time defenders and fathers of a country which so long has nourished them as her children.

The spirit of the laws, which the government ought to follow in their application to descent, is that of father to son, and from relation to relation, so that the estate of a family should go as little out of it and be as little alienated as possible. There is a very sensible reason for this in favor of children, to whom the right of property would be useless, if the father should leave them nothing, and who besides having often contributed to the acquisition of their father's wealth, are associates with him in his right of property.

No people are so oppressed and miserable as conquering nations; their successes abroad only increasing their misery at home. Did not history inform us, common sense would, that the greater a state grows, the more burthensome become its expenses in proportion: for it is necessary that every province should furnish its contingent to the general expences of government, and that beside this, it should be at the expense of its own particular administration, which is as great as if it was really independent. Add to this, that great fortunes are always acquired in one place and spent in another; which breaks through the equipoise of the product and consumption, and greatly impoverishes a whole country merely to enrich one town. A peer of the realm has two legs as well as a cow-herd, and he has but one belly any more than the clown. The pretended necessaries are really so little necessary with regard to rank, that if he should renounce them on any worthy occasion, he would only be the more honored and respected. The populace would be ready to adore a minister who should go to council on foot, because he had sold off his equipage to supply a pressing exigence of state.

THE SOCIAL COMPACT.

Man is born free, and yet is universally enslaved. At the same time, an individual frequently conceives himself to be the lord and master over others, though only more eminently deprived of liberty. So long as a people are compelled to obey, they do well to be obedient; but as

soon as they are in a capacity to resist, they do better to throw off the yoke of restraint: for, in recovering their li berty on the same plea by which they lost it, either they have a just right to reassume it, or those could have none who deprived them of it.

The most ancient of all societies, and the only natural one, is that of a family. And even in this, children are no longer connected with their father, than while they stand in need of his assistance. When this becomes needless, the natural tie is of course dissolved, the children are exempted from the obedience they owe their father, and the father is equally so from the solicitude due from him to his children; both assume a state of independence respecting each other. They may continue, indeed, to live together afterwards; but their connection, in such a case, is no longer natural, but voluntary; and even the family union is then maintained by mutual convention.

This liberty, which is common to all mankind, is the necessary consequence of our very nature; whose first law being that of self preservation, our principal concerns are those which relate to ourselves; no sooner, therefore, doth man arrive at years of discretion, than he becomes the only proper judge of the means of that preservation, and of course his own master.

In a family then, we may see the first model of politi cal societies: their chief is represented by the father, and the people by his children, while all of them being free, and equal by birth, they cannot alienate their liberty, but for their common interest.

If there are any slaves, therefore, by nature, it is because they are slaves contrary to nature. Power first made slaves, and cowardice hath perpetuated them.

The strongest is not strong enough to continue always master, unless he transforms his power into the right of command, and obedience into duty. Hence is deduced the right of the strongest; a right taken ironically in appearance, and laid down as an established principle in reality. But will this term never be rightly explained? Force, in the simplest sense, is a physical power; nor can I see what morality can result from its effects. To yield to superior force is an act of necessity, not of the will; at

most it is but an act of prudence. And in what sense can this be called a duty?

As no man hath any natural authority over the rest of his species, and as po ver doth not confer right, the basis of all lawful authority is laid in mutual convention. Now a man who becomes the slave of another, doth not give himself away, but sells himself, at least for his subsistence; but why should a whole people sell themselves? So far is a king from furnishing his subjects subsistence, that they maintain him; and, as Rabelais says, a king doth not live on a little. Can subjects be supposed to give away their liberty, on condition that the receiver shall take their property along with it? After this, I really cannot see any thing they have left.

To say that a man can give himself away, is to talk unintelligibly and absurdly; such an act must necessarily be illegal and void, were it for no other reason, than that it argues insanity of mind in the agent. To say the same thing of a whole people therefore, is to suppose a whole nation can be at once out of their senses; but were it so, such madness could not confer right.

