through so
many dangers and difficulties, as a much more healthy one could never
have struggled against, without those advantages.

Where security of person and property are preserved by laws which none
but the Whole can repeal, there the great ends of government are
provided for whether the administration be in the hands of One, or of
Many. Where any one person or body of men, who do not represent the
Whole, seize into their hands the power in the last resort, there is
properly no longer a government, but what Aristotle and his followers
call the abuse and corruption of one. This distinction excludes
arbitrary power in whatever numbers; which notwithstanding all that
Hobbes, Filmer[10] and others have said to its advantage, I look upon as
a greater evil than anarchy itself; as much as a savage is in a happier
state of life than a slave at the oar.

[Footnote 10: Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679), the English philosopher, and
author of "De Cive" (1642), "Treatise on Human Nature" (1650), "De
Corpore Politico" (1650), "Leviathan" (1651), and other works. Swift is
here combating Hobbes's advocacy for a sovereign power, as vested in a
single person.

Filmer, Sir Robert (died 1647), author of "The Anarchy of a limited and
mixed Monarchy," "Patriarcha," and "The Freeholder's Grand Inquest." In
the "Patriarcha" Filmer attempted to prove that absolute government by a
monarch was a patriarchal institution. Locke replied to this work in his
"Two Treatises on Government." [T.S.]]

It is reckoned ill manners, as well as unreasonable, for men to quarrel
upon difference in opinion; because that is usually supposed to be a
thing which no man can help in himself; which however I do not conceive
to be an universal infallible maxim, except in those cases where the
question is pretty equally disputed among the learned and the wise;
where it is otherwise, a man of tolerable reason, small experience, and
willing to be instructed, may apprehend he is got into a wrong opinion,
though the whole course of his mind and inclination would persuade him
to believe it true: He may be convinced that he is in error though he
does not see where it lies, by the bad effects of it in the common
conduct of his life, and by observing those persons for whose wisdom and
goodness he has the greatest deference, to be of a contrary sentiment.
According to Hobbes's comparison of reasoning with casting up accounts,
whoever finds a mistake in the sum total, must allo