Free Political Propositions

...can be known, I do not speak of here) can be moved to the observation of any commonwealth by anything other than solely to better attain his own particular well-being, advantage, and best interests thereby. And therefore, I hold it to be one of the most worthy observations regarding a people's best interest that all matters among that same people be conducted in such a way that every member or human of it can or would know how to pursue any private or own advantage to the detriment of the common good as little as possible. In such a way that everyone’s particular and outstanding well-being never weakens nor harms the commonwealth, but the enjoyer is always, and all the more, compelled by this to help lift up and strengthen the same for everyone's well-being and good contentment. In sum, this—and whatever one might think of for a people's best interest—must be induced by reason to that same people by every sensible person and most clearly, and be submitted to the judgment of the people, and also, as far as their knowledge can reach and grasp, be approved and decided: For the entire people, taken together, neither will nor can will anything other than purely the commonwealth, nor, when urged to do so, can they fail to observe it according to their best knowledge and ultimate ability. And these are such characteristics that it is absolutely impossible that without them, a commonwealth can be brought about in any way. Nor can these characteristics be claimed with the least semblance of truth by anyone in particular among the same people, and still less by anyone from outside for the same people. From which, in my judgment, it also appears irrefutably that all the labored wringing and pressing of ancient and new writers, as well as their high and low piping and leaping—because the one wants to defend and maintain the one-headed, the other the few-headed governments as the most legitimate—must be considered and judged as nothing other than partly muddled and dull-headed scholastic foolishness, indeed as pure trifling, if not as pure deceit. The people’s—solely worthy and divine—government, this alone contains all good characteristics for the always-necessary improvement and invincible strengthening, growth, and flourishing of a people. And this is to be considered the only best and most stable of people’s governments: where a people mostly, according to reason and wisdom, seeks to maintain the commonwealth through an equal-liberty and to push it forward through orderly free counsels. If someone should nevertheless want to resist and object here by maintaining that all peoples are by nature intractable, unmanageable, harsh, unruly, or, strictly speaking, that they would only, or for the most part, comprise raging, predatory, and consequently unsociable animals and would have need to be led and steered by all manner of deceit and force, such a person is bound to prove this. And likewise, he is bound to prove that he himself, with his like, are not only free from this, but also that he and all others, his supporters, are the right and capable people to lead and steer such an intractable people at its best through deceit and force, and I would heartily desire to see and hear such a Prover. I, on the contrary, maintain that humans in general, by their nature, are...