table, or responsible, for my discharge of this trust, both to God and you. It is a motive of my care. When you became a man, what would you think of me if I had neglected or abandoned you? G. I should not be able to reverence you in such a case. In a desert I should despise you; perhaps, left to native ferocity, I should avenge myself.

P. But as you were not born in a desert, but in Britain, my natural obligation is confirmed by a civil tie. Suppose I had abandoned you in infancy, or disease, or impotence?

G. The law would have provided for me, and would have punished you.

P. Is this an excellence in our law, or a defect? G. An excellence undoubtedly; for though the civil motive is no motive to you, yet there are too many who have no motive but that.

P. Responsibility is a motive both to me and them; responsibility to man moves them; to God me. What is a publick trust?

G. It consists of that, which men give up living in society.

for

P. You mean, men retain some of their natural rights in civil society, and they put the rest in

trust.

G. So I understand it. The honour and dignity of being chief, is given up in trust to one, who is so much the more sovereign, as the sovereign rights of many are lodged in him.

P. Then honour is in publick trust.

G. Yes, and so is wealth and power; and so it should seem, are all the other rights of mankind in a free state.

P. They are not annihilated, then; you do not mean by giving up, giving up the ghost?

G. No certainly. You have not given up the right of killing a man, have you, Sir?

P. No; I have only put that right of self-defence into the hands of the legislature, and they shoot the French, and drown the Spaniards, if they attempt to invade my estate on the coast; and they seize, imprison, try, and hang my neighbour for me if he attempts my life.

G. Suppose the persons in trust should abuse their trust, and should seize you or your property, instead of the French and the highwayman?

P. I should think I ought to resume my right, and put it into honest hands. You do not think men give up their senses to their governors in

trust.

G. No, certainly; and what they do give up are entrusted, not alienated,

P. Publick trusts, then, are in their nature, and ought to be in every form of civil government, in a state of responsibility.

G. As far as publick trusts are greater and more important than private trusts, so much more reason is there that the holders of them should be responsible.

P. I ask then a third question. Can there be a safe good government without responsibility?. G. What is a good civil government?

P. That, of every form, in which the end of civil government is obtained-that is, civil and religious liberty.

G. If it were formed ever so well, it would soon degenerate into tyranny, without responsibility. P. How so?

G. Because, constitute a civil government of what you will, and that part which is left without controul, will, on that very account, rise above, and domineer over the rest.

P. It would, and you see there would be no remedy. The end, liberty, would be defeated by the means, government. I am always, therefore, astonished, when I hear men talk of absolute and uncontroulable sovereignty in a prince, omnipotence in a parliament, despotism somewhere in a state; they convince me of nothing except that they understand the way up stairs.

G. Has the British constitution responsibility in it?

P. I intended to come to this as a fourth question. It has the reputation of it; for every writer who praises our government, praises it because one component part is a check on another, and if this be not the check, I know not where to find it.

G. But have we not many examples in our history of the peoples' calling their administrators to account, and punishing them for breach of trust? P. Suppose we had not one, what then? G. Then we should want precedent. P. But should we be left without law? must have been a first time, in the history of the

There

world, of calling culprits of every kind to account, G. True; but I recollect several instances of it in our history.

P, Every body knows a great many cases, in which the executive power has been called to account, by means of indictments and parliamentary impeachments.

G. The executive power?

P. Yes; not the king in his own person; but his counsellors and wicked ministers, without whose instrumentality the king cannot misuse his power; and in this stands the wisdom of our maxim of ascribing perfection to the supreme governor. Could the person of the supreme governor be culpable in the eye of the law, he might be arrested, imprisoned, tried and condemned, and then the remedy would be worse than the disease, the bonds of government would be dissolved, and civil war would ensue: but as he executes his high office by administration, and as all his servants are obliged to act according to law, the punishment of the servants answers every end of safety to society, for they know it is at their peril to take the prince's will instead of law for a rule of action. Beside, if the person of the supreme governor in such a state as ours were capable of culpability, the danger of calling him to account would be so great, by reason of the powerful opposition he would be always able to make, that no person would dare to attempt it, for fear of consequences to himself, and the law would defeat itself; it would be governing too much; but in the present state, the

calling of an administator to account is comparatively easy, and answers all the ends necessary to the happiness of society.

G. I believe it is allowed by all, that the three parts of our governing powers are mutually accountable to each other, and there are many instances of each calling the other to account, so that some of our kings have been dethroned, one fled from the fury of the people, and abdicated the throne, and one was actually put to death.

P. None of them understood the true principles of our constitution. The last took an active personal part in oppressive and illegal measures, as going to the house to seize the members, and though there was an informality in his trial, yet that as well as many other parts of our history shew, that there is a line beyond which the people cannot bear oppression, and that right to call rulers to account was always understood to belong to the people.

G. Allowing right, is there law for the exercise of the right?

P. Never was right of resistance more clearly ascertained, and passive obedience and non-resistance more fully exploded in any nation than in ours at the revolution; the whole went on the principle of responsibility, and the same act of settlement, that vested succession to the crown in the present illustrious family, was in effect an act of rejection, not of an administration, but of a person and a family, who had, by presuming to set themselves above controul, dissolved that social