[108] The only passage I meet with in antiquity where the obligation of obedience to government is ascribed to a promise is in Plato—_in Critone_, where Socrates refuses to escape from prison, because he had tacitly promised to obey the laws. Thus he builds a Tory consequence of passive obedience on a Whig foundation of the original contract. New discoveries are not to be expected in these matters. If no man, till very lately, ever imagined that government was founded on contract, it is certain it cannot, in general, have any such foundation. OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE. In the former essay we endeavoured to refute the speculative systems of politics advanced in this nation, as well the religious system of the one party as the philosophical of the other. We come now to examine the practical consequences deduced by each party with regard to the measures of submission due to sovereigns. As the obligation to justice is founded entirely on the interests of society, which require mutual abstinence from property, in order to preserve peace among mankind, it is evident that, when the execution of justice would be attended with very pernicious consequences, that virtue must be suspended, and give place to public utility in such extraordinary and such pressing emergencies. The maxim, _fiat Justitia, ruat Cœlum_ (let justice be performed though the universe be destroyed), is apparently false, and by sacrificing the end to the means shows a preposterous idea of the subordination of duties. What governor of a town makes any scruple of burning the suburbs when they facilitate the advances of the enemy? Or what general abstains from plundering a neutral country when the necessities of war require it, and he cannot otherwise maintain his army? The case is the same with the duty of allegiance; and common sense teaches us, that as government binds us to obedience only on account of its tendency to public utility, that duty must always, in extraordinary cases, when public ruin would evidently attend obedience, yield to the primary and original obligation. _Salus populi suprema Lex_ (the safety of the people is the supreme law). This maxim is agreeable to the sentiments of mankind in all ages; nor is any one, when he reads of the insurrections against a Nero, or a Philip, so infatuated with party-systems as not to wish success to the enterprise and praise the undertakers. Even our high monarchical party, in spite of their sublime theory, are forced in such cases to judge and feel and approve in conformity to the rest of mankind.