The Online Library of Liberty

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• Preface.
• An Enquiryconcerning Political Justice: Book I.OF The Importance of Political Institutions
• Chap. I.: Introduction
• Chap. II.: History of Political Society
• Chap. III.: The Moral Characters of Men Originate In Their Perceptions
• Chap. IV.: Three Principal Causes of Moral Improvement Considered
• I. Literature
• II. Education
• III. Political Justice
• Chap. V.: Influence of Political Institutions Exemplified
• Chap. VI.: Human Inventions Capable of Perpetual Improvement
• Chap. VII.: Of the Objection to These Principles From the Influence of Climate
• Part I.: Of Moral and Physical Causes
• Part II.: Of National Characters
• Chap. VIII.: Of the Objection to These Principles From the Influence of Luxury
• An Enquiryconcerning Political Justice: Book II.PRINCIPLES Of Society
• Chap. I.: Introduction
• Chap. II.: Of Justice
• Appendix, No. I. P. 87.: Of Suicide
• Appendix, No. II.: Of Duelling
• Chap. III.: Of Duty
• Chap. IV.: Of the Equality of Mankind
• Chap. V.: Rights of Man
• Chap. VI.: Of the Exercise of Private Judgment
• An Enquiryconcerning Political Justice: Book III.PRINCIPLES Of Government
• Chap. I.: Systems of Political Writers
• Chap. II.: Of the Social Contract
• Chap. III.: Of Promises
• Chap. IV.: Of Political Authority
• Chap. V.: Of Legislation
• Chap. VI.: Of Obedience
• Appendix
• Chap. VII.: Of Forms of Government
• An Enquiryconcerning Political Justice: Book IV.MISCELLANEOUS Principles
• Chap. I.: Of Resistance
• Chap. II.: Of Revolutions
• Section I.: Duties of a Citizen
• Section II.: Mode of Effecting Revolutions
• Section III.: Of Political Associations
• Section IV.: Of the Species of Reform to Be Desired
• Chap. III.: Of Tyrannicide
• Chap. IV.: Of the Cultivation of Truth
• Section I.: Of Abstract Or General Truth
• Section II.: Of Sincerity
• Appendix, No. I. P. 233.: Of the Connexion Between Understanding and Virtue
• Appendix, No. Ii, P. 242.: Of the Mode of Excluding Visitors
• Appendix, No. Iii, P. 252.: Subject of Sincerity Resumed
• Chap. V.: Of Free Will and Necessity
• Chap. VI.: Inferences From the Doctrine of Necessity
• Chap. VII.: Of the Mechanism of the Human Mind
• Chap. VIII.: Of the Principle of Virtue
• Chap. IX.: Of the Tendency of Virtue

CHAP. II.

HISTORY OF POLITICAL SOCIETY

WHILE we enquire whether governmentis capable ofBOOK I. CHAP. II. Frequency of war: improvement, we shall do well to considerits present effects. It is an old observation, thatthe history of mankind is little else than the historyof crimes. War has hitherto been considered as theinseparable ally of political institution. Theamong the ancients: earliest records of time are the annals of conquerors and heroes,a Bacchus, a Sesostris, a Semiramis and a Cyrus. Theseprinces led millions of men under their standard, andravaged innumerable provinces. A small number onlyof their forces ever returned to their native homes,the rest having perished of diseases, hardships andmisery. The evils they inflicted, and the mortalityintroduced in the countries against which their expeditionswere directed, were certainly not less severe thanthose which their countrymen suffered. No sooner doeshistory become more precise, than we are presentedwith the four great monarchies, that is, with foursuccessful projects, by means of BOOK I. CHAP. II. bloodshed, violence and murder, of enslaving mankind. The expeditionsof Cambyses against Egypt, of Darius against the Scythians,and of Xerxes against the Greeks, seem almost to setcredibility at defiance by the fatal consequences withwhich they were attended. The conquests of Alexandercost innumerable lives, and the immortality of Cæsaris computed to have been purchased by the death ofone million two hundred thousand men. Indeed the Romans,by the long duration of their wars, and their inflexibleadherence to their purpose, are to be ranked amongthe foremost destroyers of the human species. Theirwars in Italy endured for more than four hundred years,and their contest for supremacy with the Carthaginianstwo hundred. The Mithridatic war began with a massacreof one hundred and fifty thousand Romans, and in threesingle actions of the war five hundred thousand menwere lost by the eastern monarch. Sylla, his ferociousconqueror, next turned his arms against his country,and the struggle between him and Marius was attendedwith proscriptions, butcheries and murders that knewno restraint from mercy and humanity. The Romans, atlength, suffered the penalty of their iniquitous deeds;and the world was vexed for three hundred years bythe irruptions of Goths, Vandals, Ostrogoths, Huns,and innumerable hordes of barbarians.

among the moderns: I forbear to detail the victorious progress of Mahomet and the pious expeditions of Charlemagne. I will not enumerate the crusades against the infidels, the exploits of Aurungzebe, Gengiskan and Tamerlane, or the extensive murders of theBOOK I. CHAP. II. Spaniards in the new world. Let us examine the civilized and favoured quarter of Europe, or even those countries of Europe which are thought most enlightened.

