ty in their own favours. This inconvenience is
corrected in the same manner as that above-mentioned. The same persons,
who execute the laws of justice, will also decide all controversies
concerning them; and being indifferent to the greatest part of the
society, will decide them more equitably than every one would in his own
case.

By means of these two advantages, in the execution and decision of
justice, men acquire a security against each others weakness and
passion, as well as against their own, and under the shelter of their
governors, begin to taste at ease the sweets of society and mutual
assistance. But government extends farther its beneficial influence; and
not contented to protect men in those conventions they make for their
mutual interest, it often obliges them to make such conventions, and
forces them to seek their own advantage, by a concurrence in some common
end or purpose. There is no quality in human nature, which causes more
fatal errors in our conduct, than that which leads us to prefer whatever
is present to the distant and remote, and makes us desire objects more
according to their situation than their intrinsic value. Two neighbours
may agree to drain a meadow, which they possess in common; because it is
easy for them to know each others mind; and each must perceive, that the
immediate consequence of his failing in his part, is, the abandoning the
whole project. But it is very difficult, and indeed impossible, that a
thousand persons should agree in any such action; it being difficult for
them to concert so complicated a design, and still more difficult for
them to execute it; while each seeks a pretext to free himself of the
trouble and expence, and would lay the whole burden on others. Political
society easily remedies both these inconveniences. Magistrates find an
immediate interest in the interest of any considerable part of their
subjects. They need consult no body but themselves to form any scheme
for the promoting of that interest. And as the failure of any one piece
in the execution is connected, though not immediately, with the failure
of the whole, they prevent that failure, because they find no interest
in it, either immediate or remote. Thus bridges are built; harbours
opened; ramparts raised; canals formed; fleets equiped; and armies
disciplined every where, by the care of government, which, though
composed of men subject to all human infirmities, becomes, by one of the
finest and mo