rate wills, thus formed hastily, and without reflection, a general will results, which is also void of reflection.

If amidst these disadvantages the assembly were left to themselves, and nobody had an interest to lead them into error, the evil, though very great, would not, however, be extreme, because such an assembly never being called upon but to determine upon an affirmative or negative (that is, only having two cases to choose between), there would be an equal chance of their choosing either; and it might be hoped that at every other turn they would take the right side.

But the combination of those who share either in the actual exercise of the public power, or in its advantages, do not thus allow themselves to sit down in inaction. They wake, while the people sleep. Entirely taken up with the thoughts of their own power, they live but to increase it. Deeply versed in the management of public business, they see at once all the possible consequences of measures; and, as they have the exclusive direction of the springs of government, they give rise, at their pleasure, to every incident that may influence the minds of a multitude who are not on their guard, and who wait for some event or other that may finally determine them.

It is they who convene the assembly, and dissolve it: it is they who offer propositions, and make speeches to it. Ever active in turning to their advantage every circum. stance that happens, they equally avail themselves of the tractableness of the people during public calamities, and its heedlessness in times of prosperity. When things take a different turn from what they expected, they dismiss the Assembly. By presenting to it many propositions at once, and which are to be voted upon in the lump, they hide what is destined to promote their own private views, or give a colour to it, by joining it with things which they know will take hold of the minds of the people. By pre

other. In order to change entirely the nature of their resolutions, it was often sufficient to hide from them, or let them see, the Capitol.

It was thus the senate at Rome assumed to itself the power of levying taxes. They promised, in the time of the war against the Veintes, to give pay to such citizens as would enlist; and to that end they established a tribute. The people, solely taken up with the idea. of not going to war at their own expense, were transported with so 'much joy, that they crowded at the door of the senate, and laying hold of the hands of the senators, called them their fathers- Nihil

senting, in their speeches, arguments and facts which men have no time to examine, they lead the people into gross and yet decisive errors: and the common-places of rhetoric supported by their personal influence, ever enable them to draw to their side the majority of votes.

On the other hand, the few (for there are, after all, some) who having meditated on the proposed question, see the consequences of the decisive step which is just going to be taken, being lost in the crowd, cannot make their feeble voices to be heard amidst the universal noise and confusion. They have it no more in their power to stop the general mo tion, than a man in the midst of an army, on its march, has it in his power to avoid marching. In the mean time, the people are giving their suffrages; a majority appears in favour of the proposal; it is finally proclaimed as the ge neral will of all; and it is at bottom nothing more than the effect of the artifices of a few designing men, who are exulting among themselves.

In a word, those who are acquainted with republican

unquam acceptum a plebe tanto gaudio traditur: concursum itaque ad curiam esse, prehensatasque exeuntium manus, patres vere appellatos,' &c. See Tit. Liv. book iv.

I might confirm all these things by numberless instances from an cient history; but if I may be allowed, in this case, to draw examples, from my own country, et celebrare domestica facta, I shall relate facts which will be no less to the purpose.-In Geneva, in the year 1707, a law was enacted, that a general assembly of the people should be held every five years, to treat of the affairs of the republic: but the magistrates, who dreaded those assemblies, soon obtained from the ci tizens themselves the repeal of the law: and the first resolution of the people, in the first of those periodical assemblies (in the year 1712), was to abolish them for ever. The profound secrecy with which the magistrates prepared their proposal to the citizens on that subject, and the sudden manner in which the latter, when assembled, were ac quainted with it, and made to give their votes upon it, have indeed ac-/ counted but imperfectly for this strange determination of the people; and the consternation which seized the whole assembly, when the result of the suffrages was proclaimed, has confirmed many in the opinion, that some unfair means had been used. The whole transaction has been kept secret to this day; but the common opinion on this subject, which has been adopted by M. Rousseau, in his Letters de la Montagne, is this: The magistrates, it is said, had privately instructed the secretaries, in whose ears the citizens were to whisper their suffrages: when a citizen said approbation, he was understood to approve the proposal of the magistrates; when he said rejection, he was understood to reject the periodical assemblies.

In the year 1738, the citizens enacted at once into laws a small code of fourty-four articles, by one single line of which they bound themselves for ever to elect the four syndics (the chiefs of the council of twenty-five) out of the members of the same council, whereas they were? before free in their choice. They at that time suffered also the word

governments, and in general, who know the manner in which business is transacted in numerous assemblies, will not scruple to affirm, that the few who are united, who take an active part in public affairs, and whose station makes them conspicuous, have such an advantage over the many who turn their eyes towards them, and are with. out union among themselves, that, even with a middling degree of skill, they can at all times direct, at their pleasure, the general resolutions: that as a consequence of the very nature of things, there is no proposal, however absurd, to which a numerous assembly of men may not, at one time or other, be brought to assent; and that laws would be wiser and more likely to procure the advantage of all, if they were to be made by drawing lots, or casting dice, than by the suffrages of a multitude.

