any real power. Have they, for instance, been forced by the weight of public oppression to throw off the restraints of the law, from which they no longer received protection?—they presently find themselves suddenly become subject to the command of a few leaders, who are the more absolute in proportion as the nature of their power is less clearly ascertained: nay, perhaps, they must even submit to the toils of war, and to military discipline.

If it be in the common and legal course of things that the people are called to move, each individual is obliged, for the success of the measures in which he is then made to take a concern, to join himself to some party; nor can this party be without a head. The citizens thus grow divided among themselves, and contract the pernicious habit of submitting to leaders. They are, at length, no more than the clients. of a certain number of patrons; and the latter soon becoming able to command the arms of the citizens in the same manner as they at first governed their votes, make little account of a people, with one part of which they know how to curb the other.

But when the moving springs of government are placed entirely out of the body of the people, their action is thereby disengaged from all that

could render it complicated, or hide it from the eye. As the people thenceforward consider things speculatively, and are, if I may be allow ed the expression, only spectators of the game, they acquire just notions of things; and as these notions, amidst the general quiet, gain ground and spread themselves far and wide, they at length entertain, on the subject of their liberty, but one opinion.

Forming thus, as it were, one body, the peo ple, at every instant, have it in their power to strike the decisive blow, which is to level every thing. Like those mechanical powers, the greatest efficiency of which exists at the instant which precedes their entering into action, it has an immense force, just because it does not yet exert any; and in this state of stillness, but of attention, consists its true momentum.

With regard to those who (whether from personal privileges, or by virtue of a commission from the people) are intrusted with the active part of government, as they, in the mean while, see themselves exposed to public view, and observed as from a distance by men free from the spirit of party, and who place in them but a conditional trust, they are afraid of exciting a commotion, which, though it might not prove the destruction of all power, yet would surely

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and immediately be the destruction of their own. And if we might suppose that, through an extraordinary conjunction of circumstances, they should resolve among themselves upon the sacrifice of those laws on which public liberty is founded, they would no sooner lift up their eyes towards that extensive assembly, which views them with a watchful attention, than they would find their public virtue return upon them, and would make haste to resume that plan of conduct, out of the limits of which they can expect nothing but ruin and perdition.

In short, as the body of the people cannot act without either subjecting themselves to some power, or effecting a general destruction, the only share they can have in a government, with advantage to themselves, is not to interfere, but to influence-to be able to act, and not to act.

The power of the people is not when they strike, but when they keep in awe: it is when they can overthrow every thing, that they never need to move; and Manlius included all in four words, when he said to the people of Rome→→ Ostendite bellum, pacem habebitis.

CHAPTER XV.

Proofs drawn from Facts, of the Truth of the Principles laid down in the present Work. - 1. The peculiar Manner in which Revolutions have always been concluded in England.

IT may not be sufficient to have proved by arguments the advantages of the English constitution; it will perhaps be asked, whether the effects correspond to the theory? To this question (which I confess is extremely proper) my answer is ready: it is the same which was once made, I believe, by a Lacedæmonian-Come and see.

If we peruse the English history, we shall be particularly struck with one circumstance to be observed in it, and which distinguishes most advantageously the English government from all other free governments; I mean the manner in which revolutions and public commotions have always been terminated in England.

If we read with some attention the history of other free states, we shall see that the public dissensions that have taken place in them have constantly been terminated by settlements in

which the interests only of a few were really provided for, while the grievances of the many were hardly, if at all, attended to. In England the very reverse has happened; and we find revolutions always to have been terminated by extensive and accurate provisions for securing the general liberty.

The histories of the ancient Grecian commonwealths, and, above all, of the Roman republic, of which more complete accounts have been left us, afford striking proof of the former part of this observation.

What was, for instance, the consequence of that great revolution by which the kings were driven from Rome, and in which the senate and patricians acted as the advisers and leaders of the people? The consequence was, as we find in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Livy, that the senators immediately assumed all those powers lately so much complained of by themselves, which the kings had exercised. The execution of their future decrees were intrusted to two magistrates, taken from their own body, and entirely dependent on them, whom they called consuls, and who were made to bear about them all the ensigns of power which had formerly attended the kings. Only, care was taken that the axes and fasces, the symbols of the power