When I compare the elegant performances which have appeared in Great Britain and in France with my dry and abstracted manner of treating the same subject, in a plain language void of ornament, I own I am discouraged on many accounts. If I am obliged to set out by laying down as fundamental principles the most obvious truths, I dread the imputation of pedantry, and of pretending to turn common sense into science. If I follow these principles through a minute detail, I may appear trifling. I therefore hope the reader will believe me, when I tell him, that these defects have not escaped my discernment, but that my genius, the nature of the work, and the connection of the subject, have obliged me to write in an order and in a stile where every thing has been sacrificed to perspicuity. My principal aim shall be to discover truth, and to enable my reader to touch the very link of the chain where I may at any time go astray. My business shall not be to seek for new thoughts, but to reason consequentially; and if any thing new be found, it will be in the conclusions. Long steps in political reasoning lead to error; close reasoning is tedious, and to many appears trivial: this however must be my plan, and my consolation is, that the further I advance, I shall become the more interesting. Every supposition must be considered as strictly relative to the circumstances presupposed; and though, in order to prevent misapplication, and to avoid abstraction as much as possible, I frequently make use of examples for illustrating every principle; yet these, which are taken from matters of fact, must be supposed divested of every foreign circumstance inconsistent with the supposition. I shall combat no particular opinion in such intricate matters; though sometimes I may pass them in review, in order to point out how I am led to differ from them. I pretend to form no system, but by following out a succession of principles, consistent with the nature of man and with one another, I shall endeavour to furnish some materials towards the forming of a good one. CHAP. I. _Of the Government of Mankind._ Man we find acting uniformly in all ages, in all countries, and in all climates, from the principles of self-interest, expediency, duty, or passion. In this he is alike, in nothing else. These motives of human actions produce such a variety of combinations, that if we consider the several species of animals in the creation, we shall find the individuals in no class so unlike to one another, as man to man. No wonder then if people differ in opinion with regard to every thing which relates to man.