of right, I do not mean to injure thofe which are real, and are fuch as their pretended rights would totally deftroy. If civil fociety be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to juftice; as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in politic function or in ordinary Occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry; and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquifitions of their parents; to the nourifhment and improvement of their offspring; to inftruction in life, and to confolation in death. Whatever each man can feparately do, without trefpaffing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all. which fociety, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favour. But as to the fhare of power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the ftate, that I muft deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil fociety; for I have in my contemplation the civil focial man, and no other. It is a thing to be fettled by convention.

If civil fociety be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. That convention muft limit and modify all the descriptions of conftitution which are formed under it. Every fort of legislative, judicial, or executory power are its crea

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tures. They can have no being in any other ftate of things; and how can any man claim, under the conventions of civil fociety, rights which do not fo much as fuppofe its existence? Rights which are abfolutely repugnant to it? One of the first motives to civil fociety, and which becomes one of its fundamental rules, is, that no man should be judge in his own cause. By this each perfon has at once divefted himself of the first fundamental right of uncovenanted man, that is, to judge for himself, and to affert his own cause. He abdicates all right to be his own governor. He inclufively, in a great measure, abandons the right of felf-defence, the firft law of nature. Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil ftate together. That he may obtain justice he gives up his right of determining what it is in points the most effential to him. That he may fecure fome liberty, he makes a furrender in truft of the whole of it.

Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may and do exift in total independence of it; and exift in much greater clearness, and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection: but their abftract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right to every thing they want every thing. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wifdom. Among thefe wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil fociety, of a fufficient reftraint upon their paffions. Society requires not

only

only that the paffions of individuals fhould be fubjected, but that even in the mafs and body as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men fhould frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their paffions brought into fubjection. This can only be done by a power out of themselves; and not, in the exercife of its function, subject to that will and to those paffions which it is its office to bridle and fubdue. In this fense the restraints on men, as well as their li berties, are to be reckoned among their rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions vary with times and circumstances, and admit of infinite modifications, they cannot be fettled upon any abstract rule; and nothing is fo foolish as to difcufs them upon that principle.

The moment you abate any thing from the full rights of men, each to govern himself, and fuffer any artificial pofitive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a confideration of convenience. This it is which makes the conftitution of a ftate, and the due distribution of its powers, a matter of the most delicate, and complicated fkill. It requires a deep knowledge of human nature and human neceffities, and of the things which facilitate or obftruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanifm of civil inftitutions. The ftate is to have recruits to its ftrength, and remedies to its diftempers. What is the ufe of difcuffing a man's abftract right to food or to medicine? The question is upon the method of procur

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ing and adminiftering them. In that deliberation I fhall always advife to call in the aid of the farmer and the phyfician, rather than the profeffor of metaphyfics. The fcience of conftructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental fcience, not to be taught à priori. Nor is it a fhort experience that can inftruct us in that practical science; because the real effects of moral caufes are not always immediate; but that which in the first inftance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation; and its excellence may arife even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse alfo happens; and very plaufible schemes, with very pleafing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclufions. In ftates there are often fome obfcure and almoft latent caufes, things which appear at first view of little moment, on which a very great part of its profperity or adverfity may moft effentially depend. The fcience of government being therefore fo practical in itfelf, and intended for fuch practical purposes, a matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any perfon can gain in his whole life, however fagacious and obferving he may be, it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of fociety, or of building it up again, without having models and patterns of approved utility before his eyes.

Thefe metaphyfic rights entering into com

mon life, like rays of light which pierce into a dense medium, are, by the laws of nature, refracted from their ftraight line. Indeed in the grofs and complicated mass of human paffions and concerns, the primitive rights of men undergo fuch a variety of refractions and reflections, that it becomes abfurd to talk of them as if they continued in the fimplicity of their original direction. The nature of man is intricate; the objects of fociety are of the greatest poffible complexity; and therefore no fimple difpofition or direction of power can be fuitable either to man's nature, or to the quality of his affairs. When I hear the fimplicity of contrivance aimed at and boafted of in any new political conftitutions, I am at no lofs to decide that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their trade, or totally negligent of their duty. The fimple governments are fundamentally defective, to say no worse of them. If you were to contemplate fociety in but one point of view, all these fimple modes of polity are infinitely captivating. In effect each would answer its fingle end much more perfectly than the more complex is able to attain all its complex purposes. But it is better that the whole fhould be imperfectly and anomaloufly answered, than that, while fome parts are provided for with great exactness, others might be totally neglected, or perhaps materially injured, by the over-care of a favourite member.

The pretended rights of thefe theorists are all extremes; and in proportion as they are metaphyfically true, they are morally and politically

falfe.