They have been improved to what we see them
with greater or less degrees of felicity and skill. Not one of them has
been formed upon a regular plan or with any unity of design. As their
constitutions are not systematical, they have not been directed to any
_peculiar_ end, eminently distinguished, and superseding every other.
The objects which they embrace are of the greatest possible variety, and
have become in a manner infinite. In all these old countries, the state
has been made to the people, and not the people conformed to the state.
Every state has pursued not only every sort of social advantage, but it
has cultivated the welfare of every individual. His wants, his wishes,
even his tastes, have been consulted. This comprehensive scheme
virtually produced a degree of personal liberty in forms the most
adverse to it. That liberty was found, under monarchies styled absolute,
in a degree unknown to the ancient commonwealths. From hence the powers
of all our modern states meet, in all their movements, with some
obstruction. It is therefore no wonder, that when these states are to be
considered as machines to operate for some one great end, that this
dissipated and balanced force is not easily concentred, or made to bear
with the whole force of the nation upon one point.
The British state is, without question, that which pursues the greatest
variety of ends, and is the least disposed to sacrifice any one of them
to another or to the whole.
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