CHAP. VI.

Advantages that accrue to the people from appointing
representatives.

How then shall the people remedy the disadvantages that necessarily attend their situation? How shall they resist the phalanx of those who have engrossed to themselves all the honours, dignities, and power, in the state?

It will be by employing for their defence the same means by which their adversaries carry on their attack:-it will be by using the same weapons as they do-the same order -the same kind of discipline.

They are a small number, and consequently easily united; a small number must therefore be opposed to them, that

approved to be slipped into the law mentioned in the note, p. 134, which was transcribed from a former code; the consequence of which was, to render the magistrates absolute masters of the legislature.

The citizens had thus been successively stripped of all their political rights, and had little more left to them than the pleasure of being called a sovereign assembly when they met (which idea, it must be confessed, preserved among them a spirit of resistance which it would have been dangerous for the magistrates to provoke too far), and the power of at least refusing to elect the four syndics. Upon this privilege the citizens, a few years ago (A. D. 1765 to 1768), made their last stand and a singular conjunction of circumstances having happened at the same time, to raise and preserve among them, during three years, an uncommon spirit of union and perseverance, they in the issue succeeded, in a great measure, to repair the injuries which they had been made to do to themselves for two hundred years and

■more.

a like union may also be obtained. It is because they are a small number, that they can deliberat eone very occurrence, and never come to any resolutions but such as are maturely weighed: it is because they are few, that they can have forms which continually serve them for general standards to resort to, approved maxims to which they invariably adhere, and plans which they never lose sight of: here, therefore, I repeat it, oppose to them a small number, and you will obtain the like advantages. Besides, those who govern, as a farther consequence of their being few, have a more considerable share, consequently feel a deeper con cern, , in the success, whatever it may be, of their enterprises. As they usually profess a contempt for their adversaries, and are at all times acting an offensive part against them, they impose on themselves an obligation of conquering. They, in short, who are all alive from the most powerful incentives, and aim at gaining new advantages, have to do with a multitude, who, wanting only to preserve what they already possess, are unavoidably liable to long intervals of inactivity and supineness. But the people, by appointing representatives, immediately gain to their cause that advantageous activity which they before stood in need of, to put them on a par with their adversaries; and those pas sions become excited in their defenders, by which they themselves cannot be actuated.

Exclusively charged with the care of public libert, the representatives of the people will be animated by a sense of the greatness of the concerns with which they are intrusted. Distinguished from the bulk of the nation, and forming among themselves a separate assembly, they will assert the rights of which they have been made the guardians, with all that warmth the esprit de corps is used to inspire. Placed on an elevated theatre, they will endea vour to render themselves still more conspicuous; and the arts and ambitious activity of those who govern will now be encountered by the vivacity and perseverance of opponents actuated by the love of glory.

Lastly, as the representatives of the people will natu rally be selected from among those citizens who are most

If it had not been for an incentive of this kind, the English commons would not have vindicated their right of taxation with so much vigilance as they have done, against all enterprises (often perhaps involuntary) of the lords.

favoured by fortune, and will have consequently much to preserve, they will, even in the midst of quiet times, keep a watchful eye on the motions of power. As the advantages they possess will naturally create a kind of rivalship between them and those who govern, the jealousy which they will conceive against the latter will give them an exquisite degree of sensibility on every increase of their authority. Like those delicate instruments which dis cover the operations of nature, while they are yet imperceptible to our senses, they will warn the people of those things which of themselves they never see but when it is too late; and their greater proportional share, whether of real riches, or of those which lie in the opinions of men, I will make them, if I may so express myself, the barometers that will discover, in its first beginning, every tendency to a change in the constitution.⚫

CHAP. VII.

The subject continued.-the advantages that accrue to the people from their appointing representatives are very inconsiderable, unless they also entirely trust their legislative authority to them." THE observations made in the preceding chapter are so obvious that the people themselves, in popular governments, have always been sensible of the truth of them, and never thought it possible to remedy, by themselves ne the disadvantages necessarily attending their situ

Whenever the oppressions of their rulers have red them to resort to some uncommon exertion of their ral powers, they have immediately put themselves under nt direction of those few men who had been instrumental fon ung and encouraging them; and when the nature i the circumstances has required any degree of firmness m perseverance in their conduct, they have never been ble to attain the ends they proposed to themselves, ex by means of the most explicit deference to those eders whom they had thus appointed.

as these leaders, thus hastily chosen, are easily intired by the continual display which is made before. hem of the terrors of power; as that unlimited confidence

A to above reasoning essentially requires, that the representathe people should be united in interists with the people. We we see that this union feally prevails in the English constitut and may be called the masterpiece of it.

H