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roufed, to lay proftrate the moft ancient and confirmed dominion; that civil authority is founded in opinion; that general opinion therefore ought always to be treated with deference, and managed with delicacy and circumfpection.

2. Opinion of right always following the cuftom, being for the most part founded in nothing elfe, and lending one principal fupport to government, every innovation in the constitution, or, in other words, in the cuftom of governing, diminishes the stability of government. Hence fome abfurdities are to be retained, and many fmall inconveniences endured in every country, rather than that the ufage should be violated, or the course of public affairs diverted from their old and smooth channel. Even names are not indifferent. When the multitude are to be dealt with, there is a charm in founds. It was upon this principle, that feveral statesmen of those times advised Cromwell to affume the title of King, together with the ancient ftyle and infignia of royalty. The minds of many, they contended, would be brought to acquiefce in the authority of a King, who fufpected the office, and were offended with the administration of a Protector. Novelty reminded them of ufurpation. The adverfaries of this design opposed the measure,

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

3. Government may be too fecure. The greatest tyrants have been those, whofe titles were the most unqueftioned. Whenever therefore the opinion of right becomes too predominant and superstitious, it is abated by breaking the cuftom. Thus the Revolution broke the custom of fucceffion, and thereby moderated both in the prince and in the people, thofe 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 dan-` gerous 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 separate party or religion, or of like occupation or profeffion, or in any way connected by a participation of intereft or paffion, from

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the fame vicinity. A proteftant establishment in this country may have little to fear from its popish fubjects, scattered 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 county. The most frequent and defperate riots are thofe, 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 also one danger of an overgrown metropolis, and of thofe great cities and crowded districts, into which the inhabitants of trading countries are commonly collected. The worst effect of popular tumults confifts in this, that they discover to the infurgents the secret of their own ftrength, teach them to depend upon it against a future occafion, and both produce and diffuse fentiments of confidence in one another, and affurances of mutual fupport. Leagues thus formed and ftrengthened, may over-awe, or over-fet the power of any ftate; and the danger is greater, in proportion, as from the propinquity of habitation and intercourfe of employment, the paffions and counfels of a party can be circulated with ease and rapidity. It is by these

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 spark will produce the explosion.

VOL. II.

K

CHAP.

CHA P. III.

THE DUTY OF SUBMISSION

ΤΗ

TO CIVIL

GOVERNMENT EXPLAINED.

'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 reafons which make that obedience a duty.

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 state, as the ground and cause of the relation between them; which compact binding the parties, for the fame general reason 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 two-fold;

Firft, An exprefs compact by the primitive founders of the ftate, who are fuppofed to have

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