Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Once acquiring power, rulers will try their best to keep and extend it:
We know, by infinite examples and experience, that men possessed of Power,
rather than part with it, will do any thing, even the worst and the blackest,
to keep it; and scarce ever any man upon earth went out of it as long as he
could carry everything his own way in it.... This seems certain, that the good
of the world, or of their people, was not one of their motives either for continuing
in Power, or for quitting it.
It is the nature of Power to be ever encroaching, and converting every
extraordinary power, granted at particular times, and upon particular occasions,
into an ordinary power, to be used at all times, and when there is no
occasion; nor does it ever part willingly with any advantage.
If liberty for "Cato" is the source of human happiness, the tyranny of
power is the source of vast human misery:
Tyrants ... reduce mankind to the condition of brutes, and make that Reason,
which God gave them, useless to them: They deprive them even of the
blessings of nature, starve them in the midst of plenty, and frustrate the
natural bounty of the earth to men; so that Nature smiles in vain where
tyranny frowns: The very hands of men, given them by Nature for their
support, are turned by tyrants into the instruments of their misery, by being
employed in vile drudgeries or destructive wars, to gratify the lust and vanity
of their execrable lords ....
Tyrants ... are supported by general ruin; they live by the destruction of
mankind; and as fraud and villainy, and every species of violence and cruelty,
are the props of their throne; so they measure their own happiness, and
security, and strength, by the misery and weakness of their people. . . . That
wealth, which dispersed amongst their subjects, and circulated in trade and
commerce, would employ, increase, and enrich them ... is barbarously robbed
from the people, and engrossed by these their oppressors ....
Alas! Power encroaches daily upon Liberty, with a success too evident;
and the balance between them is almost lost. Tyranny has engrossed almost
the whole earth, and striking at mankind root and branch, makes the world a
slaughterhouse; and will certainly go on to destroy, till it is either destroyed
itself, or, which is most likely, has left nothing else to destroy.
The corruption and lust for power in human nature are the cause of the
aggressive nature of power, and therefore require eternal vigilance against
power's encroachments:
There has been always such a constant and certain fund of corruption and
malignity in human nature, that it has been rare to find that man, whose views
and happiness did not center in the gratification of his appetites, and worst
appetites, his luxury, his pride, his avarice, and lust of power and who considered
any public trust reposed in him, with any other view, than as the means
to satiate such unruly and dangerous desires! And this has been most eminently
true of Great Men, and those who aspired to dominion. They were first made
194