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But when they see that all their actions are exposed to public view,-that, in consequence of the celerity 320 with which all things become communicated, the whole nation forms, as it were, one continued irritable body, no part of which can be touched without exciting an universal tremor,-they become sensible 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.

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Here, also, we must remark the error of those, who, as they make the liberty of the people consist in their power, so make their power consist in their action.

When the people are often called to act in their own persons, it is impossible for them to acquire any exact knowledge of the state 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 settled principle, and, above all, no plans of union, have time to be established among them.You wish to have the people love and defend their laws and liberty; leave them, therefore, the necessary time to know what laws and liberty are, and to agree in their opinion concerning them. You wish an union, a coalition, which cannot be obtained but by a slow and peaceable process; forbear, therefore, continually to shake the vessel.

Nay, farther, it is a contradiction, that the people should act, and at the same time retain any real power. Have they, for instance, been forced by the weight of public oppression to throw off the restraints of the law, from which they no longer received protection?—they presently find themselves suddenly become subject to the command of a few leaders, who are the more abso

lute in proportion as the nature of their power is less clearly ascertained; nay, perhaps they must even submit to the toils of war, and to military discipline (2).

If it be in the common and legal course of things that the people are called to move, each individual is obliged, for the success of the measures in which he is then made to take a concern, to join himself to some party; nor can this party be without a head. The citizens thus grow divided among themselves, and contract the pernicious habit of submitting to leaders. They are, at length, no more than the clients of a certain number of patrons; and the latter, soon becoming able to command the arms of the citizens, in the same 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.

But when the moving springs of government are 322 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 consider things speculatively, and are, if I may be allowed the expression, only spectators of the game, they acquire just notions of things; and as these

(2) Mr. Justice Blackstone, in his commentaries upon the conduct of the people, in their resistance to Charles I., observes :-" Flushed, therefore, with the success they had gained, fired with resentment for past oppressions, and dreading the consequences, if the king should regain his power, the popular leaders (who in all ages have called themselves THE PEOPLE) began to grow insolent and ungovernable, their insolence soon rendered them desperate, and despair at length forced them to join with a set of military hypocrites and enthusiasts, who overturned the church and monarchy, and proceeded with deliberate solemnity to the trial and murder of their sovereign." See also Chapter v. of this book.-EDITOR.

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notions, amidst the general quiet, gain ground, and spread themselves far and wide, they at length entertain, on the subject of their liberty, but one opinion.

Forming thus, as it were, one body, the people, at every instant, have it in their power to strike the decisive blow, which is to level every thing. Like those mechanical powers, the greatest efficiency of which exists at the instant which precedes their entering into action, it has an immense force, just because it does not yet exert any; and in this state of stillness, but of attention, consists its true momentum.

With regard to those who (whether from personal privileges, or by virtue of a commission from the people) are intrusted with the active part of government, as they, 323 in the meanwhile, see themselves exposed to public view,

and observed as from a distance by men free from the spirit of party, and who place in them but a conditional trust, they are afraid of exciting a commotion, which, though it might not prove the destruction of all power, yet would surely and immediately be the destruction of their own. And if we might suppose that, through an extraordinary conjunction of circumstances, they should resolve among themselves upon the sacrifice of those laws on which public liberty is founded, they would no sooner lift up their eyes towards that extensive assembly, which views them with a watchful attention, than they would find their public virtue return upon them, and would make haste to resume that plan of conduct, out of the limits of which they can expect nothing but ruin and perdition.

In short, as the body of the people cannot act without either subjecting themselves to some power, or effecting a general destruction, the only share they can have in a

government, with advantage to themselves, is not to interfere, but to influence

act.

to be able to act, and not to

The power of the people is not when they strike, but when they keep in awe: it is when they can overthrow 324

every thing, that they never need to move; and Manlius included all in four words, when he said to the people of Rome-Ostendite bellum, pacem habebitis.

CHAPTER XI.

SECTION I.

Proofs drawn from Facts, of the Truth of the Principles laid down in the present Work.-First, the peculiar Manner in which Revolutions have always been concluded in England.

Ir may not be sufficient to have proved by arguments the advantages of the English constitution; it will perhaps be asked, whether the effects correspond to the theory? To this very proper question an answer is ready it is the same which was once made, by a Lacedæmonian-Come and see.

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If we peruse the English history, we shall be particularly struck with one circumstance to be observed in it, and which distinguishes most advantageously the English government from all other free governments; that 325 is, the manner in which revolutions and public commotions have always been terminated in England.

If we read with some attention the history of other free states, we shall see that the public dissensions that have taken place in them have constantly been terminated by settlements in which the interests only of a few were really provided for, while the grievances of the many were hardly, if at all, attended to. In England

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