France was wasted by successive battles during a whole century,the French: for the question of the Salic law, and the claim of the Plantagenets. Scarcely was this contest terminated, before the religious wars broke out, some idea of which we may form from the siege of Rochelle, where of fifteen thousand persons shut up eleven thousand perished of hunger and misery; and from the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, in which the numbers assassinated were forty thousand. This quarrel was appeased by Henry the fourth, and succeeded by the thirty years war in Germany for superiority with the house of Austria, and afterwards by the military transactions of Louis the fourteenth.

In England the war of Cressy and Agincourt only gave placethe English. to the civil war of York and Lancaster, and again after an interval to the war of Charles the first and his parliament. No sooner was the constitution settled by the revolution, than we were engaged in a wide field of continental warfare by king William, the duke of Marlborough, Maria Theresa and the king of Prussia.

And what are in most cases the pretexts upon which war isCauses of war.BOOK I. CHAP. II. undertaken? What rational man could possibly have given himself the least disturbance for the sake of choosing whether Henry the sixth or Edward the fourth should have the style of king of England? What Englishman could reasonably have drawn his sword for the purpose of rendering his country an inferior dependency of France, as it must necessarily have been if the ambition of the Plantagenets had succeeded? What can be more deplorable than to see us first engage eight years in war rather than suffer the haughty Maria Theresa to live with a diminished sovereignty or in a private station; and then eight years more to support the free-booter who had taken advantage of her helpless condition?

The usual causes of war are excellently described by Swift. “Sometimes the quarrel between two princes is to decide which of them shall dispossess a third of his dominions, where neither of them pretends to any right. Sometimes one prince quarrels with another, for fear the other should quarrel with him. Sometimes a war is entered upon because the enemy is too strong; and sometimes because he is too weak. Sometimes our neighbours want the things which we have, or have the things which we want; and we both fight, till they take ours, or give us theirs. It is a very justifiable cause of war to invade a country after the people have been wasted by famine, destroyed by pestilence, or embroiled by factions among themselves. It is justifiable to enter into a war against our nearest ally, when one of his towns lies convenient for us, or a territory of land, that would render our dominions round and compact. If a princeBOOK I. CHAP. II. sends forces into a nation where the people are poor and ignorant, he may lawfully put the half of them to death, and make slaves of the rest, in order to civilize and reduce them from their barbarous way of living. It is a very kingly, honourable and frequent practice, when one prince desires the assistance of another to secure him against an invasion, that the assistant, when he has driven out the invader, should seize on the dominions himself, and kill, imprison or banish the prince he came to relieve* .”

If we turn from the foreign transactions of states with eachPenal laws. other, to the principles of their domestic policy, we shall not find much greater reason to be satisfied. A numerous class of mankind are held down in a state of abject penury, and are continually prompted by disappointment and distress to commit violence upon their more fortunate neighbours. The only mode which is employed to repress this violence, and to maintain the order and peace of society, is punishment. Whips, axes and gibbets, dungeons, chains and racks are the most approved and established methods of persuading men to obedience, and impressing upon their minds the lessons of reason. Hundreds of victims are annually sacrificed at the shrine of positive law and political institution.

BOOK I. CHAP. II. Despotism. Add to this the species of government which prevails over nine tenths of the globe, which is despotism: a government, as Mr. Locke justly observes, altogether “vile and miserable,” and “more to be deprecated than anarchy itself.*

Deduction. This account of the history and state of man is not a declamation, but an appeal to facts. He that considers it cannot possibly regard political disquisition as a trifle, and government as a neutral and unimportant concern. I by no means call upon the reader implicitly to admit that these evils are capable of remedy, and that wars, executions and despotism can be extirpated out of the world. But I call upon him to consider whether they may be remedied. I would have him feel that civil policy is a topic upon which the severest investigation may laudably be employed.

If government be a subject, which, like mathematics, natural philosophy and morals, admits of argument and demonstration,BOOK I. CHAP. II. then may we reasonably hope that men shall some time or other agree respecting it. If it comprehend every thing that is most important and interesting to man, it is probable that, when the theory is greatly advanced, the practice will not be wholly neglected. Men may one day feel that they are partakers of a common nature, and that true freedom and perfect equity, like food and air, are pregnant with benefit to every constitution. If there be the faintest hope that this shall be the final result, then certainly no subject can inspire to a sound mind such generous enthusiasm, such enlightened ardour and such invincible perseverance.

The probability of this improvement will be sufficiently established,Enumeration of arguments. if we consider, first, that the moral characters of men are the result of their perceptions: and, secondly, that of all the modes of operating upon mind government is the most considerable. In addition to these arguments it will be found, thirdly, that the good and ill effects of political institution are not less conspicuous in detail than in principle; and, fourthly, that perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species, so that the political, as well as the intellectual state of man, may be presumed to be in a course of progressive improvement.

[*]Gulliver's Travels, Part IV. Ch. v.

[*]Locke on Government, Book I. Ch. i. §. 1; and Book II. Ch. vii. §. 91. The words in the last place are: “Wherever any two men are, who have no standing rule and common judge to appeal to on earth for the determination of controversies of right betwixt them, there they are still in the state of nature, and under all the inconveniences of it, with only this woeful difference to the subject, &c.”

Most of the above arguments may be found much more at large in Burke's Vindication of Natural Society; a treatise, in which the evils of the existing political institutions are displayed with incomparable force of reasoning and lustre of eloquence, while the intention of the author was to shew that these evils were to be considered as trivial.