Page images
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

Intended malice fometimes confers an unintended benefit. So the malicious application of the general principles of government by some modern authors, may, by bringing on a thorough and impartial investigation of them, have removed the probability of their abuse being in future productive of any serious mifchief to the state. Truth courts investigation, and lives by difcuffion. Upon this principle Dr. Price is very emphatic in recommending free difcuffion. *«In short, we may, in this instance, learn our duty from the conduct of the oppreffors of the world. They know, that light is hoftile to them, and therefore they labour to keep men in the dark. Remove the darkness, in which they invelope the world, and their ufurpations will be expofed, their power will be fubverted, and the world emancipated." Every one will not perhaps agree with Dr. Price, that the whole world is enslaved, and that it therefore wants emancipation; yet no one certainly can differ from him in maintaining, that the caufe of truth will be better fupported and maintained by the publication, than the fuppreffion of its principles. This motive encourages me in my progrefs.

The fubftantial ground of difference be

Dr. Price's Difcourfe, delivered on the 4th Nov. 1789, p. 14, 15.

tween

The danger of

extreme propo fitions.

tween the diffenting parties, appears to me to arife in great measure from the generality of the propofitions, about which they differ. * « In a subject, where truth and error lie arguing upon fo near to each other, divided by a line in many cafes not to be difcerned without care and attention, and where preingagements of intereft to one fide or the other are apt to bend and corrupt the judgment, it is no wonder to find great perplexity in men's notions and disputes, or that thofe, who lie in wait to deceive or embroil mankind, fhould choose a field of controverfy, in which there is fuch room for all the arts of fophiftry. While they keep in generalities, (as fuch disputants always do) fome truth will be in their affertions, for the fake of which they cannot abfolutely be denied. To this they retreat for cover whenever they are preffed. By a little aggravation of the conclufions they oppofe, they can easily reprefent them as exceffes, with popular topics for declamation and invective. While the minds of men are thus amufed with generalities, and by artificial terrors of one extreme driven towards the other, the real point of truth is eafily kept out of fight, and the difpute between liberty and authority

* Dr. Roger's Vindication of the Civil Establishment of Religion, printed in 1728, p. 2 and 3.

[blocks in formation]

How certain propofitions

commonly fup

pofed contra

dictory are re

concileable.

may on these terms be carried on for ever; but if we can fix the proper limits of each, we fhall foon make them friends, and put an end to all confufion about them."

It is much to be lamented, that most of the writers upon these political fubjects have fet out, and continued through their whole career, upon the treacherous extremities of their refpective doctrines. Under this exceffive tenfion, the different partizans view their antagonists in the loweft degree of depravity, and reprefent them in the groffeft terms of degradation. Thus this political maxim, falus populi fuprema lex, "the welfare of the people is the first of all laws," is oppofed by one party to another maxim, omnis poteftas a Deo," all power is from God;" and the abettors of each, from mifconceiving or mifapplying them, run into the oppofite extremes, of attributing to individuals a jure divino indefeasible right to power, and of denying the existence of any monarchical right or power upon earth. Whereas if these two principles are but fairly represented, and rightly understood, they are not only confiftent with each other, but one effentially flows from the other; for as I have before observed, fociety is effential to the phyfical nature of man; and power and govern

[ocr errors][merged small]

ment are effential to the fubfiftence of fociety: thefe, therefore, like our existence, proceed immediately from God. In this generical and original fenfe of power, no one, I apprehend, will deny that the existence of all temporal or civil power proceeds from God; and in this fenfe I may cite the authority of the Apoftle; There is no power, but of God, and avail myself of the deduction, which Milton and others draw from it, that the inftitution of magistracy is jure divino. But

free

as our benevolent Creator has conftituted us agents in this world, fo what particular form of government each nation fhould live under, and what persons should be entrusted with the magiftracy, without doubt, was left to the choice of each nation. But ftill each particular form of government, adopted by different focieties or nations, muft all tend ultimately to one and the fame end.

* "The great end of men's entering into fociety being the enjoyment of their properties in peace and fafety, and the great inftrument and means of that being the laws eftablished in that fociety, the first and fundamental pofitive law of all commonwealths is the establishing of the legislative power; as

• Locke of Civil Government, c. xi. p. 204.

E 2

the

Sovereignty of

power neceifary for the prefer

vation of the fociety.

pre.

the first and fundamental natural law, which is to govern even the legiflative itself, is the servation of the fociety, and (as far as will confift with the public good) of every person in it. This legiflative is not only the fupreme power of the commonwealth, but facred and unal terable in the hands where the community have once placed it; nor can any edict of any body elfe, in what form foever conceived, or by what power foever backed, have the force and obligation of a law, which has not its fanction from that legiflative, which the public has chofen and appointed. For without this, the law could not have that, which is abfolutely neceffary to its being a law, confent of the fociety, over whom nobody can have a power to make laws, but by their own confent, and by authority received from them; and therefore all the obedience, which by the moft folemn ties, any one can be obliged to pay, ultimately terminates in this fupreme power and is directed by thofe laws, which it enacts; nor can any oaths to any foreign power whatsoever, or any domeftic fubordi nate power difcharge any member of the fociety from his obedience to the legislative, acting pursuant to their truft, nor oblige him to any obedience contrary to the laws fo enacted, or farther than they do allow; it being

ridiculous

« PreviousContinue »