ing from the operation of human passions, she is glorified; so that in the midst of the revolutionary storms that agitate the world, atl the good proceeds from God, and all the evil is to be ascribed to the abuse of liberty by the perverseness of human conduct. But Providence would not be equally justified under a consideration of the supposed state of anarchy preceding the formation of political societies. This anarchy is not accidental. It is supposed natural; and if it is morally impossible that men, delivered over to the operation of uncontrouled passions, can live in peace with each other, you cannot impute to them the disorder that results from a total want of all government.'

The hypothesis is also contrary to revelation. We are not to suppose that man as degraded by his fall was abandoned by God. With the promise of a redeemer, many temporal blessings were actually and immediately bestowed. Among these were the restraints of society. Man therefore is not to be considered as subject to the moral depravity conse quent upon the fall as acting by itself: he is responsible for the alleviations provided, and the use he makes of them. The latter part of the chapter is employed in computing the theories of the publicists on the origin of property, which they suppose to take place before the existence of govern ment; but the author contends that they begin to exist together. These pages have some very interesting remarks, but there is a considerable want of perspicuity and distinctness.

But it is contended that not only are the systems under examination unsupported by history, and contrary to revelation, but that reason itself is sufficiently armed against the absurdities contained in them. The first assertion which the writer notices as involving a contradiction, is that of Locke and Rousseau, that sovereignty is the production of human reason and liberty.

Is it not to prevent them from abusing their liberty, to restrict them to order, that is to say, to force them to live conformable to the suggestions of right reason? Is it not because their reason when left to its own operations, plunges them into slavery, on account of the ignorance they fall into, and the evil influence, of the passions? If reason, in order to exercise her functions, and to acquire efficient force, is obliged to call authority, or power, to her aid, she certainly cannot be the principle and origin of that very authority which guides her infancy, and conducts her, as it were, by the hand.'

'Human reason and liberty, when left to operate of themselves, create ignorance and disorder, and possess not the energy necessary to establish a power calculated to controul themselves, and to prevent their dangerous eccentricities."

Neither can we find the original motive and inducement to form society in the sentiments of kindness which mutually attract mankind to each other; because the more active force of the passions which tends continually to create dissention among them is equally an essential part of human nature. Authority therefore is externally imposed. He allows that both religion and society are compacts in a certain sense, viz. that conditions are annexed to certain conduct. But the terms of both are dictated by the Creator. The publicists, however, suppose a compact between equals. And as from the dissolution of the subsisting compact anarchy would ensue, so they suppose a time when anarchy existed universally, and from which mankind entered into the social compact. The disposition of a number of men to join their individual into general will, can be produced, he thinks, only by the compressive power of authority. This has no resemblance to a compact entered into by men perfectly independent. One cherishes a sentiment of subordination, which having been characteristic of man in all ages and countries, may therefore be called natural: the other tends to inflame pride and passion, and to produce the dissolution of all government.

• Created in a state of innocence, surrounded with mercies, and enjoying the favour of his maker, if he was capable in the beginning, of revolting against the authority of his God, if he has dared, before the tribunal of reason, to misrepresent, and misconstruc the words and terms of the prohibition he lay under, he will not be persuaded, in the deplorable state to which his passions have reduced him, to obey, from a sense of duty, the very power that oppresses him, by placing before his eyes a primitive contract, by the tenour of which, he himself had dictated the conditions of his obe. dience.'

To ascertain the means by which God inclines the mind of man to subordination, the general laws by which he influences the human will, and the channel by which authority was first introduced and is still supported, are the objects of the 2d part.

Ch. I. The existence of society and of an authority that governs are facts, for which, says the author, reason alone ist unable to account. It is only by the help of revelation, which furnishes us with authentic and satisfactory infor-, mation respecting the nature and origin of man, that we are enabled to solve this question. The natural weakness of man renders him dependent on his fellow-creatures. Early infancy is reared to maturity, youth is guided by

