Matthew vi. 10

Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. These words, being a part of the Lord's prayer, must be perfectly familiar to you. It is evident that by the kingdom mentioned in them is meant, not that absolute dominion of the Deity by which he does whatever he pleases in the Armies of Heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, but that moral kingdom which consists in the voluntary obedience of reasonable beings to his laws and, particularly, that kingdom of the Messiah which our Saviour came to establish.

The same kingdom is undoubtedly here meant with that which we are told in the Gospel history the apostles went about preaching every where and declaring to be at hand, which the Jews at the time this prayer was framed were impatiently expecting, and which in their religious services they were continually praying for in the words, May his kingdom reign. May the Messiah come, and deliver his people.

This kingdom is described in the prophecy of Daniel under the character of a kingdom which the God of heaven was to set up in the time of the fourth temporal kingdom upon earth (or the Roman empire) and which was to be given to the Son of Man, and to increase gradually till it broke in pieces all other kingdoms, and filled the whole earth.

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Having reason to hope I should be attended to in the American States and thinking I saw an opening there favourable to the improvement and best interests of mankind, I have been induced to convey thither the sentiments and advice contained in the following Observations. They were, therefore, originally intended only for America. The danger of a spurious edition has now obliged me to publish them in my own country.

I should be inexcusable did I not take this opportunity to express my gratitude to a distinguished writer (the Count de Mirabeau) for his translation of these Observations into French, and for the support and kind civility with which it has been accompanied …

I think it necessary to add that I have expressed myself in some respects too strongly in the conclusion of the following Observations. By accounts from persons the best informed, I have lately been assured that no such dissentions exist among the American States as have been given out in this country, that the new governments are in general well settled, and the people happy under them, and that, in particular, a conviction is becoming universal of the necessity of giving more strength to that power which forms and which is to conduct and maintain their union.

Sect. I

Of the Nature of Civil Liberty, and the Essentials of a Free Government

With respect to Liberty in general there are two questions to be considered:

First, what it is? and secondly, how far it is of value? There is no difficulty in answering the first of these questions. To be free, is ‘to be able to act or forbear acting, as we think best’ or ‘to be masters of our own resolutions and conduct’. It may be pretended that it is not desirable to be thus free, but, without doubt, this it is to be free, and this is what all mean when they say of themselves or others that they are free.

I have observed that all the different kinds of liberty run up into the general idea of self-government. The liberty of men as agents is that power of self-determination which all agents, as such, possess. Their liberty as moral agents is their power of self-government in their moral conduct. Their liberty as religious agents is their power of selfgovernment in religion. And their liberty as members of communities associated for the purposes of civil government is their power of selfgovernment in all their civil concerns. It is liberty in the last of these views of it that is the subject of my present enquiry, and it may, in other words, be defined to be ‘the power of a state to govern itself by its own will’.

General Introduction

The first of the following tracts was published in the beginning of the year 1776 and the second in the beginning of last year.

The principal design of the first part of the second tract was … to remove the misapprehensions of my sentiments on civil liberty and government into which some had fallen. It gives me concern to find that it has not answered that end in the degree I wished. I am still charged with maintaining opinions which tend to subvert all civil authority. I paid little regard to this charge while it was confined to the advocates for the principles which have produced the present war; but as it seems lately to have been given the public from the authority of a writer of the first character, it is impossible I should not be impressed by it; and I find myself under a necessity of taking farther notice of it.

There are two accounts, directly opposite to one another, which have been given of the origin of civil government. One of them is that ‘civil government is an expedient contrived by human prudence for gaining security against oppression, and that, consequently, the power of civil governors is a delegation or trust from the people for accomplishing this end’.

The other account is that ‘civil government is an ordinance of the Deity, by which the body of mankind are given up to the will of a few, and, consequently, that it is a trust from the Deity, in the exercise of which civil governors are accountable only to him’.