Were it possible also for a man to alienate himself, he could not, in the same manner, dispose of his children, who, as human beings, are born free; their freedom is their own, and nobody hath any right to dispose of it but themselves. Before they arrive at years of discretion, indeed, their father may, for their security, and in their name, stipulate the conditions of their preservation, but cannot unconditionally and irrevocably dispose of their per sons; such a gift being contrary to the intention of nature, and exceeding the bounds of paternal authority.

To renounce one's natural liberty, is to renounce one's very being as a man; it is the duties of humanity. And what possible indemnification can be made the man who thus gives up his all? Such a renunciation is incompatible with our very nature; for to deprive us of the liberty of the will, is to take away all morality from our actions. In a word, a convention, which stipulates on the one part absolute authority, and on the other implicit obedience, is, in itself, futile and contradictory. Is it not evident, that we can lie under no reciprocal obligation whatever to a

person, of whom we have a right to demand every thing; and doth not this circumstance, against which he has no equivalent, necessarily infer such act of convention to be void? For what claim can my slave have upon me, when he himself, and all that belongs to him, are mine? His claims are of course my own, and to say those can be set up against me, is to talk absurdly

Even in a time of war, a just prince may make himself master, in an enemy's country, of whatever belongs to the public, but he will respect the persons and private properties of individuals; he will respect those rights on which his own are founded. The design of war being the destruction of an hostile state, we have a right to kill its defenders, while they are in arms; but as, in laying down their arms, they cease to be enemies, or instruments of hostility, they become, in that case, mere men, and we have not the least right to murder them. It is sometimes possible effectually to destroy a state, without killing even one of its members; now war cannot confer any right or privilege which is not necessary to accomplish its end and design. It is true, these are not the principles of Grotius, nor are they founded on the authority of the poets; but they are such as are deduced from the nature of things, and are founded on reason.

With regard to the right of conquest, it has no other foundation than that of force, the law of the strongest. But if war doth not give the victor a right to massacre the vanquished, this pretended right, which does not exist, cannot be the foundation of a right to enslave them. If we have no right to kill an enemy, unless we cannot by force reduce him to slavery, our right to make him a slave never can be founded on our right to kill him. It is, therefore, an iniquitous bargain, to make him purchase, at the expense of liberty, a life which we have no right to take away. In establishing thus a right of life and death over others, on that of enslaving them; and, on the other hand, a right of enslaving them on that of life and death, we certainly fall into the absurdity of reasoning in a circle. Thus, in whatever light we consider this subject, the right of making men slaves is null and void, not only because it is unjust, but because it is absurd and insignifi

cant. The terms slavery and justice are contradictory and. reciprocally exclusive of each other. Hence the following proposal would be equally ridiculous, whether made by one individual to another, or by a private man to a whole people. "I enter into an agreement with you, altogether at your own charge, and solely for my profit, which I will observe as long as I please, and which you are to observe also as long as I think proper."

Instead of annihilating the natural equality among mankind, the fundamental compact substitutes, on the contrary, a moral and legal equality, to make up for that natural and physical difference which prevails among individuals, who, though unequal in personal strength and mental abilities, become thus all equal by convention and right.

This equality, indeed, is under some governments merey apparent and delusive, serving only to keep the poor still in misery, and favor the oppression of the rich. And, in fact, the laws are always useful to persons of fortune, and hurtful to those who are destitute: whence it follows, that a state of society is advantageous to mankind in general, only when they all possess something, and none of them have any thing too much.

The frequency of executions is a sign of the weakness or indolence of government. There is no malefactor who might not be made good for something: nor ought any person to be put to death, even by way of example unless such as could not be preserved without endangering the community.

Whatever is right and conformable to order, is such from the nature of things, independent of all human conventions. All justice comes from God, who is its fountain; but could we receive it immediately from so sublime a source, we should stand in no need of government or laws. There is indeed an universal justice springing from reason alone; but, in order to admit this to take place among mankind, it should be reciprocal. To consider things as they appear, we find the maxims of justice among mankind to be vain and fruitless for want of a natural support; they tend only to the advantage of the wicked and the disadvantage of the just, while the latter