Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/63

§. 2. will naturally lead us into a hort enquiry concerning the nature of ociety and civil government; and the natural, inherent right that belongs to the overeignty of a tate, wherever that overeignty be lodged, of making and enforcing laws. only true and natural foundations of ociety are the wants and the fears of individuals. Not that we can believe, with ome theoretical writers, that there ever was a time when there was no uch thing as ociety; and that, from the impule of reaon, and through a ene of their wants and weaknees, individuals met together in a large plain, entered into an original contract, and choe the tallet man preent to be their governor. This notion, of an actually exiting unconnected tate of nature, is too wild to be eriouly admitted; and beides it is plainly contradictory to the revealed accounts of the primitive origin of mankind, and their preervation two thouand years afterwards; both which were effected by the means of ingle families. Thee formed the firt ociety, among themelves; which every day extended it’s limits, and when it grew too large to ubit with convenience in that patoral tate, wherein the patriarchs appear to have lived, it necearily ubdivided itelf by various migrations into more. Afterwards, as agriculture increaed, which employs and can maintain a much greater number of hands, migrations became les frequent; and various tribes, which had formerly eparated, reunited again; ometimes by compulion and conquet, ometimes by accident, and ometimes perhaps by compact. But though ociety had not it’s formal beginning from any convention of individuals, actuated by their wants and their fears; yet it is the ene of their weaknes and imperfection that keeps mankind together; that demontrates the neceity of this union; and that therefore is the olid and natural foundation, as well as the cement, of ociety. And this is what we mean by the original contract of ociety; which, though perhaps in no intance it has ever been formally expreed at the firt intitution of a tate, yet in nature and reaon mut always be undertood and implied, in