# The Providence Gazette/Volume 14/Number 710/To the Public

For the Providence Gazette.
To the Public.
Perhaps, in the scarcity of news, a few thoughts on government and liberty may not be disagreeable.—“All men will, and in a free country ought to judge of politics.”
Political writers say, that there are three species or forms of government; the republican, the monarchical, and the despotic, from which all others are taken, or to which they may be reduced. To these three forms of government they have given the names of democracy, aristocrasy, and monarchy.
1st. By a democracy is meant, that form of government where the highest power of making laws is lodged in the common people, or persons chosen out from them. This is what by some is called a republic, a commonwealth, or free state, and seems to be most agreeable to natural right and liberty.
2d. By an aristocrasy is meant, that form of government where the highest power is in the nobles and peers.
3d. By a monarchy is meant, the government of a state or people by a single person, a kingly government.
In the two last, the common people are excluded from making laws, or rather have given up their right, and excluded themselves. Yet these two, as well as the first, are said to be instituted for the good of the people. Each of those three governments have their particular and different laws; for the freest society of people on earth cannot be governed without laws. The public good of the society or whole community should be the great end and design of all those laws which the people are to obey; and if that design be really attained, the people are happy; and that form of government seems to be best, which is best administered. “That government only can be pronounced consistent with any laudable design, which allows to the governed the liberty of doing what they may desire to do, consistent with the general good, and which forbids only their doing the contrary.” True political liberty does not exclude all restraint; it only excludes unreasonable restraint. To determine precisely how far personal liberty is compatible with the general good, and of the propriety of social conduct in all cases, is a matter of great extent, and demands the united wisdom of a whole people, and the consent of the whole people, as far as it can be obtained, is indispensibly necessary to every law, by which the people are to be bound; otherwise the whole people will be enslaved to one or the few, who frame the laws for them. It cannot reasonably be imagined that the Almighty intended, that the greater part of mankind should come into the world with saddles on their backs, and bridles in their mouths, and a few ready booted and spurred to ride the rest to death.
If there could be, in any region in the universe, an order of moral agents, living in society, whose reason is strong, whose passions are moderate, and whose dispositions are wholly turned to virtue, to such an order of happy beings, legislation, administration, and police, with the endless, various, and complicated apparatus of politics, must be in a great measure needless and superfluous. Did reason govern mankind, there would be little occasion for any other government, either monarchical, aristocratical, democratical, or mixed. But, alas! Man, whom we dignify with the honorable title of rational, being much more frequently influenced in his proceedings by supposed interest, by passion, by sensual appetite, by caprice, by any thing, by nothing, than by reason; it has in all civilized ages and countries been found proper and necessary to make laws, fortified by sanction and to establish orders of men, invested with authority to execute those laws, and inflict deserved punishments upon the violators of them. By such means only, has it been found possible in any good degree to preserve the general peace and tranquility. Such is the perverse and selfish disposition of man, the most unruly of all animals, that this most useful institution has been generally debauched into an engine of oppression and tyranny over those whom it was expressly and solely established to defend: And to such a degree has this evil prevailed, that in almost every age and country the government has been the principal grievance of the people, as appears too dreadfully manifest, from the bloody and deformed page of history. For what is history but a view of the abuses of power, committed by those who have had it, and who have got it into their hands, to the subjugation, slavery and destruction of the human species, to the ruin of the general peace and happiness, and turning the Almighty’s fair world into a butchery of its inhabitants, only for the gratification of the unbounded ambition of a few, who in overthrowing the happiness of their fellow creatures, have confounded their own? All lawful authority, legislative and executive, originates in the people. Power in the people, is like light in the sun: native, original, inherent and unlimited, by anything human.
Power in Governors, whether they be called Kings, or by whatever name or titles they may be called, may be compared to the reflected light of the moon; for it is only borrowed, delegated and ⟨limited⟩ by the intention of the people, whose it is, and to whom Governors are and ought to be accountable; the people being answerable only to God; themselves being the losers, if they pursue a false scheme of politics. As the people are the fountain of power, so are they the object of government, in such manner that where the people are safe, the good ends of government are answered; and where the people are sufferers by their Governors, those Governors have failed of the main design of their institution. As the people are the fountain of power and object of government, so are they the last resource, the last resort, when their Governors betray their trust. Happy is that people, who have originally so principled their form of government, their constitution, that they themselves can, without violence to it, lay hold of its power, wield it as they please, and when necessary turn it against those to whom it was entrusted, and who have exerted it to the prejudice of its original proprietors. In planning a government by representation, the people ought to provide against their own annihilation.
The planners of the British constitution were provident, but far from being provident enough. They sat up Parliaments, as a curb on kings and ministers; but they neglected to reserve to the people a regular and constitutional method of exerting their power in curbing of parliaments. In any country like Britain, where the parliament is constitutionally the last resort, and where there lies no regular appeal to the people, the perversion and corruption of a parliament from its original intention may prove the utter ruin of the people, as leaving no constitutional means of redress, and compelling the people to take into their own hands the work of vindicating their liberties by force, which in the concussion of jarring parties may sometimes produce anarchy, and end in tyranny.
There is no word that has admitted of more various significations, and has made more different impressions on human minds, than the word Liberty. Some have taken it for a facility of deposing a person, on whom they had conferred a tyrannical authority; others for a power of chusing a person whom they are obliged to obey; others for a right of bearing arms, and being thereby enabled to use violence; others for being governed by a native of their own country; others for doing what they please with their own. It is true, in free governments, the people seem to do what they please; but their political liberty does not consist in an unrestrained and unlimited freedom; for in all governments and societies directed by laws, their true liberty can consist only in their power of doing what they ought to desire, and in not being constrained to do what they ought not to desire.
There is a real difference between Independence and Liberty. Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws, made by a free people, permit; and if a citizen could do what the laws forbid, he would no longer be possessed of liberty, because all his fellow-citizens would have the same power, and the same liberty to break the laws. Political liberty is to be met with only in moderate governments; and in these it is not always to be met with. It is there only, when there is no abuse of power: But constant experience shews, that every man invested with power, is apt to abuse it; he pushes on to the utmost limits. Therefore, to prevent the abuse of power, it is necessary, by the constitution of things, that power should be a check to power.