Numberless are the calamities to which we are liable in this world. There are few of us who have not some share of trouble allotted us, either in our persons, or families, or fortunes. But, if happily exempted from troubles of this kind, there are troubles of a public nature which are very shocking and which at present throw a dark cloud over all our views and hopes. In such circumstances we are necessarily led to look out for consolation. It would be dreadful to suffer under present evils and to be under a necessity perhaps of looking forward to future greater evils, without any considerations that have a tendency to abate anxiety and mitigate pain. But this is not our condition. There are many springs of comfort to which in the worst circumstances we may have recourse, and which will help to reconcile us to our lot, and to give us patience and fortitude. Most of them, however, are of little moment compared with the two following; I mean, ‘the consideration of the perfect government of the deity’, and ‘the prospect of a future better state’. These are the grand springs of consolation amidst the evils of life and wretched is the person who, either from scepticism, or inattention, or viciousness of character, loses the hope and satisfaction which they are fitted to afford.

Preface to the Fifth Edition

The favourable reception which the following Tract has met with makes me abundant amends for the abuse it has brought upon me. I should be ill employed were I to take much notice of this abuse: but there is one circumstance attending it which I cannot help just mentioning. The principles on which I have argued form the foundation of every state as far as it is free, and are the same with those taught by Mr. Locke and all the writers on civil liberty who have been hitherto most admired in this country. But I find with concern that our governors chuse to decline trying by them their present measures. For, in a pamphlet which has been circulated by government with great industry, these principles are pronounced to be ‘unnatural and wild, incompatible with practice, and the offspring of the distempered imagination of a man who is biassed by party, and who writes to deceive’. I must take this opportunity to add that I love quiet too well to think of entering into a controversy with any writers, particularly nameless ones. Conscious of good intentions and unconnected with any party, I have endeavoured to plead the cause of general liberty and justice. And happy in knowing this, I shall, in silence, commit myself to that candour of the public of which I have had so much experience.

Richard Price was born at Tyn-ton in the parish of Llangeinor near Bridgend in the county of Glamorgan on 23 February 1723. His father, Rice Price, was a Dissenting minister who had been an assistant to Samuel Jones, founder of the Academy at Brynllywarch. By all the accounts that have survived, Rice Price was a strict Calvinist who maintained an austere discipline in the home. Richard, however, rebelled against his father's theology at an early age, and though he upheld the puritan values inculcated by his parents, his religious beliefs became much more liberal and much more rationalist.

Price's father died on 28 June 1739 and his mother, Catherine, scarcely a year later. Richard then went up to London, where his uncle, Samuel Price, was an assistant minister to the famous hymnwriter Isaac Watts, at St Mary Axe in Bury Street. Once established in London, Price was entered at Coward's Academy in Tenter Alley, Moorfields, where he came under the instruction and the influence of John Eames, who had been a friend and a disciple of Isaac Newton. It was at this Academy that he was prepared for the ministry, which was to remain his vocation and his first concern throughout an extremely active career. It was at this Academy too that he received the training in mathematics that enabled him to make important contributions to the theory of probability, to actuarial science and to the growth and development of insurance.

Nicholas of Cusa, in Latin Nicolaus Cusanus, was born in 1401 at Kues on the banks of the Moselle river between Trier and Koblenz. His father was a moderately well-to-do boatman and vineyard owner who served on juries and lent money to the local nobility. There is no proof that Nicholas studied with the Brothers of the Common Life in Deventer, Holland, as many of his earlier biographers assert, although he was influenced by the devotio moderna that they represented, and a scholarship, the Bursa Cusana, named after him, was established in the seventeenth century at Deventer. Following a year's stay at the University of Heidelberg in 1416, he pursued higher education in canon law at the University of Padua from 1417 until 1423. After receiving a doctorate in canon law (doctor decretorum) he returned to Germany and enrolled at the University of Cologne in early 1425. He seems to have studied philosophy and theology at Cologne and he practiced and probably also taught canon law. (In 1428 he turned down an offer of a professorship in canon law at the University of Louvain.) In 1427 and 1429–30, Cusanus travelled to Rome as the secretary of the Archbishop of Trier and established contacts with the Italian humanists who were interested in his reports of having discovered lost classical manuscripts in German monastic and cathedral libraries.