the experience of age, and old age is cherished and supported by the grateful and affectionate attentions of mature age.' Of this order of things subordination is a very striking feature. In the management of a family we have a society existing under the protection and controul of parental authority. This appears to afford conclusive evidence against the social compact. The existence of mankind begins with authority and with submission, and as these moral relations necessarily arose out of the natural relations subsisting between parent and child, which are essential to the continuance of the species, we have strong grounds for deducing the origin of society from the creation by an uninterrupted series. In the remaining chapters it appears that by a very natural and probable progression, governments of the most various and complicated fabric were produced by the gradual modification and extension of the parental authority. But though it was modified, we have no reason to suppose that it was ever completely suspended or interrupted, because at every period of man's history there have existed both the necessity and the principles of government. While the various branches of the same family could trace their genealogy to a common progenitor, this patriarch probably exercised a truly sovereign power over them. There lay no appeal from his authority, which would be readily acquiesced in, because simplicity of wants and interests left no temptation to injustice on his part, or to rebellion on theirs; and the sentiments of natural relation operated with unimpaired force. As the tribe increased so did the power of the patriarch, till it terminated in a genuine monarchy. Locke admits it to be highly probable that the first fathers of the human race were the first depositaries of the sovereignty; but derives their power from the consent of their children when they had attained the age of reason. But authority regards conduct not contemplation. The age of matured understanding, though it puts man in possession of the knowledge of what is right, does not mature the subordination of his will to the practice of it. The pursuit of what is wrong is frequently most prevalent at that age when we begin to know and to appreciate what is right. Is it not therefore safer for the interests of society and of individuals to suppose man impressed by the Deity with a sentiment of continued subordination to that authority from which Locke has imagined a formal emancipation to take place? This emancipation has no foundation in nature. It is the production of an advanced state of society; where it is found expedient that the parental authority should transfer part of its rights

to the state, and that under the common relations of citi zens, father and child should in certain respects be reduced to an equality in the eye of the law. In reply to Locke's assertion that absolute independence is man's natural and inherent right, this distinction is adduced, that the differ ence between absolute independence and rational liberty is so great, that the existence of the former is incompatible with the enjoyment of the latter; that a governing authority is necessary to secure all those ends for which liberty is desirable. The author asserts that all the forms of government have their foundation in nature however diversified by circumstance at present; this, we presume, is what he means when he says that governments are not of human invention; that they are natural; and that were they not, they could not subsist.' In forming governments mankind have only modified a principle already existing. This principle is natural and universal; and its agency being continual and reproductive, pervades the political institutions to which it has given birth, aud provides the indefeasible means of their

continuatice.

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It is observable that Locke having admitted in peint of fact the continued submission of children to their parents, lays down by no means so satisfactory a reason for this fact as that suggested by the author of the present work. He furnishes us with very inadequate grounds for the uniform submission to parental authority exhibited in the history of the early ages of the world. Nor is his account of the formation of society more probable than that of the authority which presides over it. The idea of a state of complete independence has no support but bare conjecture. The perfection of order probably never subsisted for any considerable length of time without interruption, much less has complete anarchy ever been general. Subordination and society are the order established by God in the world: an inestimable blessing, but subject to the abuse of human frailty and perverseness; agitated occasionally by impatience of restraint or the endurance of real suffering, and sometimes yielding to the force of a revolution. Of these struggles the benefits have generally been distant and doubiful in proportion to the violence which entered into the contest. The intervening period of multiplied suffering and political quackery termanales in a general conviction of the benefits of subordination, and the wisdom of that maxim quieta ne movete.'

The second chapter conducts us in the history of society from the patriarchal government to that of a more compl

cated form.

To the patriarchal government others succeeded, formed on various political principles, according to the multiplicity of new relations and interests which advanced civilization gave rise to in Society. Was it at such a period that man quitted the state of nature? It was; if we are to understand by that, the most natural, the least complex, and the most sacred government that ever existed, since it received its powers of acting from God himself. But under this point of view, it is no longer a state of anarchy in which mankind, independent of all authority, know no controul. How has the patriarchal monarchy introduced other forms of government? Shall we, like writers on natural law and right, assemble, in au instant, a multitude of rude barbarians, exhibit them contracting together, and, at once, forming a great nation, as it were by a miracle, or by the movement of a magic wand ? No. Such is not the procedure of nature. The history of mankind instructs us differently.'

We are so much of the author's opinion respecting the spontaneous deliberative efforts of wild men towards forming a political society, that we think it equally probable that such a set of men should appreciate without experience the importance of elegance and precision in language, and under an impression of its various advantages should proceed to frame one. How can the advantages of society or the utility of language be estimated but by experience? How shali men make a choice when unable to form the estimate which recommends it to their adoption? Is the science of government the only one in which theory precedes fact? The claims of the first political chiefs to obedience probably were imperceptibly established over mankind in the infancy of society, while as yet they acknowledged no other than the habitual and willing subjection of children. As an example of patriarchal and political power, the case of Abraham is cited. His authority as patriarchal exhibits a simple and affecting picture of the government of a family; and it was at the same time political, because the men over whom he ruled as a chief were not his own children. He had no natural heir when he marched against the five kings and delivered Lot. Two different modes are then suggested by which men submitted to an authority, with the possessor of which they were unconnected by any natural relation. The first is where a family who have not the means of defending themselves against hostility, yield to the power, and claim the protection of a neighbouring chieftain. This claim to protection is the unalienable right of the subject under every form of government

But in political, as in natural society, if the sovereign, or ruler,