pofed the other to invite fervitude by undue compliances and dangerous conceffions. 4. As ignorance of union and want of communication appear amongst the principal preservatives of civil authority, it behoves every state 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 or religion, even of the fame occupation or profeffion, or in any way connected by a participation of intereft or paffion, from fettling in the fame vicinity. A protestant establishment in this country may have little to fear from its popish subjects, 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 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 those great cities and crouded diftricts, into which the inhabitants of trading countries are commonly collected. The worst effect of popular tumults confifts in this, that they dif cover to the infurgents the fecret of their own ftrength, teach them to depend on it against a future occafion, and diffuse and produce fentiments of confidence in one another, and affurances of mutual support. Leagues thus formed and ftrengthened may over-awe or over-fet the power of the ftate; and the danger is greater in proportion, as from the propinquity of habitation and intercourse of employment, the paffions and counfels of the party can be circulated with ease and rapidity. It is by these means, and in fuch fituations, that the minds of men are so affected and prepared, that the most dreadful uproars often arise from the slightest provocations. When the train is laid, a spark will produce the explofion. CHAP. CHA P. III. The Duty of Submiffion to Civil Government explained. HE subject 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 duty. In order to prove civil obedience to be a moral duty, and an obligation upon the confcience of the fubject, it hath been ufual 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 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 universal obligation of fidelity in the performance of promises. This compact is two-fold: Firft, An exprefs compact by the primitive founders of the ftate, who are fupposed to have convened for the declared purpose of fettling their future union, and a conftitution of government. The whole body is fuppofed to have unanimously confented, in the first place, to be bound by the resolutions of the majority; that majority, in the next place, to have fixed certain fundamental regulations; and then to have constituted, either in one perfon, or in an affembly (the rule of fucceffion or appointment being at the fame time determined) a ftanding legislature, to whom, under these pre-established restrictions, 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 tranfanction is sometimes called the focial compact, and these supposed original regulations compofe what are meant by the conftitution, the fundamental laws of the conftitution; and form on one fide, the inherent indefeafible prerogative of the crown; and on the other, the unalienable birthright of the fubject. Secondly, 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 enters into a private society is understood, without any other or more explicit ftipulation, to promise a conformity. with the rules and obedience to the government of that fociety, as the known conditions upon which he is admitted to a participation of its privileges. This account of the fubject, although fpecious, and patronized by names the most respectable, appears to labour under the following objections? that it is founded upon a fuppofition false infact, insufficient (if it were true) for the purposes for which it is produced, and leading to dangerous conclufions. No focial compact, fimilar to what is here described, was ever made or entered into in fact; no fuch original convention of the people was ever actually held, or in any country could be held, antecedent to the exiftence of civil government in that country. It is to fuppofe it poffible to call favages out of caves and deferts, to deliberate and vote upon topics, which the experience and ftudies |