us to avoid. But no wonder, that what is set up in opposition to the
state of nature should preserve itself by trampling upon the law of
nature.

To prove that these sorts of policed societies are a violation offered
to nature, and a constraint upon the human mind, it needs only to look
upon the sanguinary measures, and instruments of violence, which are
everywhere used to support them. Let us take a review of the dungeons,
whips, chains, racks, gibbets, with which every society is abundantly
stored; by which hundreds of victims are annually offered up to support
a dozen or two in pride and madness, and millions in an abject servitude
and dependence. There was a time when I looked with a reverential awe on
these mysteries of policy; but age, experience, and philosophy, have
rent the veil; and I view this _sanctum sanctorum_, at least, without
any enthusiastic admiration. I acknowledge, indeed, the necessity of
such a proceeding in such institutions; but I must have a very mean
opinion of institutions where such proceedings are necessary.

It is a misfortune that in no part of the globe natural liberty and
natural religion are to be found pure, and free from the mixture of
political adulterations. Yet we have implanted in us by Providence,
ideas, axioms, rules, of what is pious, just, fair, honest, which no
political craft, nor learned sophistry can entirely expel from our
breasts. By these we judge, and we cannot otherwise judge, of the
several artificial modes of religion and society, and determine of them
as they approach to or recede from this standard.

The simplest form of government is _despotism_, where all the inferior
orbs of power are moved merely by the will of the Supreme, and all that
are subjected to them directed in the same manner, merely by the
occasional will of the magistrate. This form, as it is the most simple,
so it is infinitely the most general. Scarcely any part of the world is
exempted from its power. And in those few places where men enjoy what
they call liberty, it is continually in a tottering situation, and makes
greater and greater strides to that gulf of despotism which at last
swallows up every species of government. The manner of ruling being
directed merely by the will of the weakest, and generally the worst man
in the society, becomes the most foolish and capricious thing, at the
same time that it is the most terrible and destructive that well can be
conceived. In a despotism, the