In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end of
government, let us suppose a small number of persons settled in some
sequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the rest, they will
then represent the first peopling of any country, or of the world.
In this state of natural liberty, society will be their first thought.
A thousand motives will excite them thereto, the strength of one man
is so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual
solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek assistance and relief of
another, who in his turn requires the same. Four or five united would
be able to raise a tolerable dwelling in the midst of a wilderness,
but one man might labour out of the common period of life without
accomplishing any thing; when he had felled his timber he could not
remove it, nor erect it after it was removed; hunger in the mean time
would urge him from his work, and every different want call him
a different way. Disease, nay even misfortune would be death,
for though neither might be mortal, yet either would disable him
from living, and reduce him to a state in which he might
rather be said to perish than to die.

Thus necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly
arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessings of which,
would supersede, and render the obligations of law and government
unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other;
but as nothing but heaven is impregnable to vice, it will
unavoidably happen, that in proportion as they surmount the first
difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a common cause,
they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other;
and this remissness will point out the necessity of establishing
some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue.