om, of goodness, and of power: wisdom, to discern the
real interest of the community; goodness, to endeavour always to
pursue that real interest; and strength, or power, to carry this
knowlege and intention into action. These are the natural foundations
of sovereignty, and these are the requisites that ought to be found in
every well constituted frame of government.

HOW the several forms of government we now see in the world at first
actually began, is matter of great uncertainty, and has occasioned
infinite disputes. It is not my business or intention to enter into
any of them. However they began, or by what right soever they
subsist, there is and must be in all of them a supreme, irresistible,
absolute, uncontrolled authority, in which the _jura summi imperii_,
or the rights of sovereignty, reside. And this authority is placed in
those hands, wherein (according to the opinion of the founders of such
respective states, either expressly given, or collected from their
tacit approbation) the qualities requisite for supremacy, wisdom,
goodness, and power, are the most likely to be found.

THE political writers of antiquity will not allow more than three
regular forms of government; the first, when the sovereign power is
lodged in an aggregate assembly consisting of all the members of a
community, which is called a democracy; the second, when it is lodged
in a council, composed of select members, and then it is stiled an
aristocracy; the last, when it is entrusted in the hands of a single
person, and then it takes the name of a monarchy. All other species of
government, they say, are either corruptions of, or reducible to,
these three.

BY the sovereign power, as was before observed, is meant the making of
laws; for wherever that power resides, all others must conform to, and
be directed by it, whatever appearance the outward form and
administration of the government may put on. For it is at any time in
the option of the legislature to alter that form and administration by
a new edict or rule, and to put the execution of the laws into
whatever hands it pleases: and all the other powers of the state must
obey the legislative power in the execution of their several
functions, or else the constitution is at an end.

IN a democracy, where the right of making laws resides in the people
at large, public virtue, or goodness of intention, is more likely to
be found, than either of the other qualities of government. Popular
as