The Origins and Design of Government
Some writers have so confused society with government that they leave little or no distinction between them. Yet they are not only different; they also have different origins. Society arises from our needs, and government from our wrongdoing. Society promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections; government does so negatively by restraining our vices. One encourages interaction, while the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every condition is a blessing, but government, even at its best, is only a necessary evil; at its worst, it is intolerable. When we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries under a government that we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is made worse by the thought that we provide the means by which we suffer.
Government, like clothing, is the badge of lost innocence. The palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. If the impulses of conscience were clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, humanity would need no other lawgiver. But since they are not, a person finds it necessary to surrender part of his property to provide the means of protecting the rest. He is induced to do this by the same prudence that, in every other case, advises him to choose the lesser of two evils. Therefore, since security is the true design and purpose of government, it unquestionably follows that whatever form of government appears most likely to secure it for us, with the least expense and the greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.
To gain a clear and just idea of the design and purpose of government, let us imagine a small number of people settling in some secluded part of the earth, unconnected with everyone else. They would represent the first settlement of any country, or of the world. In this state of natural liberty, society would be their first concern.
A thousand motives would draw them together. One person’s strength is so unequal to his needs, and his mind so unsuited to perpetual solitude, that he is soon compelled to seek the help and relief of another, who in turn requires the same. Four or five people united could raise a tolerable dwelling in the middle of a wilderness, but one person might labor through the ordinary span of life without accomplishing it. After felling the timber, he could not move it, nor erect it once it had been moved. Meanwhile, hunger would draw him away from his work, and every different need would call him in a different direction. Disease, or even misfortune, would mean death. Though neither might be fatal in itself, either could make him incapable of sustaining his life and reduce him to a condition in which he might more properly be said to perish than to die.
Necessity, like a gravitational force, would soon draw our newly arrived settlers into society. Its mutual blessings would supersede the need for law and government, making their obligations unnecessary as long as the settlers remained perfectly just toward one another. But since nothing except heaven is impregnable to vice, it would inevitably happen that, as they overcame the first difficulties of settlement that had united them in a common cause, they would begin to relax in their duty and attachment to one another. This neglect would reveal the necessity of establishing some form of government to make up for the failure of moral virtue.
Some convenient tree would serve as their statehouse. Beneath its branches, the whole colony could assemble to deliberate on public matters. Their first laws would most likely carry only the title of regulations and would be enforced by no penalty other than public disapproval. In this first parliament, every man would have a seat by natural right.
But as the colony grew, its public concerns would grow as well. The distances separating its members would make it too inconvenient for all of them to meet on every occasion, as they had at first, when their number was small, their homes were near one another, and their public concerns were few and minor. This would show them the convenience of consenting to leave legislative work to a select number chosen from the whole body. These representatives would be presumed to have the same interests at stake as those who appointed them and to act as the whole body would act if everyone were present.
If the colony continued to grow, it would become necessary to increase the number of representatives. To ensure that the interests of every part of the colony were considered, the people would find it best to divide the whole into convenient districts, each sending its proper number. To prevent the elected from forming an interest separate from that of the electors, prudence would show the propriety of holding frequent elections. By this means, the elected would return within a few months and mingle again with the general body of electors. Their fidelity to the public would be secured by the prudent thought that they should not make a rod for their own backs.
Because this frequent interchange would establish a common interest among every part of the community, the people would naturally and mutually support one another. On this, and not on the meaningless title of king, depend the strength of government and the happiness of the governed.
Here, then, are the origin and rise of government: a system made necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world. Here, too, are the design and purpose of government: freedom and security. However much our eyes may be dazzled by spectacle or our ears deceived by sound, however much prejudice may warp our wills or self-interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and reason will say that this is right.
I derive my idea of the proper form of government from a principle in nature that no art can overturn: the simpler anything is, the less liable it is to fall into disorder and the easier it is to repair when disordered. With this principle in mind, I offer a few remarks on the much-praised constitution of England.
I grant that it was noble for the dark and servile times in which it was established. When the world was overrun by tyranny, even the smallest retreat from it was a glorious rescue. But the English constitution is imperfect, subject to convulsions, and incapable of producing what it seems to promise. This is easily demonstrated.
Absolute governments, though a disgrace to human nature, have the advantage of simplicity. If the people suffer, they know the source from which their suffering comes. They also know the remedy and are not bewildered by a variety of causes and cures. But the constitution of England is so exceedingly complex that the nation may suffer for years without being able to discover where the fault lies. Some will place it in one part and some in another, while every political physician prescribes a different medicine.
