It is divided into four books; the firft of which, contains 'an enquiry into the manner wherein natural man became a member of fociety, and what are the eflential conditions of the first convention, or focial compact. In treating this subject, he recurs to the firit and most ancient of all communities, that of a family, which he takes as the first model of civil focieties.

On this head, he cenfures Hobbes, and more particularly Grotius; with whom it appeared to be a doubt, whether all mankind were the property of about a hundred of their fellowcreatures, called princes; or whether the faid hundred princes were formed for the rest of mankind. He denies that one man bath naturally any authority over another, as also that power confers right; proceeding to confider how far it be in the power either of individuals or communities to confer fuch authority, or give up their natural liberty. If an individual, fays Grotius, may alienate his freedom, and become the flave of a mafter, why may not a whole people do the fame, and become fubjects to a king? Our Author thinks the terms of this quellion equivocal. To alienate any thing, he obferves, muft be done either by gift or fale. Now a man, in confenting to become the flave of another, does not abfolutely give himself away; he fells himself at least for his subfiftence: But for what reafon fhould a whole people fell themfelves? So far is a king from furnishing his fubjects fubfiftence, that they furnish fubfiftence for him; and a king, as Rabelais fays, does not live upon a little. So that, in fuch a cale, his fubjects would beftow on him their liberty, on condition that he would take their property into the bargain. Our Author objects farther to the right of conqueft, fo far as regards perional flavery, in contradiction to Grotius; whofe inconfiftency he points out alfo with respect to the primary convention. A people, fays that celebrated writer, may choose themfelves a king. According to Grotius, then, a people were a people before fuch choice was made; that choice being an act of civil fociety: It is neceffary, therefore, to examine, firft, into the act whereby a people became fuch. This must have been by a prior convention; otherwife, whence arofe the obligation that the minority fhould fubmit to the majority? Or whence could an hundred perions, who might defire a king, derive a right to vote fo ten, who might choofe to have none?

With regard to the focial compact itfelf, our Author obferves, that the following is the fundamental problem, of

which fuch compact is the folution; viz. to find fuch a kind of affociation as will defend and protect, with the united force of the whole body, the perfon and property of each member; while, at the fame time, fuch member, by being united to all the reft, fhould be fubjected only to himself, and preferve the fame liberty as before.

The terms in which this compact would be expreffed, he thinks, would run thus, "The contracting parties do feverally agree to fubmit their lives and fortunes to the fupreme direction of the whole body, collectively receiving each member into their body as infeparable from the whole."

In the fecond book, our Author treats of the legislative and the unalienable and indivifible right of fovereignty, as lodged in the people. Under this head, Mr. Rouffeau confiders the right, of which fociety is poffefled, of punishing criminals with death; a right which fome fcrupulous perfons have affected to call in queftion. If it be afked, fays he, how individuals, who have no right to dispose of their own lives, can inveft the fupreme authority with a right they do not poffefs? the queftion appears difficult to refolve, only because it is wrongly put. Every man hath a right to rifk his life, for its prefervation. We fhould not charge a man with fuicide, who might kill himself by jumping out of the window of an houfe on fire, to efcape being burnt: Nor hould we impute fuch crime to one, who might be caft away at fea, tho' he was apprized of the danger when he embarked.

The focial contract is made with a view to the prefervation of the contracting parties. Thofe who would enjoy the benefit of the end, muft affent to the means, which are infeparable from fome rifks and inconveniences. Whoever

could preferve his life at the expence of others, ought to refign that life allo, for their fafety, when it is required. Now, a private citizen is not the proper judge of those dangers to which the law requires him to be expofed; but, when the magiftrate declares that it is expedient, for the good of the ftate, that he should die, he ought to fubmit to his fate; fince it is only on fuch conditions that he hath hitherto lived in fecurity, and his life is not merely the free gift of nature, but a conditional gift of the ftate. Thus the punishment of death, which is inflicted on criminals, may be confidered nearly in the fame light: as it is, in order to prevent our fuffering by the poinard of an affaflin, that we consent to fuffer death, fhould we become fuch ourselves. So far from difpofing

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difpofing of our lives by this contract, we enter into it only for our prefervation; for it is not to be prefumed, that any one of the contracting parties would form a premeditated scheme to get himself hanged. Befides, every malefactor, becoming a rebel and a traitor to his country, by the breach of its laws, he ceases to be a member of that community against which he thus openly denounces war. The preservation of the ftate becomes hence incompatible with that of fuch an individual, and one of them must be fecured at the expence of the other and thus, when a criminal is executed, he doth not fuffer as a citizen, but as an enemy. His trial and fentence are the proofs and declaration of his having broken the focial compact, and that, of courfe, he is no longer a member of the state.

Our Author admits, nevertheless, that the frequency of executions, is always a fign of the weakness or indolence of a government; and that there is no criminal who might not be made at leaft good for fomething. Nay, notwithstanding what is faid above, he goes fo far as to affirm, that fociety hath no right to put to death any individual, even by way of example, whofe life may be fpared, without endangering the welfare of the fociety.

