of a national association, it ought to be constructed
as not to be disordered by any accident happening among the parts, and,
therefore, no extraordinary power should be lodged in the hands of any
individual. Monarchy would not have continued so many ages in the world
had it not been for the abuses it protects. It is the master-fraud which
shelters all others. By admitting a participation of the spoil, it makes
itself friends; and when it ceases to do this it will cease to be the
idol of courtiers.

One of the greatest improvements that have been made for the perpetual
security and progress of constitutional liberty, is the provision which
the new constitutions make for occasionally revising, altering, and
amending them. The best constitutions that could now be devised
consistently with the condition of the present moment, may be far short
of that excellence which a few years may afford. There is a morning of
reason rising upon man on the subject of governments that has not
appeared before. Just emerging from such a barbarous condition, it is
too soon to determine to what extent of improvement government may yet
be carried. For what we can foresee, all Europe may form but one great
republic, and man be free of the whole.

_IV.--The Reform of England_

As it is necessary to include England in the prospect of general
reformation, it is proper to inquire into the defects of its government.
It is only by each nation reforming its own, that the whole can be
improved and the full benefit of reformation enjoyed.

When in countries that are called civilised we see age going to the
workhouse and youth to the gallows something must be wrong in the system
of government. Why is it that scarcely any are executed but the poor?
The fact is a proof, among other things, of a wretchedness in their
condition. Bred up without morals, and cast upon the world without a
prospect, they are the exposed sacrifice of vice and legal barbarity.

The first defect of English government I shall mention is the evil of
those Gothic institutions, the corporation towns. As one of the houses
of the English Parliament is, in a great measure, made up of elections
from these corporations, and as it is unnatural that a pure stream
should flow from a foul fountain, its vices are but a continuation of
the vices of its origin. A man of moral honour and good political
principles cannot submit to the mean drudgery and disgraceful arts by
which such elections