It is for the advantage of the whole number that the promises of each individual should be kept:and,rather than they should not be kept,that such individuals as fail to keep them should be punished.If it be asked,how this appears?
the answer is at hand:Such is the benefit to gain,and mischief to avoid,by keeping them,as much more than compensates the mischief of so much punishment as is requisite to oblige men to it.Whether the dependence of benefit and mischief (that is,of pleasure and pain)upon men's conduct in this behalf,be as here stated,is a question offact,to be decided,in the same manner that all other questions of fact are to be decided,by testimony,observation,and experience.(54)43.This then,and no other,being the reason why men should be made to keep their promises,viz,that it is for the advantage of society that they should,is a reason that may as well be given at once,why Kings,on the one hand,in governing,should in general keep within established Laws,and (to speak universally)abstain from all such measures as tend to the unhappiness of their subjects:and,on the other hand,why subjects should obey Kings as long as they so conduct themselves,and no longer;why they should obey in short so long as the probable mischiefs of obedience are less than the probable mischiefs of resistance:why,in a word,taking the whole body together,it is their duty to obey,just so long as it is their interest,and no longer.This being the case,what need of saying of the one,that he PROMISED so to govern;of the other,that they PROMISEDso to obey,when the fact is otherwise?
44.True it is,that,in this country,according to ancient forms,some sort ofvague promise of good government is made by Kings at the ceremony of their coronation:and let the acclamations,perhaps given,perhaps not given,by chance persons out of the surrounding multitude,be construed into a promise of obedience on the part of the whole multitude:that whole multitude itself,a small drop collected together by chance out of the ocean of the state:and let the two promises thus made be deemed to have formed a perfect compact:not that either of them is declared to be the consideration of the other.