wills it."

Having in all the preceding parts of this work endeavoured to establish
a system of principles as a basis on which governments ought to be
erected, I shall proceed in this, to the ways and means of rendering
them into practice. But in order to introduce this part of the subject
with more propriety, and stronger effect, some preliminary observations,
deducible from, or connected with, those principles, are necessary.

Whatever the form or constitution of government may be, it ought to have
no other object than the general happiness. When, instead of this, it
operates to create and increase wretchedness in any of the parts
of society, it is on a wrong system, and reformation is necessary.
Customary language has classed the condition of man under the two
descriptions of civilised and uncivilised life. To the one it has
ascribed felicity and affluence; to the other hardship and want. But,
however our imagination may be impressed by painting and comparison,
it is nevertheless true, that a great portion of mankind, in what are
called civilised countries, are in a state of poverty and wretchedness,
far below the condition of an Indian. I speak not of one country, but of
all. It is so in England, it is so all over Europe. Let us enquire into
the cause.

It lies not in any natural defect in the principles of civilisation,
but in preventing those principles having a universal operation; the
consequence of which is, a perpetual system of war and expense,
that drains the country, and defeats the general felicity of which
civilisation is capable. All the European governments (France
now excepted) are constructed not on the principle of universal
civilisation, but on the reverse of it. So far as those governments
relate to each other, they are in the same condition as we conceive of
savage uncivilised life; they put themselves beyond the law as well
of God as of man, and are, with respect to principle and reciprocal
conduct, like so many individuals in a state of nature. The inhabitants
of every country, under the civilisation of laws, easily civilise
together, but governments being yet in an uncivilised state, and almost
continually at war, they pervert the abundance which civilised life
produces to carry on the uncivilised part to a greater extent. By thus
engrafting the barbarism of government upon the internal civilisation of
a country, it draws from the latter, and more especially from the poor,
a great portion o