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* From Section XXI. to the end, the pages muft guide the reader, the
Sections by fome miftake having been wrong numbered.

VOL. I.

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SECT.

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PREFA C E.

Ir is a question with feveral, whether there be any effential difference between one FORM OF GOVERNMENT and another? or, whether every FORM may not become good or bad, according as it is well or ill administered?—Were it once admitted, that ALL governments are alike, and that the only difference confifts in the character and conduct of the governors, most political difputes would be at an end, and all zeal for one conftitution above another must be esteemed mere bigotry and folly.But, though a friend to moderation, I cannot, fays HUME, forbear condemning this fentiment, and fhould be forry to think, that human affairs admit of no greater ftability, than what they receive from the cafual bumours and characters of particular

men.

It is true, thofe who maintain, that the goodness of all governments confifts in the goodness of the adminiftration, may cite many particular instances in hiftory, where the very fame government, in different bands, has varied fuddenly into the two oppofite extremes of good and bad.-Compare the French government under HENRY IV.-Oppreffion, levity, artifice, on the part of the rulers; faction, fedition, treachery, rebellion, difloyalty, on the part of the fuljes: thefe compofe the character of the former miferable æra. -- But when the patriotic and heroic prince, who fucceeded, was once firmly feated on the throne, the government, the people, every thing, feemed to be totally changed; and all from the difference of the temper and fentiments of these two fevereigns.-Inftances of this kind may be multiplied, almost without number, from ancient as well as modern hiftory, foreign as well as domeftic.

But here it may be proper to make a diftinction.-All ABSOLUTE GOVERNMENTS muft very much

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