increase in the proportion
they ought to diminish. It is but few general laws that civilised life
requires, and those of such common usefulness, that whether they are
enforced by the forms of government or not, the effect will be nearly
the same. If we consider what the principles are that first condense
men into society, and what are the motives that regulate their mutual
intercourse afterwards, we shall find, by the time we arrive at what is
called government, that nearly the whole of the business is performed by
the natural operation of the parts upon each other.

Man, with respect to all those matters, is more a creature of
consistency than he is aware, or than governments would wish him to
believe. All the great laws of society are laws of nature. Those
of trade and commerce, whether with respect to the intercourse of
individuals or of nations, are laws of mutual and reciprocal interest.
They are followed and obeyed, because it is the interest of the parties
so to do, and not on account of any formal laws their governments may
impose or interpose.

But how often is the natural propensity to society disturbed or
destroyed by the operations of government! When the latter, instead of
being ingrafted on the principles of the former, assumes to exist for
itself, and acts by partialities of favour and oppression, it becomes
the cause of the mischiefs it ought to prevent.

If we look back to the riots and tumults which at various times have
happened in England, we shall find that they did not proceed from the
want of a government, but that government was itself the generating
cause; instead of consolidating society it divided it; it deprived it
of its natural cohesion, and engendered discontents and disorders
which otherwise would not have existed. In those associations which men
promiscuously form for the purpose of trade, or of any concern in which
government is totally out of the question, and in which they act merely
on the principles of society, we see how naturally the various parties
unite; and this shows, by comparison, that governments, so far from
being always the cause or means of order, are often the destruction
of it. The riots of 1780 had no other source than the remains of those
prejudices which the government itself had encouraged. But with respect
to England there are also other causes.

Excess and inequality of taxation, however disguised in the means, never
fail to appear in their effects. As a gre