In treating of the inftitution of laws, and their expedi ency with regard to the people, for whofe ufe they may be defigned, our Author obferves, that many nations have made a great figure, as a people, who neverthelefs were never in à fituation to be governed by good laws; and that even those few which have been in that fituation, have remained fo but a very fhort time. Nations, fays he, as well as individuals, are tractable only in their infancy; they become incorrigible as they grow old. When their customs are once established, and their prejudices deeply rooted, it is a fruitless and dangerous enterprize to attempt to reform them: Like the weak and cowardly patient, who trembles at fight of the phyfician, they cannot bear that you fhould touch them, to enquire into and remove their diforders. There is in nations, alfo, as well as in individuals, a term of maturity, at which they thould be permitted to arrive before they are fubjected to laws: This term, however, is not always eafily known; and yet if it be anticipated, the work is fpoiled. One people fhould be difciplined, as foon as formed; while another may not be ripe for fuch fubmiffion, till after ten centuries. The Ruffians, continues Mr. Rouffeau, will never be truly pofhed, because they were civilized too foon. Peter the ift

had

had only an imitative turn; he had nothing of that true genius, whofe creative power forms fomething out of nothing. Some of his regulations were indeed proper enough, but most of them were ill-timed or ill-placed. He faw that his fubjects were mere barbarians, but he had not genius enough to fee that they were not yet ripe for being rendered polite. He wanted to civilize them when he fhould only have formed them to difcipline. He would make them immediately Germans and Englishmen, whereas he ought to have begun by making them first Ruffians. Thus he prevented his fubjects from ever becoming what they might have been, by perfuading them they were what they really were not: Just as a French tutor forms his pupil to make a figure in his childhood, and forever after to make none at all. The empire of Ruffia, while it is ambitious of fubjecting all Europe, will become fubjected itfelf. Its neighbours, the Tartars, will in time become both its mafters and ours. This revolution appears to me inevitable; all the monarchs in Europe feeming to act, in concert, to accelerate fuch an

event.

But we must here close this article, referring the confideration of the third and fourth book of this extraordinary little tract to our Appendix.

MONTHLY CATALOGUE, For DECEMBER, 1762.

RELIGIOUS and CONTROVERSIAL.

Art. 1. Reflections on the Unacceptableness of a Death-bed Repentance. By E. Harwood. 8vo. 1s. Waugh, &c.

I

T has long been the complaint of many rational Chriftians, that the most important fubjects of practical divinity have been almost entirely engroffed by illiterate Enthufiatts. The numerous swarms of Mechanics, whom w great modern Apoles have infpired, and fent forth to multiply and replenish the earth, have mangled the great truths of Christianity with fuch blind fury, and difcuffed the distinguishing doctrines of it in fuch a manner, as hath really done that glorious caufe greater injury than the moft artful and infidious arguments of its avowed adverfaries. Hence it is, that the multitude of theologicai books and pamphlets of every fize, and o levery price, from four

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Guineas

Guineas to four Farthings, diffeminated among mankind, with the udable defign of making them w unto falvation, have been, by fome, rather confidered as implying a fatire upon the dignity and reafonablenefs of Christianity.

Let a country 'Squire, worn out with hard drinking, and foxhunting, and willing to get a fmattering of divinity in his old age, purchate ten pamphlets on religious fubjects, that he fees advertised in his Evening-poit, and he may depend upon it, that more than half of them will prove, either the wild effufions of Cornelius Cayley, the amorous devotions of William Romaine, or the indelicate vilions of fome entranced Methodist.

It were much to be withed, that men of learning and sober reflection, could refcue practical Christianity out of the hands of thofe nieaneit and moft mifchievous of all scriblers, who are fure to leave an almost indelible blot on every religious subject that has the misfortune to be touched by them. Were judicious perfons more generally to write on fuch fubjects, in a manner worthy their dignity and importance, it would, probably, prouuce the best effects upon the minds of great numbers, and either prevent them from falling a prey to the devouring monfter, Enthufiafm, or at least confirm and establish them in confillent and defenfible principles.

Mr. Harwood, to whom the public is indebted for a late pamphlet, entitled, the Converfion of a Deifi, mentioned in our Review for laft June, appears in this little treatife as judicious a Writer on practical religion, as he fhewed himfelf in that a rational Advocate for Chrif tianity. With regard to the acceptance his prefent tract may meet with from the public, he appears to be not a little difcouraged, from a reflection on the various controverfies which have of late prevailed in the chriftian world, which are, now, he thinks too loud and clamorous for the fill voice of ferious and practical admonition to be generally heard.

"I a am very fenfible, fays he in his preface, that the beft difcourfe on a ferious fubject, from the most learned and celebrated divine, much less from me, could not be generally attended to in the prefent ftate of practical religion. When controverfy has, of late, been fo warmly agitated in the church, and chriftians have been running into parties concerning an intermediate ftate, and concerning the true charailer of a man after God's own heart, and are now difputing about the neceflity of water-baptifm, and the expediency of a liturgy, and contending for and againt thefe things, as if falvation depended on the iffues of the debate; there is little reafon to hope that a plain exhort tion to an holy life will gain much of their attention. Happy if my fate be not like that of the perfon mentioned by the ecclefiaftical hiftorians who, at one of the great general councils, when a moft numerous convocation of chriftian bithops were all bawling and quarelling about the Tinity, begged again and again to be heard. This being after long importunity, and with great difficulty obtained, he Rood up, and while the whole fynod expected to hear fomething decrive concerning the homcuftos, in a grave and folemn voice, repeated the following paffage from St. PAUL: The grace of God, that bringeth falvation,