injuring it; it must establish prudent checks: it must cautiously divide
the power it confers, because re-united, it will by such reunion be
infallibly oppressed. The slightest reflection, the most scanty review,
will make men feel that the burthen of governing and weight of
administration, is too ponderous and overpowering to be borne by an
individual; that the scope of his jurisdiction, that the range of his
surveillance, and multiplicity of his duties must always render him
negligent; that the extent of his power has ever a tendency to render
him mischievous. In short, the experience of all ages will convince
nations that man is continually tempted to the abuse of power: that as
an abundance of strong liquor intoxicates his brain, so unlimited power
corrupts his heart; that therefore the sovereign ought to be subject to
the law, not the law to the sovereign.

_Government_ has necessarily an equal influence over the philosophy, as
over the morals of nations. In the same manner that its care produces
labour, activity, abundance, salubrity and justice; its negligence
induces idleness, sloth, discouragement, penury, contagion, injustice,
vices and crimes. It depends upon government either to foster industry,
mature genius, give a spring to talents, or stifle them. Indeed
government, the disturber of dignities, of riches, of rewards, and
punishments; the master of those objects in which man from his infancy
has learned to place his felicity, and contemplate as the means of his
happiness; acquires a necessary influence over his conduct: it kindles
his passions; gives them direction; makes him instrumental to whatever
purpose it pleases; it modifies him; determines his manners; which in a
whole people, as in the individual, is nothing more than the conduct,
the general system of wills, of actions that necessarily result from his
education, government, laws, and religious opinions--his institutions,
whether rational or irrational. In short, manners are the habits of a