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sation which each sex produces in the other, still remains an equally inexplicable mystery. To conclude the above digression, which may do very well for a preface, I shall only add, that those speculators who will amuse themselves in seeking for the demonstration of the political theorem above expressed, will thereby be led through a field of observations which they will at first little expect; and in their way towards attaining such demonstration, will find the science, commonly called metaphysics, to be at best but a very superficial one, and that the mathematics, or at least the mathematical reasonings hitherto used by men, are not so completely free from error as has been thought.*

Out of the four chapters added to the present edition, two, the 10th and 11th, B. I. contain among other things, a few strictures on the courts of equity; in which I wish it may be found I have not been mistaken: of the two others, the one, 19th, B. II., contains a few observations on the attempts that may in different circumstances be made, to set new limits on the authority of the crown; and in the 20th, a few general thoughts are introduced on the right of taxation, and on the claim of the American colonies in that respect. Any farther observations I may hereafter make. on the English government, such as comparing it with the other governments of Europe, and examining what difference in the manners of the inhabitants of this country may have resulted from it, must come in a new work, if I ever undertake to treat these subjects. In regard to the American disputes, what I may hereafter write on that account, will be introduced in a work which I may at some future time publish, under the title of Histoire de George Trois, Roi d'Angleterre, or perhaps of Histoire d'Angleterre, depuis l'année 1765, (that in which the American stamp duty was laid) jusques à l'année, 178-meaning that in which an end shall be put to the present contests.†

* Certain errors that are not discovered, are in several cases compensated by others, which are equally unperceived.

A certain book written in French, on the subject of the American disputes, was, I have been told, lately attributed to me, in which I had no share whatever.

THE

Constitution of England:

BOOK I.

INTRODUCTION.

THE spirit of philosophy which peculiarly distinguishes the present age, after having corrected a number of errors fatal to society, seems now to be directed towards the principles of society itself; and we see prejudices vanish, which are difficult to overcome in proportion as it is dangerous to attack them. This rising freedom of sentiment, the necessary forerunner of political freedom, led me to imagine that it would not be unacceptable to the public to be made acquainted with the principles of a constitution, on which the eye of curiosity seems now to be universally turned; and which, though celebrated as a model of perfection, is yet but little known to its ad

mirers.

I am aware that it will be deemed presumptuous in a man who has passed the greatest part of his life out of England, to attempt a delineation of the English government; a system which is supposed to be so complicated as not to be understood, or developed, but by those who have been initiated in the mysteries of it from their infancy.

But, though a foreigner in England, yet as a native of a free country, I am no stranger to those circumstances

a As every popular notion, which may contribute to the support of an arbitrary government, is at all times vigilantly protected by the whole strength of it, political prejudices are, last of all, if ever, shaken off, by a nation subjected to such a governmeut. A great change in this respect, however, has of late taken place in France, where this book was first published, and opinions are now discussed there, and tenets avowed, which, in the time of Louis the fourteenth, would have appeared downright blasphemy: it is to this an allusion is made above.

B

which constitute or characterise liberty! even the great disproportion between the republic of which I am a member, and in which I formed my principles, and the British empire, has perhaps only contributed to facilitate my political inquiries.

As the mathematician, the better to discover the proportions he investigates, begins with freeing his equation from coefficients or such other quantities as only perplex, without properly constituting, it—so it may be advantageous to the investigator of the causes that produce the equilibrium of a government, to have previously studied them, disengaged from the apparatus of fleets, armies, foreign trade, distant and extensive dominions, in a word, from all those brilliant circumstances which so greatly affect the external appearance of a powerful society, but have no essential connection with the real principles of it. It is upon the passions of mankind, that is, upon causes which are unalterable, that the action of the various parts of à state depends. The machine may vary as to its dimensions, but its movement and acting springs still remain intrinsically the same; and that time cannot in any shape be considered as lost, which has been spent in seeing them act and move in a narrower circle.

One other consideration I will suggest, which is, that the very circumstance of being a foreigner may of itself be attended, in this case, with a degree of advantage. The English themselves (the observation cannot give them any offence) having their eyes open, as I may say, upon their liberty, from their first entrance into life, are perhaps too much familiarised with its enjoyment, to inquire, with real concern, into its causes. Having acquired practical notions of their government, long before they have meditated on it, and these notions being slowly and gradually imbibed, they at length behold it without any high degree of sensibility; and they seem to me, in this respect, to be like the recluse inhabitant of a palace, who is perhaps in the worst situation for attaining a complete idea of the whole, and never experienced the striking effect of its external structure and elevation; or, if you please, like a man who, having always had a beautiful and extensive scene before his eyes, continues for ever to view it with indifference.

But a stranger, beholding at once the various parts of a constitution displayed before him, which, at the same time that it carries liberty to its height, has guarded against inconveniences seemingly inevitable, beholding, in short, those things carried into execution, which he had ever regarded as more desirable than possible, he is struck with a kind of admiration; and it is necessary to be thus strongly affected by objects, to be enabled to reach the general principle which governs them.

Not that I mean to insinuate that I have penetrated with more acuteness into the constitution of England than others; my only design in the above observations was to obviate an unfavourable, though natural prepos session; and if, either in treating of the causes which originally produced the English liberty, or of those by which it is still maintained, my observations should be found new or singular, I hope the English reader will not condemn them, but where they shall be found inconsistent with history, or with daily experience. Of my readers in general I also request, that they will not judge of the principles I shall lay down, but from their relation to those of human nature: a consideration which is almost the only one essential, and has been hitherto too much ne glected by the writers on the subject of government,

CHAP. I.

CAUSES OF THE LIBERTY OF THE ENGLISH NATION.-
REASONS OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE GO
VERNMENT OF ENGLAND, AND THAT OF FRANCE.
IN ENGLAND, THE GREAT POWER OF THE CROWN,
UNDER THE NORMAN KINGS, CREATED AN UNION BE-
TWEEN THE NOBILITY AND THE PEOPLE.

WHEN the Romans, attacked on all sides by the barbarians, were reduced to the necessity of defending the centre of their empire, they abandoned Great Britain as well as several other of their distant provinces. The island, thus left to itself, became a prey to the nations inhabiting the shores of the Baltic; who, having first destroyed the ancient inhabitants, and for a long time reciprocally annoyed each other, established several sovereignties in the southern part of the island, afterwards called England, which at length were united, under Egbert, into one kingdom.

The successors of this prince, denominated the AngloSaxon princes, among whom Alfred the great and Edward the confessor are particularly celebrated, reigned for about two hundred years; but, though our knowledge of the principal events of this early period of the English history is in some degree exact, yet we have but vague and uncertain accounts of the nature of the government which those nations introduced.

It appears to have had little more affinity with the present constitution, than the general relation, common indeed to all the governments established by the northern nations, that of having a king and a body of nobility; and the ancient Saxon government is "left us in story (to use the expressions of sir William Temple on the subject) but like so many antique, broken, or defaced pictures, which may still represent something of the customs and fashions of those ages, though little of the true lines, proportions, or resemblance." a

a See his Introduction to the History of England.

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