In his excellent book Common Sense, Thomas Paine in 1776 lays out a succinct argument for the establishment of government. He begins his argument by distinguishing between a government and a society.
Paine defines a society as something produced by our wants, which promotes interactions and happiness by uniting our affections. Government, Paine argues, is produced by our wickedness. It is the imperfect nature of man that will inevitably require the formation of government as a punisher to restrain our vices and imperfections of character.
To construct his argument, Paine begins by observing that a person could wander alone into the wilderness and scratch out a means of survival for himself. All of his time and energy, however, would be spent on tending to the basic needs of life. His entire existence would be consumed with feeding and sheltering himself, or with provisioning himself with all the necessary tools, clothes and resources with which to survive the seasons. His days would be toiled away in labor that would never surpass his immediate needs.
Worse, tragedy or illness otherwise surmountable by the assistance of others could leave a single person to ruin. Should you fall seriously ill or injured and were unable to provide for yourself you could easily perish for want of what the basic tasks of life provide. Should your life be imperiled by a force in excess of what a single person can defend, you would have no enactable defense.
It is advantageous then to live in groups. Even a small group, in relatively short time, would be capable of achieving far beyond what any single individual could throughout his entire life. The efficiencies gained by a large enough community would allow a much greater capacity to endure hardship and tragedy. These efficiencies would also give birth to an otherwise impossible facet of human life; the ability and freedom to pursue the finer things such as the study of music, art, philosophy, medicine, math or science and so on. Cohesive societies are the systems that allow each of us the freedom to pursue the greater forms of happiness.
When a society is kept small, its governance is a simple matter. Each person depending on the other for his survival and happiness, their aims and pursuits are mutual and in accord with common ends. In a sufficiently small society, each member serves as his own representative and a formalized system of government is unnecessary, so long as each member’s aim is aligned to his neighbor’s and their prosperity so intimately linked.
As societies increase in size, individuals within that group are able to specialize in certain tasks thereby achieving efficiencies of labor otherwise impossible. Some focus solely on farming. With the freedom the farmer gains through his reliance on the blacksmith to provide his tools and the carpenter to build his house, he is able to farm at a much greater scale thereby supplying the food needs for the whole lot. As the farmer’s chief aim in life is the study and application of farming, undistracted by several other necessities of life, he is able to cultivate his art to achieve much greater yields than he otherwise would.
Since the blacksmith is no longer troubled with the provision of his meals he can apply himself to his art, forging new alloys and more efficient tools that he trades to the farmer for food and the carpenter for shelter. With the devision of labor comes the efficiency and freedom to pursue innovation that benefits the society as a whole. This is the pursuit of happiness.
But with these pursuits comes inevitable conflict. As societies grow, the aims and means of their ends begin to diversify. With no member of the this society any longer chiefly concerned with their mutual survival, their essential concerns turn gradually to the various pursuits of happiness for their own lives. Their individual concerns no longer tied to an identical end, combined with the imperfections of human nature and the otherwise well intentioned pursuits of happiness, competition begins to manifest. This competition is constructive in its onset and aim, but inseparable none the less from conflict.
If man were a perfect being, immune to vice, he could live perpetually in harmony with others. Unfortunately, he is not a perfect being and subject to the deficiencies of human nature. It is from this imperfect human nature that laws and government become necessary for all societies, in order to ensure the protection of the rights of its members from injustice. These protections of rights are realized through the establishment and enforcement of law. The purpose of government then, is to represent the interests of the people by protecting each member’s individual rights through mutually agreed upon law.
As a society increases in size, each member’s ability to adequately represent himself diminishes. The logistical challenges of a large group to fully understand the interests of each of its members will ultimately reach a point of ineffectiveness. It is at this point, writes Paine, that the natural and logical progression of a society is to elect representatives from within the group to act on behalf of the remaining population.
This assembly of representatives is the initial form of self governance. Rather than elect or allow a monarchy or an aristocracy, our free and independent group chooses delegates from within its own to represent the various elements of the population and to construct the necessary laws and governance with which to hold each member equally accountable in the aim of producing a secure society, mutually beneficial to the whole. This is the essential purpose for having a government, to secure and protect the natural rights of each of its members.
Paine goes on to argue that since the establishment of government is an additional burden of labor and resources, on top of meeting the basic necessities of life, or in the direct pursuit of happiness, it follows that the establishment of a system of government requires each member to surrender a portion of his property or labor in order to secure the remainder. The expense and burden of maintaining a government is one of the reasons that Paine was so clear in his opening argument that government is, at best, a necessary evil. James Madison expounded upon this belief in Federalist Paper 51 when he said one of the great difficulties in government is giving it adequate power to be effective, while simultaneously restraining it, so that the imperfect nature of the people holding office do not pervert the power they have been given.
Through the realization of the cost of government, it would be logical to conclude that the best form of government is one that is capable of achieving its end with the least expense and greatest benefit. By understanding that no matter who is elected to hold office and to manage the power of government, they are themselves also imperfect beings and will inevitably be prone to abuse their power to advance their own interests at the expense of the population. For this reason, it would also be logical to ensure strict limitations on the power of government, and to take appropriate precautions so that the ultimate power within the society remains with the people.
Since both the necessity of government and the risk of tyranny is initiated by the imperfect nature of man, it is the construction of a just and impartial system of law that will ultimately be held accountable to supply the defects of moral virtue within its society, inclusive of government. The chief means then, to ensure the most efficient and least burdensome form of government, is the societal maintenance of the highest moral virtue attainable. All forms of government not dedicated to the construction and preservation of sound moral virtue in the positive interests of the people it represents are tyrannies, but more on that later.