Page:Essay on the First Principles of Government 2nd Ed.djvu/89

 good laws, true freedom may be established for ages; whereas, were the old forms of constitutional liberty once abolished, as in France, there would be little hope of their revival.

Whenever the house of Commons shall be so abandonedly corrupt, as to join with the court in abolishing any of the essential forms of the constution, or effectually defeating the great purposes of it, let every Englishman, before it be too late, re-peruse the history of his country, and do what Englishmen are renowned for having formerly done in the same circumstances.

Where civil liberty is intirely divested of its natural guard, political liberty, I should not hesitate to prefer the government of one, to that of a number; because a sense of shame would have less influence upon them, and they would keep one another in countenance, in cases in which any single person would yield to the sense of the majority.