In the first ages of the world, when men are as yet barbarous and ignorant, they seek no farther
security against mutual violence and injustice, than the choice of some rulers, few or many, in
whom they place an implicit confidence, without providing any security, by laws or political
institutions, against the violence and injustice of these rulers. If the authority be centered in a
single person, and if the people, either by conquest, or by the ordinary course of propagation,
encrease to a great multitude, the monarch, finding it impossible, in his own person, to execute
every office of sovereignty, in every place, must delegate his authority to inferior magistrates,
who preserve peace and order in their respective districts. As experience and education have not
yet refined the judgments of men to any considerable degree, the prince, who is himself
unrestrained, never dreams of restraining his ministers, but delegates his full authority to every
one, whom he sets over any portion of the people.