e find verified in the American tribes, where men live in concord
and amity among themselves without any established government and never
pay submission to any of their fellows, except in time of war, when
their captain enjoys a shadow of authority, which he loses after
their return from the field, and the establishment of peace with the
neighbouring tribes. This authority, however, instructs them in the
advantages of government, and teaches them to have recourse to it,
when either by the pillage of war, by commerce, or by any fortuitous
inventions, their riches and possessions have become so considerable as
to make them forget, on every emergence, the interest they have in the
preservation of peace and justice. Hence we may give a plausible reason,
among others, why all governments are at first monarchical, without any
mixture and variety; and why republics arise only from the abuses of
monarchy and despotic power. Camps are the true mothers of cities; and
as war cannot be administered, by reason of the suddenness of every
exigency, without some authority in a single person, the same kind of
authority naturally takes place in that civil government, which succeeds
the military. And this reason I take to be more natural, than the common
one derived from patriarchal government, or the authority of a father,
which is said first to take place in one family, and to accustom the
members of it to the government of a single person. The state of society
without government is one of the most natural states of men, and must
submit with the conjunction of many families, and long after the first
generation. Nothing but an encrease of riches and possessions coued
oblige men to quit it; and so barbarous and uninstructed are all
societies on their first formation, that many years must elapse before
these can encrease to such a degree, as to disturb men in the enjoyment
of peace and concord. But though it be possible for men to maintain a
small uncultivated society without government, it is impossible
they should maintain a society of any kind without justice, and the
observance of those three fundamental laws concerning the stability of
possession, its translation by consent, and the performance of promises.
These are, therefore, antecedent to government, and are supposed to
impose an obligation before the duty of allegiance to civil magistrates
has once been thought of. Nay, I shall go farther, and assert, that
government, upon its firs