People And Nations Are Forged

Resistance To Sudden Violence, For The Preservation Not Only Of My Person, My Limbs, And Life, But Of My Property, Is An Indisputable Right Of Nature Which I Have Never Surrendered To The Public By The Compact Of Society, And Which Perhaps, I Could Not Surrender If I Would.

The Good Of The Governed Is The End, And Rewards And Punishments Are The Means, Of All Government. The Government Of The Supreme And All-perfect Mind, Over All His Intellectual Creation, Is By Proportioning Rewards To Piety And Virtue, And Punishments To Disobedience And Vice. ... The Joys Of Heaven Are Prepared, And The Horrors Of Hell In A Future State, To Render The Moral Government Of The Universe Perfect And Complete. Human Government Is More Or Less Perfect, As It Approaches Nearer Or Diverges Further From An Imitation Of This Perfect Plan Of Divine And Moral Government.

The People, When They Have Been Unchecked, Have Been As Unjust, Tyrannical, Brutal, Barbarous, And Cruel, As Any King Or Senate Possessed Of Uncontrollable Power. The Majority Has Eternally, And Without One Exception, Usurped Over The Rights Of The Minority.

A Single Assembly Is Apt To Grow Ambitious, And After A Time Will Not Hesitate To Vote Itself Perpetual. This Was One Fault Of The Long Parliament; But More Remarkably Of Holland, Whose Assembly First Voted Themselves From Annual To Septennial, Then For Life, And After A Course Of Years, That All Vacancies Happening By Death Or Otherwise, Should Be Filled By Themselves, Without Any Application To Constituents At All.

Tacitus Appears To Have Been As Great An Enthusiast As Petrarch For The Revival Of The Republic And Universal Empire. He Has Exerted The Vengeance Of History Upon The Emperors, But Has Veiled The Conspiracies Against Them, And The Incorrigible Corruption Of The People Which Probably Provoked Their Most Atrocious Cruelties. Tyranny Can Scarcely Be Practised Upon A Virtuous And Wise People.