up an idol which they called Divine Right, and which, in imitation of
the Pope, who affects to be spiritual and temporal, and in
contradiction to the Founder of the Christian religion, twisted
itself afterwards into an idol of another shape, called Church and
State. The key of St. Peter and the key of the Treasury became
quartered on one another, and the wondering cheated multitude
worshipped the invention.

When I contemplate the natural dignity of man, when I feel (for
Nature has not been kind enough to me to blunt my feelings) for the
honour and happiness of its character, I become irritated at the
attempt to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if they were all
knaves and fools, and can scarcely avoid disgust at those who are
thus imposed upon.

We have now to review the governments which arise out of society, in
contradistinction to those which arose out of superstition and
conquest.

It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing the
principles of Freedom to say that Government is a compact between
those who govern and those who are governed; but this cannot be true,
because it is putting the effect before the cause; for as man must
have existed before governments existed, there necessarily was a time
when governments did not exist, and consequently there could
originally exist no governors to form such a compact with.

The fact therefore must be that the individuals themselves, each in
his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with
each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in