ect a good edifice, they should have begun as Lycurgus
did at Sparta, by clearing the area, and removing the old materials.
Society at first consisted merely of some general conventions which
all the members bound themselves to observe, and for the performance
of which the whole body became security to every individual.
Experience was necessary to show the great weakness of such a
constitution, and how easy it was for those, who infringed it, to
escape the conviction or chastisement of faults, of which the public
alone was to be both the witness and the judge; the laws could not
fail of being eluded a thousand ways; inconveniences and disorders
could not but multiply continually, till it was at last found
necessary to think of committing to private persons the dangerous
trust of public authority, and to magistrates the care of enforcing
obedience to the people: for to say that chiefs were elected before
confederacies were formed, and that the ministers of the laws existed
before the laws themselves, is a supposition too ridiculous to deserve
I should seriously refute it.

It would be equally unreasonable to imagine that men at first threw
themselves into the arms of an absolute master, without any conditions
or consideration on his side; and that the first means contrived by
jealous and unconquered men for their common safety was to run hand
over head into slavery. In fact, why did they give themselves
superiors, if it was not to be defended by them against oppression,
and protected in their lives, liberties, and properties, which are in
a manner the constitutional elements of their being? Now in the
relations between man and man, the worst that can happen to one man
being to see himself at the discretion of another, would it not have
been contrary to the dictates of good sense to begin by making over to
a chief the only things for the preservation of which they stood in
need of his assistance? What equivalent could he have offered them
for so fine a privilege? And had he presumed to exact it on pretense
of defending them, would he not have immediately received the answer
in the apologue? What worse treatment can we expect from an enemy? It
is therefore past dispute, and indeed a fundamental maxim of political
law, that people gave themselves chiefs to defend their liberty and
not be enslaved by them. If we have a prince, said Pliny to Trajan, it
is in order that he may keep us from having a master.

Political writers