By RICHARD PRICE, D.D. F.R.S.
LONDON,
Printed for T. CADELL, in the Strand.
MDCCLXXVIII.
General Introduction.
The first of the following tracts was published in the beginning of the year 1776; and the second in the beginning of last year. They are now offered to the public in one volume, with corrections and additions. All the calculations, in the Appendix to the first tract, have been transferred to the second and fourth sections, in the third part of the second tract.
The section on Public Loans, in the second tract, has been revised with care; and a supplement to it, containing additional proposals and some necessary explanations, has been given at the end of the whole.—This is a subject to which I have applied (perhaps too unprofitably) much or my attention. I have now done with it; and the whole is referred to the candid examination of those who may be better informed, hoping for their indulgence should they find that, in any instance, I have been mistaken. I have not meant, in any thing I have said on this subject, to censure any persons. That accumulation of artificial debt which I have pointed out, and by which the dagger of the kingdom from its growing burdens has been so needlessly increased, has, I doubt not, been the effect of inattention in our ministers; and the scheme, by which the loan of last year has been procured, gives reason to hope that better plans of borrowing will be adopted for the future.
The principal design of the first part of the second tract was (as I have observed in the introduction to it) to remove the misapprehensions of my sentiments on Civil Liberty and Government into which some had fallen. It gives me concern to find that it has not answered that end in the degree I wished. I am still charged with maintaining opinions which tend to subvert all civil authority. I paid little regard to this charge, while it was confined to the advocates for the principles which have produced the present war; but as it seems lately to have been given the public from the authority of a writer of the first character,[1] it is impossible I should not be impressed by it; and I find myself under a necessity of taking farther notice of it.
There are two accounts, directly opposite to one another, which have been given of the origin of civil government. One of them is, that “civil government is an expedient contrived by human prudence for gaining security against oppression; and that, consequently, the power of civil governors is a delegation or trust from the people for accomplishing this end.”
The other account is, that “civil government is an ordinance of the Deity, by which the body of mankind are given up to the will of a few; and, consequently, that it is a trust from the Deity, in the exercise of which civil governors are accountable only to him.”