falfehood. They relate to good or evil. What in the refult is likely to produce evil, is politically false: that which is productive of good, politically is true.

Believing it therefore a queftion at leaft arduous in the theory, and in the practice very critical, it would become us to afcertain, as well as we can, what form it is that our incantations are about to call up from darkness and the fleep of ages. When the fupreme authority of the people is in queftion, before we attempt to extend or to confine it, we ought to fix in our minds, with fome degree of diftinctness, an idea of what it is we mean when we fay the PEOPLE.

In a ftate of rude nature there is no fuch thing as a people. A number of men in themselves have no collective capacity. The idea of a people is the idea of a corporation. It is wholly artificial; and made like all other legal fictions by common agreement. What the particular nature of that agreement was, is collected from the form into which the particular fociety has been caft. Any other is not their covenant. When men, therefore, break up the original compact or agreement which gives its corporate form and capacity to a ftate, they are no longer a people; they have no longer a corporate existence ; they have no longer a legal coactive force to bind within, nor a claim to be recognized abroad. They are a number of vague loofe individuals, and nothing more. With them all is to begin again. Alas! they little know how many a weary step is to be taken

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before they can form themfelves into a mafs, which has a true politic perfonality.

We hear much from men, who have not acquired their hardinefs of affertion from the profundity of their thinking, about the omnipotence of a majority, in fuch a diffolution of an antient fociety as hath taken place in France. But amongst men fo difbanded, there can be no fuch thing as majority or minority; or power in any one perfon to bind another. The power of acting by a majority, which the gentlemen theorists feem to affume fo readily, after they have violated the contract out of which it has arifen, (if at all it exifted) must be grounded on two affumptions; first, that of an incorporation produced by unanimity; and fecondly, an unanimous agreement, that the act of a mere majority (fay of one) fhall pass with them and with others as the act of the whole.

We are fo little affected by things which are habitual, that we confider this idea of the decifion of a majority as if it were a law of our original nature: but fuch conftructive whole, refiding in a part only, is one of the most violent fictions of pofitive law, that ever has been or can be made on the principles of artificial incorporation. Out of civil fociety nature knows nothing of it; nor are men, even when arranged according to civil order, otherwife than by very long training, brought at all to fubmit to it. The mind is brought far more eafily to acquiefce in the proceedings of one man, or a few, who act under a general procuration for the ftate, than in the vote of a victorious majority in councils in which every man has his share in the deliberation. For there the beaten party are exafperated and foured by the previous contention, and mortified by the conclufive defeat. This mode of decifion, where wills may be fo nearly equal, where, according to circumftances, the fmaller number may be the ftronger force, and where apparent reafon may be all upon one fide

and on the other little elfe than impetuous appetite; all this must be the refult of a very particular and fpecial convention, confirmed afterwards by long habits of obedience, by a fort of difcipline in fociety, and by a strong hand, vefted with ftationary permanent power, to enforce this fort of conftructive general will. What organ it is that fhall declare the corporate mind is fo much a matter of pofitive arrangement, that feveral ftates, for the validity of feveral of their acts, have required a proportion of voices much greater than that of a mere majority. These proportions are fo entirely governed by convention, that in fome cafes the minority decides. The laws in many countries to condemn require more than a mere majority; less than an equal number to acquit. In our judicial trials we require unanimity either to condemn or to abfolve. In fome incorporations one man speaks for the whole; in others, a few. Until the other day, in the conftitution of Poland, unanimity was required to give validity to any act of their great national council or diet. This approaches much more nearly to rude nature than the inftitutions of any other country. Such, indeed, every commonwealth muft be, without a pofitive law to recognize in a certain number the will of the entire body.

If men diffolve their ancient incorporation, in order to regenerate their community, in that state of things each man has a right, if he pleafes, to remain an individual. Any number of individuals, who can agree upon it, have an undoubted right to form themselves into a state apart and wholly independent. If any of these is forced into the fellowship of another, this is conqueft and not compact. On every principle, which fuppofes fociety to be in virtue of a free covenant, this compulfive incorporation muft be null and void.

As a people can have no right to a corporate capacity without univerfal confent, fo neither have they

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a sight to hold exclufively any lands in the name and title of a corporation. On the fcheme of the present rulers in our neighbouring country, regenerated as they are, they have no more right to the territory called France than I have. I have a right to pitch my tent in any unoccupied place I can find for it; and I may apply to my own maintenance any part of their unoccupied foil. I may purchase the house or vineyard of any individual proprietor who refufes his confent (and moft proprietors have, as far as they dared, refufed it) to the new incorporation. I ftand in his independent place. Who are thefe infolent men calling themfelves the French nation, that would monopolize this fair domain of nature? Is it because they speak a certain jargon? Is it their mode of chattering, to me unintelligible, that forms their title to my land? Who are they who claim by prescription and defcent from certain gangs of banditti called Franks, and Burgundians, and Vifigoths, of whom I may have never heard, and ninety-nine out of an hundred of themselves certainly never have heard; whilft at the very time they tell me, that prescription and long poffeffion form no title to property? Who are they that prefume to affert that the land which I purchased of the individual, a natural perfon, and not a fiction of state, belongs to them, who in the very capacity in which they make their claim can exift only as an imaginary being, and in virtue of the very prescription which they reject and difown? This mode of arguing might be pufhed into all the detail, fo as to leave no fort of doubt, that on their principles, and on the fort of footing on which they have thought proper to place themselves, the crowd of men, on the other fide of the channel, who have the impudence to call themselves a people, can never be the lawful exclufive poffeffors of the foil. By what they call reafoning without prejudice, they leave not one ftone upon another in the fabric of human fociety. They fubvert all the authority which they hold, as well as

all that which they have deftroyed.-Appeal from the new to the old Whigs.

PEOPLE.

Profperity of the People.

No government ought to own that it exifts for the purpose of checking the profperity of its people, or that there is fuch a principle involved in its policy.Two Letters to Gentlemen in Bristol.

PEOPLE AND GOVERNORS.

THE people have no interest in diforder. When they do wrong, it is their error, and not their crime. But with the governing part of the ftate it is far otherwife. They certainly may act ill by defign, as well as by mistake.-Thoughts on the Caufe of the prefent Difcontents.

PEOPLE.

THEY who ftir up the people to improper defires, whether of peace or war, will be condemned by themselves. They who weakly yield to them will be condemned by hiftory.Regicide Peace.

PEOPLE.

Their Intereft and Humours ought to be confulted. I would not only confult the intereft of the people, but I would chearfully gratify their humours. We are all a fort of children, that must be foothed and managed. I think I am not auftere or formal in my nature. I would bear, I would even myself play my part in, any innocent buffooneries to divert them. But I never will act the tyrant for their amufement. If they will mix malice in their sports, I fhall never confent to throw them any living, fen

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