I know it is difficult to overcome local or long-standing prejudices. Yet if we allow ourselves to examine the component parts of the English constitution, we will find them to be the degraded remains of two ancient tyrannies combined with some new republican materials.
First: The remains of monarchical tyranny in the person of the king.
Second: The remains of aristocratic tyranny in the persons of the peers.
Third: The new republican materials in the persons of the commons, on whose virtue the freedom of England depends.
Because the first two are hereditary, they are independent of the people. Therefore, in a constitutional sense, they contribute nothing to the freedom of the state.
To say that the constitution of England is a union of three powers that reciprocally check one another is farcical. Either the words have no meaning, or they are direct contradictions.
To say that the commons serve as a check upon the king presupposes two things.
First: That the king cannot be trusted without supervision. In other words, a thirst for absolute power is the natural disease of monarchy.
Second: That the commons, having been appointed for that purpose, are either wiser or more worthy of confidence than the crown.
But the same constitution that gives the commons the power to check the king by withholding public funds afterward gives the king the power to check the commons by authorizing him to reject their other bills. It therefore supposes that the king is wiser than those whom it has already supposed to be wiser than he is. What sheer absurdity!
There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of monarchy. It first excludes a man from the means of obtaining information, yet empowers him to act in cases requiring the highest judgment. The position of a king shuts him off from the world, yet the work of a king requires him to know the world thoroughly. These different parts, by unnaturally opposing and destroying one another, prove the whole character of monarchy to be absurd and useless.
Some writers have explained the English constitution this way: the king, they say, is one party and the people another; the peers form a house acting on behalf of the king, and the commons form one acting on behalf of the people. But this arrangement has all the divisions of a house divided against itself. Though the expressions are pleasantly arranged, they appear empty and ambiguous when examined.
Even the most precise construction that words can bear will always become mere sound when it is used to describe something that either cannot exist or is too incomprehensible to be described. Such words may amuse the ear, but they cannot inform the mind. This explanation also contains a prior question: How did the king acquire a power that the people are afraid to trust and must always keep in check? Such a power could not be the gift of a wise people, nor can any power that needs checking come from God. Yet the provision made by the constitution assumes that such a power exists.
But that provision is unequal to the task. The means either cannot or will not accomplish the end, and the whole arrangement defeats itself. Just as a greater weight will always lift a lesser one, and all the wheels of a machine are set in motion by one, we need only determine which power in the constitution carries the most weight, because that power will govern.
Though the others, or some of them, may obstruct or, as the phrase goes, check the speed of its motion, their efforts will be ineffective as long as they cannot stop it. The primary moving power will ultimately have its way, and whatever it lacks in speed will be supplied by time.
It hardly needs to be said that the crown is this overbearing part of the English constitution. It is also self-evident that the crown derives its entire importance merely from its power to bestow offices and pensions. Thus, although we have been wise enough to shut and lock a door against absolute monarchy, we have at the same time been foolish enough to put the key in the crown’s possession.
The prejudice of English people in favor of their own government by king, lords, and commons arises as much, or more, from national pride as from reason. Individuals are undoubtedly safer in England than in some other countries. But the will of the king is as much the law of the land in Britain as it is in France, with this difference: instead of coming directly from his mouth, it is delivered to the people in the more formidable shape of an act of Parliament. The fate of Charles I has only made kings more subtle, not more just.
Therefore, setting aside all national pride and prejudice in favor of particular systems and forms, the plain truth is that it is entirely due to the constitution of the people, and not to the constitution of the government, that the crown is not as oppressive in England as it is in the Ottoman Empire.
An inquiry into the constitutional errors of the English form of government is highly necessary at this time. We are never in a proper condition to do justice to others while we remain under the influence of some leading partiality. Neither are we capable of doing justice to ourselves while we remain bound by any stubborn prejudice. Just as a man attached to a prostitute is unfit to choose or judge a wife, any preconception in favor of a rotten constitution of government will prevent us from recognizing a good one.
Monarchy and Hereditary Succession
Human beings were originally equal in the order of creation. That equality could only have been destroyed by some later circumstance. The distinctions between rich and poor can largely be explained without resorting to the harsh, unpleasant words oppression and greed. Oppression is often the consequence of wealth, but seldom or never the means of obtaining it. And although greed may keep a man from becoming desperately poor, it generally makes him too timid to become wealthy.
But there is another, greater distinction for which no truly natural or religious reason can be given: the division of men into KINGS and SUBJECTS. Male and female are distinctions of nature, and good and bad are distinctions of heaven. But it is worth asking how one class of men came into the world so highly exalted above the rest and distinguished as if it were a new species, and whether such men bring happiness or misery to humankind.
