become communicated, the whole Nation forms, as it were, one continued irritable body, no part of which can be touched without exciting an univerfal tremor, they become fenfible that the cause of each individual is really the cause of all, and that to attack the lowest among the People, is to attack the whole People.

Here alfo we must remark the error of those who, as they make the liberty of the people to confift in their power, fo make their power confift in their action.

When the People are often called to act in their own perfons, it is impoffible for them to acquire any exact knowledge of the ftate of things. The event of one day effaces the notions which they had begun to adopt on the preceding day; and amidst the continual change of things, no fettled principle, and above all no plans of union, have time to be eftablished among them.-You wish to have the People love and defend their laws and liberty; leave them, therefore, the neceffary time to know what laws and liberty are, and to agree in their opinion concerning them;— you with an union, a coalition, which cannot be obtained but by a flow and peaceable procefs, forbear therefore continually to shake the veffel.

Nay farther, it is a contradiction, that the People fhould act, and at the fame time retain any real power. Have they, for instance, been forced by the weight of public oppreffion to throw off the reftraints of the law, from which they no longer received protection, they presently find themfelves fuddenly become fubject to the command of a few Leaders, who are the more abfolute in proportion as the nature of their power is lefs clearly afcertained: nay, perhaps, they must even fubmit to the toils of war, and to military discipline.

If it be in the common and legal courfe of things that the People are called to move, each individual is obliged, for the fuccefs of the measures in which he is then made to take a concern, to join himself to fome party; nor can this party be without a Head. The Citizens thus grow divided among themselves, and contract the pernicious habit of fubmitting to Leaders. They are, at length, no more than the clients of a certain number of Patrons; and the latter foon becoming able to command the arms of the Citizens in the fame. 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. Y

But when the moving fprings 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 confider things fpeculatively, and are, if I may be allowed the expreffion, only fpectators of the game, they acquire juft notions of things; and as these notions, amidst the general quiet, get ground and spread themselves far and wide, they at length entertain, on the fubject of their liberty, but one opinion.

Forming thus, as it were, one body, the People, at every inftant, has it in its power to ftrike the decifive blow which is to level every thing. Like thofe mechanical powers the greatest efficiency of which exifts at the inftant which precedes their entering into action, it has an immenfe force, just because it does not yet exert any; and in this ftate of ftillness, but of attention, confifts its true

momentum.

With regard to thofe who (whether from perfonal privileges, or by virtue of a commiffion from the People) are intrufted with the active part of Government, as they, in the mean while, fee themfelves expofed to

public view, and obferved as from a distance by Men free from the fpirit of party, and who place in them but a conditional truft, they are afraid of exciting a commotion which, though it might not prove the deftruction of all power, yet would furely and immediately be the deftruction of their own. And if we might fuppofe that, through an extraordinary conjunction of circumftances, they should refolve among themfelves upon the facrifice of those laws on which public liberty is founded, they would no fooner lift up their eyes towards that extenfive Affembly which views them with a watchful attention, than they would find their public virtue return upon them, and would make hafte to resume that plan of conduct out of the limits of which they can expect nothing but ruin and perdi

tion.

In fhort, as the body of the People cannot act without either fubjecting themselves to fome Power, or effecting a general destruction, the only fhare 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 ftrike, 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 faid to the People of Rome, Oftendite bellum, pacem habebitis.

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

T may not be fufficient to have proved by

I arguments the divine to bat P

arguments the advantages of the English Conftitution it will perhaps be asked, whether the effects correfpond to the theory? To this queftion (which I confefs is extremely proper) my answer is ready; it is the fame which was once made, I believe, by a Lacedemonjan, Come and fee.

If we peruse the English History, we fhall be particularly ftruck with one circumftance to be obferved in it, and which diftinguishes moft advantageously the English Government from all other free. governments; I mean the