I
heartily thank you for the kind interest you take in me. I would not
miss this opportunity, were I not engaged in something, which I think
more useful, and which, I believe, will please you more -- that is, in
preparing a Political Treatise, which I began some time since, upon your
advice. Of this treatise, six chapters are already finished. The first
contains a kind of introduction to the actual work; the second treats of
natural right; the third, of the right of supreme authorities. In the
fourth, I inquire, what political matters are subject to the direction
of supreme authorities; in the fifth, what is the ultimate and highest
end which a society can contemplate; and, in the sixth, how a monarchy
should be ordered, so as not to lapse into a tyranny. I am at present
writing the seventh chapter, wherein I make a regular demonstration of
all the heads of my preceding sixth chapter, concerning the ordering of
a well-regulated monarchy. I shall afterwards pass to the subjects of
aristocratic and popular dominion, and, lastly, to that of laws and
other particular questions about politics. And so, farewell."
The author's aim appears clearly from this letter; but being hindered by
illness, and snatched away by death, he was unable, as the reader will
find for himself, to continue this work further than to the end of the
subject of aristocracy.
------------------------
A POLITICAL TREATISE.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
PHILOSOPHERS conceive of the passions which harass us as vices into
which men fall by their own fault, and, therefore, generally deride,
bewail, or blame them, or execrate them, if they wish to seem unusually
pious.
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