In the early ages of the world, according to the chronology of Scripture, there were no kings. The consequence was that there were no wars. It is the pride of kings that throws humankind into confusion. Holland, without a king, has enjoyed more peace during the last century than any of Europe’s monarchical governments. Antiquity supports the same observation. The quiet, rural lives of the first patriarchs possess a certain happiness that vanishes when we reach the history of Jewish royalty.
Government by kings was first introduced into the world by the heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom. It was the most successful invention the Devil ever set in motion for the promotion of idolatry. The heathens paid divine honors to their dead kings, and the Christian world has improved upon the practice by doing the same to its living ones. How impious it is to apply the title sacred majesty to a worm who, amid all his splendor, is crumbling into dust!
Just as exalting one man so greatly above the rest cannot be justified by the equal rights of nature, neither can it be defended by the authority of Scripture. The will of the Almighty, as declared by Gideon and the prophet Samuel, expressly condemns government by kings. Every anti-monarchical part of Scripture has been smoothly glossed over under monarchical governments, but these passages undoubtedly deserve the attention of countries that have yet to form their governments. “Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s” is the Scriptural doctrine of courts, yet it offers no support for monarchical government. The Jews at that time had no king and were living in subjection to the Romans.
Nearly three thousand years passed between the Mosaic account of creation and the time when the Jews, under a national delusion, requested a king. Until then, their form of government, except in extraordinary cases when the Almighty intervened, was a kind of republic administered by a judge and the elders of the tribes. They had no kings, and it was considered sinful to acknowledge any being under that title except the Lord of Hosts. When a man seriously reflects on the idolatrous homage paid to the persons of kings, he need not wonder that the Almighty, ever jealous of his honor, should condemn a form of government that so impiously invades the prerogative of heaven.
Monarchy is ranked in Scripture as one of the sins of the Jews, for which a curse held in reserve was pronounced against them. The history of that transaction deserves attention.
When the children of Israel were oppressed by the Midianites, Gideon marched against them with a small army, and victory, through divine intervention, was decided in his favor. The Jews, elated by success and attributing it to Gideon’s generalship, proposed making him a king. They said, “Rule thou over us, thou and thy son and thy son’s son.” Here was temptation in its fullest extent: not merely a kingdom, but a hereditary one. Yet Gideon, in the piety of his soul, replied, “I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you, THE LORD SHALL RULE OVER YOU.”
Words could not be more explicit. Gideon does not decline the honor; he denies their right to grant it. Nor does he flatter them with invented declarations of thanks. In the positive style of a prophet, he charges them with disloyalty to their proper Sovereign, the King of heaven.
About one hundred and thirty years later, they fell into the same error again. The longing of the Jews for the idolatrous customs of the heathens is exceedingly difficult to account for, but so it was. Seizing upon the misconduct of Samuel’s two sons, who had been entrusted with certain secular affairs, they came abruptly and noisily to Samuel and said, “Behold thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways, now make us a king to judge us like all the other nations.”
We cannot help observing that their motives were bad. They wanted to be like other nations, meaning the heathens, whereas their true glory lay in being as unlike them as possible.
“But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, Give us a king to judge us; and Samuel prayed unto the Lord, and the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee, for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, THAT I SHOULD NOT REIGN OVER THEM. According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt, even unto this day; wherewith they have forsaken me and served other Gods; so do they also unto thee. Now therefore hearken unto their voice, howbeit, protest solemnly unto them and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them.”
This did not describe any particular king, but the general conduct of the earthly kings whom Israel was so eager to imitate. Despite the great distance in time and the difference in customs, the character remains in fashion:
“And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people, that asked of him a king. And he said, This shall be the manner of the king that shall reign over you; he will take your sons and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen, and some shall run before his chariots.”
This description agrees with the present practice of impressing men.
“And he will appoint him captains over thousands and captains over fifties, and will set them to ear his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots; and he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks and to be bakers.”
This describes the expense and luxury of kings as well as their oppression.
“And he will take your fields and your olive yards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants; and he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give them to his officers and to his servants.”
From this we see that bribery, corruption, and favoritism are the persistent vices of kings.
“And he will take the tenth of your men servants, and your maid servants, and your goodliest young men and your asses, and put them to his work; and he will take the tenth of your sheep, and ye shall be his servants, and ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen, AND THE LORD WILL NOT HEAR YOU IN THAT DAY.”
