m out of two
evils to choose the least. WHEREFORE, security being the true design
and end of government, it unanswerably follows, that whatever FORM
thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense
and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.

In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end of
government, let us suppose a small number of persons settled in some
sequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the rest, they will
then represent the first peopling of any country, or of the world. In
this state of natural liberty, society will be their first thought. A
thousand motives will excite them thereto, the strength of one man is
so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual
solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek assistance and relief of
another, who in his turn requires the same. Four or five united would
be able to raise a tolerable dwelling in the midst of a wilderness, but
one man might labour out of the common period of life without
accomplishing any thing; when he had felled his timber he could not
remove it, nor erect it after it was removed; hunger in the mean time
would urge him from his work, and every different want call him a
different way. Disease, nay even misfortune would be death, for though
neither might be mortal, yet either would disable him from living, and
reduce him to a state in which he might rather be said to perish than
to die.

Thus necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly
arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessings of which,
would supersede, and render the obligations of law and government
unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as
nothing but heaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen,
that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of
emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will
begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other; and this
remissness will point out the necessity of establishing some form of
government to supply the defect of moral virtue.

Some convenient tree will afford them a State-House, under the branches
of which, the whole colony may assemble to deliberate on public
matters. It is more than probable that their first laws will have the
title only of REGULATIONS, and be enforced by no other penalty than
public disesteem. In this first parliament every man, by natural
right, will h