Page:Common sense - addressed to the inhabitants of America.djvu/13



writers have o confounded ociety with government, as to leave little or no ditinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickednes; the former promotes our happines poitively, by uniting our affections; the latter negatively, by retraining our vices. The one encourages intercoure, the other creates ditinctions. The firt is a patron, the lat a puniher.

Society in every tate is a bleing, but government even in its bet tate is but a neceary evil; in its wort tate an intolerable one: For when we uffer, or are expoed to the ame mieries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnih the means by which we uffer. Government, like dres, is the badge of lot innocence; the palaces of Kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of Paradie: For were the impules of concience clear, uniform and irreitably obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the cae, he finds it neceary to urrender up a part of his property, to furnih means for the protection of the ret; and this he is induced to do, by the ame prudence which in every other cae advies him, out of two evils to chooe the leat. Wherefore, ecurity being the whole deign and end of government, it unanwerably follows, that whatever form thereof appears mot likely to enure it to us, with the leat expence and greatet benefit, is preferable to all others.

In order to give a clear and jut idea of the deign and end of government, let us uppoe a mall number of perons ettled in ome equetered part of the earth, unconnected with the ret; they will then repreent the firt peopling of any country, or of the world. In this tate of natural liberty, ociety will be their firt thought. A thouand motives will excite them thereto; the trength of one man is o unequal to his wants, and his mind o unfitted for perpetual olitude, that he is oon obliged to eek aitance and relief of another, who in his turn requires the ame. Four or five united would be able to raie a tolerable dwelling in the midt of a wildernes, but one man might labour out the common period of life without accomplihing any thing; when he had felled his timber he could not remove it, nor erect it after it was removed; hunger in