This explains the continuation of monarchy. The characters of the few good kings who have lived since neither sanctify the title nor erase the sinfulness of its origin. The high praise given to David does not concern him officially as a king, but only as a man after God’s own heart.
“Nevertheless the People refused to obey the voice of Samuel, and they said, Nay, but we will have a king over us, that we may be like all the nations, and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.”
Samuel continued reasoning with them, but without success. He confronted them with their ingratitude, but nothing would persuade them. Seeing them fully committed to their folly, he cried out, “I will call unto the Lord, and he shall send thunder and rain.” This was then a punishment, because it was the time of the wheat harvest. Samuel continued, “that ye may perceive and see that your wickedness is great which ye have done in the sight of the Lord, IN ASKING YOU A KING.”
The account continues, “So Samuel called unto the Lord, and the Lord sent thunder and rain that day, and all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel. And all the people said unto Samuel, Pray for thy servants unto the Lord thy God that we die not, for WE HAVE ADDED UNTO OUR SINS THIS EVIL, TO ASK A KING.”
These portions of Scripture are direct and positive. They admit no equivocal interpretation. Either it is true that the Almighty has entered his protest against monarchical government, or Scripture is false. A man has good reason to believe there is as much kingcraft as priestcraft in withholding Scripture from the public in Catholic countries. Monarchy in every instance is the popery of government.
To the evil of monarchy, we have added the evil of hereditary succession. As the first degrades and diminishes us, so the second, when claimed as a right, insults posterity and imposes upon it. Since all men were originally equal, no one could possess by birth the right to establish his own family in perpetual preference to every other. Although he himself might deserve some proper degree of honor from his contemporaries, his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit it. One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary kingship is that nature disapproves of it. Otherwise, she would not so often turn it into ridicule by giving humankind an ass in place of a lion.
Second, since no man could originally possess any public honors except those bestowed upon him, the people who gave those honors had no power to give away the rights of posterity. They might say, “We choose you as our head,” but they could not, without obvious injustice to their children, say, “Your children and your children’s children shall reign over ours forever.” Such an unwise, unjust, and unnatural compact might, perhaps in the next succession, place them under the government of a rogue or a fool. Most wise men have always treated hereditary right with contempt in their private opinions. Yet it is one of those evils that, once established, is not easily removed. Many submit from fear, others from superstition, and the more powerful group shares with the king in plundering the rest.
This assumes that the present families of kings in the world had honorable origins. Yet it is more than probable that, if we could remove the dark covering of antiquity and trace them back to their beginnings, we would find the first of them to have been nothing better than the leading ruffian of some restless gang. His savage manners or superior cunning gained him the title of chief among plunderers. By increasing his power and extending his raids, he intimidated peaceful and defenseless people into purchasing their safety through regular payments.
Yet his electors could have had no thought of giving hereditary rights to his descendants, because permanently excluding themselves would have been incompatible with the free and unrestricted principles by which they professed to live. Hereditary succession in the early ages of monarchy, therefore, could not have arisen as a matter of right, but only as something accidental or complimentary. Because few or no records existed in those days, and traditional history was stuffed with fables, it became very easy after a few generations to invent some superstitious tale, conveniently timed and Muhammad-like, to force hereditary right down the throats of ordinary people.
Perhaps the disorders that threatened, or appeared to threaten, upon the death of a leader and the choice of a new one led many people at first to favor hereditary claims, since elections among ruffians could hardly have been orderly. In this way it happened, as it has happened since, that something first accepted as a convenience was afterward claimed as a right.
Since the conquest, England has known a few good monarchs but has groaned under a much greater number of bad ones. Yet no sensible man can say that their claim through William the Conqueror is honorable. A French bastard landed with an armed band of outlaws and established himself as king of England against the consent of its inhabitants. In plain language, this is a thoroughly shabby and villainous origin. It certainly contains nothing divine.
Still, there is no need to spend much time exposing the folly of hereditary right. If some people are weak enough to believe in it, let them indiscriminately worship the ass and the lion, and welcome. I will neither imitate their humility nor disturb their devotion.
Yet I would like to ask how they imagine kings first arose. The question allows only three answers: by lot, by election, or by usurpation. If the first king was chosen by lot, that establishes a precedent for choosing the next in the same way and excludes hereditary succession. Saul was chosen by lot, yet the succession was not hereditary, nor does anything in that transaction suggest that it was ever intended to be.
If the first king of any country was chosen by election, that also establishes a precedent for the next. To say that the right of all future generations can be taken away by the first electors when they choose not merely a king but a family of kings forever has no parallel, either within or outside Scripture, except the doctrine of original sin. That doctrine supposes the free will of all people to have been lost in Adam. Hereditary succession can gain no glory from such a comparison, and no other comparison will fit it.
