'THE GOVERNMENT IS US' -- REALLY?

'THE GOVERNMENT IS US' -- REALLY?

The Founders put forward several fundamental principles by which they defined the overall purposes of government. First, government exists for man, not man for government. Second, government exists to protect the rights of citizens, not violate or bestow them. Third, government is accountable to the people and rules by their consent.

The Founders believed that the key to the greatest amount of human happiness was for individuals to live, and by extension governments to govern, in accordance with the natural law. This is why they believed that government was meant for the benefit of the governed, not the governors. All men were created equal and endowed with equal rights by the Creator before government existed. It was therefore incumbent upon the government to protect those rights in a manner that encouraged the greatest welfare of all.

John Adams opined, “We ought to consider what is the end of government before we determine which is the best form. … The happiness of society is the end of government. … From this principle it will follow that the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best.”

Congress used similar wording to justify taking up arms against the British: “But a reverence for our great Creator, principles of humanity, and the dictates of common sense must convince all those who reflect upon the subject that government was instituted to promote the welfare of mankind, and ought to be administered for that attainment of that end.”

It was precisely for this reason that governments were subject to the very same natural law as the citizens they ruled, as John Locke contended:

Thus, the law of nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other men’s actions must, as well as their own and other men’s actions, be conformable to the law of nature, i.e. to the will of God, of which that is a declaration, and the fundamental law of nature being the perseveration of mankind, no human sanction can be good or valid against it. … For the law of nature being unwritten, and so nowhere to be found but in the minds of men, they who through passion or interest shall mis-cite or misapply it cannot so easily be convinced of their mistake where there is no established judge.

Since it was subject to the natural law, the only just objects of government’s attention were the “happiness of society” and the “welfare of mankind” per the protection of his divinely endowed rights. This was often phrased by the Founders as the protection of each man’s property. But “property” was not simply the things one possessed, but also included one’s life, beliefs, skills, and so forth. James Madison referred to “the property which individuals have in their opinions, their religion, their person, and their faculties.”

All of these were to be the objects of government’s protection. This idea went all the way back, once again, to the great Cicero, who stridently defended the right to property and described government’s role in its protection in terms remarkably similar to those of John Locke and the Founders:

It is also incumbent on everyone who holds a high governable office to make absolutely sure that the private property of all citizens is safeguarded, and that the State does not encroach on these rights in any way whatever. … Indeed, the principal reason why, in the first place, states and cities were ever organized at all was to defend private property. It is true that people had come together into communities spontaneously by a natural instinct. But the reason why they sought the shelter of cities was because they wanted to safeguard their own personal possessions. … It is, I repeat, the special function of every state and every city to guarantee that each of its citizens shall be allowed the free and unassailed enjoyment of his own property.

This gets to a subject of particular importance today, when more people are claiming that our rights are bestowed and defined by government, not the “law of Nature and Nature’s God,” as our Founders contended. Those who make this argument typically do so by conjecturing that, since we live in a “democracy” (according to our Founders, we don’t; , “the government is us.” Thomas Paine quite directly addressed this very argument in the very first lines of his famous “Common Sense”:

Some writers have so confounded society with government as to leave little or no distinction between them, whereas they are not only different but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness. The former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil, in its worst state an intolerable one.

For Paine, “society” was what we would today call the “civil society,” the realm of human interaction in which we engage with each other voluntarily and conduct ourselves as we should in accordance with the natural law. This again reflects the Founders’ belief that man could act in accordance with the natural law, but that because he often didn’t, government was necessary. Government, then, exists to protect the rights, including the right to property, that by our own nature we tend to violate.


Joshua Charles

Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
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