An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth EditionFerguson, Adam
Philosophy
An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition
Ferguson, Adam
Civil society -- History; Civilization -- History
The elevation of one class is a moderated arrogance; the submission of the
other a limited deference. The first must be careful, by concealing the
invidious part of their distinction, to palliate what is grievous in the
public arrangement, and by their education, their cultivated manners, and
improved talents, to appear qualified for the stations they occupy. The
other, must be taught to yield, from respect and personal attachment, what
could not otherwise be extorted by force. When this moderation fails on
either side, the constitution totters. A populace enraged to mutiny, may
claim the right of equality to which they are admitted in democratical
states; or a nobility bent on dominion, may choose among themselves, or
find already pointed out to them, a sovereign, who, by advantages of
fortune, popularity, or abilities, is ready to seize for his own family,
that envied power which has already carried his order beyond the limits of
moderation, and infected particular men with a boundless ambition.
Monarchies have accordingly been found with the recent marks of
aristocracy. There, however, the monarch is only the first among the
nobles; he must be satisfied with a limited power; his subjects are ranged
into classes; he finds on every quarter a pretence to privilege that
circumscribes his authority; and he finds a force sufficient to confine his
administration within certain bounds of equity and determinate laws. Under
such governments, however, the love of equality is preposterous, and
moderation itself is unnecessary. The object of every rank is precedency,
and every order may display its advantages to their full extent. The
sovereign himself owes great part of his authority to the sounding titles
and the dazzling equipage which he exhibits in public. The subordinate
ranks lay claim to importance by a like exhibition, and for that purpose
carry in every instant the ensigns of their birth, or the ornaments of
their fortune. What else could mark out to the individual the relation in
which he stands to his fellow subjects, or distinguish the numberless ranks
that fill up the interval between the state of the sovereign and that of
the peasant? Or what else could, in states of a great extent, preserve any
appearance of order, among members disunited by ambition and interest, and
destined to form a community, without the sense of any common concern?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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