As all sinned in Adam, so all people obeyed through the first electors. As all humankind was subjected to Satan in the first case, it was subjected to sovereignty in the second. As our innocence was lost in the first, our authority was lost in the last. And as both prevent us from reclaiming an earlier condition and privilege, it follows beyond dispute that original sin and hereditary succession are parallels. Dishonorable rank! Inglorious connection! Yet the most subtle sophist cannot produce a fairer comparison.
As for usurpation, no man will be bold enough to defend it. That William the Conqueror was a usurper is a fact that cannot be contradicted. The plain truth is that the antiquity of the English monarchy cannot withstand examination.
But it is not so much the absurdity of hereditary succession as its evil that concerns humankind. If it ensured a line of good and wise men, it would bear the seal of divine authority. But because it opens the door to the foolish, the wicked, and the unfit, it possesses the nature of oppression. Men who consider themselves born to reign and others born to obey soon become insolent. Separated from the rest of humankind, their minds are poisoned early by self-importance. The world in which they live differs so greatly from the world at large that they have little opportunity to understand its true interests. When they succeed to the government, they are frequently among the most ignorant and unfit people in all the dominions.
Another evil attending hereditary succession is that the throne may be occupied by a minor of any age. Throughout that time, a regency acting under the cover of a king has every opportunity and inducement to betray its trust. The same national misfortune occurs when a king, worn out by age and infirmity, enters the final stage of human weakness. In both cases, the public becomes the prey of every scoundrel who can successfully manipulate the follies of infancy or age.
The most plausible argument ever offered in favor of hereditary succession is that it protects a nation from civil wars. If this were true, the argument would carry great weight. Instead, it is the most barefaced falsehood ever imposed upon humankind. The entire history of England disproves it. Thirty kings and two minors have reigned in that distracted kingdom since the conquest. During that time, including the Revolution, there have been no fewer than eight civil wars and nineteen rebellions. Hereditary succession therefore works against peace rather than for it and destroys the very foundation on which it claims to stand.
The struggle for the monarchy and its succession between the houses of York and Lancaster left England drenched in blood for many years. Twelve pitched battles, besides skirmishes and sieges, were fought between Henry and Edward. Henry was twice Edward’s prisoner, while Edward in turn became Henry’s prisoner. So uncertain are the fortunes of war and the temper of a nation, when merely personal matters form the basis of a quarrel, that Henry was carried in triumph from a prison to a palace, while Edward was forced to flee from a palace to a foreign country. Yet sudden changes of public feeling seldom last. Henry in his turn was driven from the throne, and Edward was recalled to succeed him, with Parliament always following the stronger side.
This struggle began during the reign of Henry VI and was not entirely extinguished until the reign of Henry VII, in whom the two families were united. It covered a period of 67 years, from 1422 to 1489.
In short, monarchy and hereditary succession have laid not merely this or that kingdom, but the whole world, in blood and ashes. It is a form of government against which the word of God bears testimony, and blood will accompany it.
If we examine the occupation of a king, we will find that in some countries kings have none. After idling away their lives without pleasure to themselves or benefit to the nation, they leave the scene and allow their successors to tread the same useless path. In absolute monarchies, the full burden of civil and military business rests upon the king. The children of Israel, in requesting a king, offered this reason: “that he may judge us, and go out before us and fight our battles.” But in countries where the king is neither a judge nor a general, as in England, a man would be puzzled to discover what his business is.
The nearer any government comes to being a republic, the less business it has for a king. It is somewhat difficult to find a proper name for the government of England. Sir William Meredith calls it a republic, but in its present condition it is unworthy of that name. The corrupt influence of the Crown, which controls the distribution of all offices, has so completely swallowed the power and consumed the virtue of the House of Commons, the republican part of the constitution, that the government of England is almost as monarchical as those of France or Spain.
People quarrel over names without understanding them. It is the republican, not the monarchical, part of England’s constitution in which Englishmen take pride: the liberty of choosing a House of Commons from among themselves. It is easy to see that when republican virtue fails, slavery follows. Why is the constitution of England sickly? Because monarchy has poisoned the republic. The Crown has absorbed the Commons.
In England, a king has little more to do than make war and give away offices. In plain terms, his business is to impoverish the nation and set its people against one another. A fine occupation indeed for a man who is paid eight hundred thousand pounds sterling a year and worshiped in addition! One honest man is worth more to society and in the sight of God than all the crowned ruffians who ever lived.
