“An ancient Sage valued himself upon this, that though he could not fiddle, he knew how to make a great City of a little one. The Science that I, a modern Simpleton, am about to communicate is the very reverse. I address myself to all Ministers who have the Management of extensive Dominions, which from their very Greatness are become troublesome to govern, because the Multiplicity of their Affairs leaves no Time for fiddling.”

         – Benjamin Franklin

I refer your attention to that work of the above named scholar, “Rules By Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced To A Small One”, and here provide a View, a Satire upon a Satire, of the Rules by which our Government’s apparent designs may be more swiftly fulfilled.

However peaceably your people have submitted to your Government, shown their Affection to your Interest, and patiently borne their Grievances, you are to suppose them always inclined to terrorism, and treat them accordingly. Quarter police among them, who by their Insolence may provoke the rising of Protesters, and by their Batons and Tasers suppress them. By this Means, like the Husband who uses his Wife ill from Suspicion, you may in Time convert your Suspicions into Realities.

Much of the Strength of Government depends on the Opinion of the People; and much of that Opinion on the Choice of Rulers placed immediately over them. If you send them wise and good Men for positions of Authority, who study the Interest of the People, and advance their Prosperity, they will think their Government wise and good, wishing the Welfare of its Citizens. You are therefore to be careful who you recommend for those Offices. If you can find Rogue Traders who have embezzled their Fortunes, or Career Politicians who have abandoned their former allegiances and beliefs, these may do well as Ministers; for they will probably be rapacious, and provoke the People by their Extortions. Wrangling Spin-Doctors too are not amiss, for they will be forever disputing and obfuscating the plainest truth. If withal they should be ignorant, wrong-headed and insolent, so much the better; all will contribute to impress those ideas of your Government that are proper for a People you would wish to renounce it.

To confirm these Impressions, and strike them deeper, whenever the Injured come to the Capitol with Complaints of Oppression or Injustice, punish such Suitors with harassment, incarceration, enormous expense, and a final Judgment in Favor of the Oppressor. This will have an admirable Effect every Way. The Trouble of future Complaints will be prevented, and Officers and Officials will be encouraged to further Acts of Oppression and Injustice; and thence the People may become more disaffected, and at length desperate.

When such Officials have crammed their Coffers, and made themselves so odious to the People that they can no longer remain among them with Safety to their Persons, surround them with armed men for their protection and reward them with Pensions. You may make them Peers too, if that respectable Order should not think fit to resent it. All will contribute to encourage new Officials in the same Practices, and make the Government detestable.

If when you are engaged in Surveillance, your Citizens should vie in liberal Aids of Information and Money against the common Enemy, giving upon your simple Requisition, reflect, that biometric data taken from them by your Power is more honorable to you than information presented by their inherent Honesty. Despise therefore their voluntary submissions, and resolve to harass them with novel legislation. They will probably complain that they are oppressed by a Body in which they have no Democratic Representative, and that this is contrary to common Right. They will petition for Redress. Let Parliament flout their Claims, reject their Petitions, refuse even to suffer the reading of them, and treat the Protesters with the utmost Contempt. Nothing can have a better Effect, in producing the Alienation proposed; for though many can forgive Injuries, none ever forgave Contempt.

Remember to make your arbitrary surveillance more grievous to your Citizens, by public Declarations importing that your Power over them has no Limits, so that when you pry without their Consent into a moment of their private lives, you have a clear Right to inquire into every hour of every day. This will weaken every Idea of Security in their Privacy and Persons, and convince them that under such a Government they have nothing they can call their own; which can scarce fail of producing the happiest Consequences!

Possibly indeed some Citizens might still comfort themselves, and say, “Though we have no Civil Liberties, we have yet something left that is valuable; we have constitutional Liberty both of Person and of Conscience. This Premier, these Commons and these Lords, who it seems are too remote from us to know us and feel for us, cannot take from us our Habeas Corpus Right, or our Right of Trial by a Jury of our Neighbors. To annihilate this Comfort, begin by Laws to perplex their daily movements with infinite Regulations impossible to be observed; ordain Fines and Punishments for every Failure; take away the Trial of such infractions by Jury, and give it to arbitrary Judges of your own appointing, and of the lowest Characters in the Country, whose Salaries and Emoluments are to arise out of the Fine or Condemnations, and whose Appointments are at the Premier’s Pleasure.

Then let there be a formal Declaration that Opposition to your Edicts is Treason, and that Persons suspected of Treason may, according to some unjustly enacted Law, be seized and imprisoned with neither charge or trial; and pass an Act that those there charged shall be sent away in Chains from their Friends and Community to be convicted without defense or access to the Evidence against them. And lest the People should think you cannot possibly go any farther, pass another solemn declaratory Act, that the Premier, the Commons, and the Lords had, hath, and of Right ought to have, full Power and Authority to make Statutes of sufficient Force and Validity to bind the Protesting, Impoverished Citizenry IN ALL CASES WHATSOEVER. This must operate wonderfully to your Purpose, by convincing them that they are at present under a Power omnipotent, which can not only batter and imprison their Bodies, but damn them every day of their lives by compelling them, if it pleases, to disclose every inch of their private dealings.

To make your surveillance more odious, and more likely to procure Resistance, send out Agents to superintend the Collection of information, composed of the most indiscreet, ill-bred and insolent you can find. Let these have large Salaries out of Fines extorted , and live in open grating Luxury upon the oppression of the Innocent, whom they are to worry continually with groundless and expensive Prosecutions, all at the Cost of the Party prosecuted tho’ acquitted, because the Crown is to pay no Costs. Let these Men by your Order be exempted from all the common standards of evidence and courtesy, though they and their Privacy are protected by its Laws. If any Surveillance Officers are suspected of the least Tenderness for the People, discard them. If others are justly complained of, even for the unwarranted murder of the innocent, protect and reward them. If any of these measures should prompt the common folk to threaten your officials, let your agents be made safe by observing and enforcing not with their own hands and eyes, by from afar by Camera and Loudhailer.

To make your Oppressions yet more odious, misapply the Profits of its Fines. If it was originally appropriated for the Defence of National Security and the better Support of Government, and the Administration of Justice where it may be necessary, then apply none of it to that Defense, but bestow it where it is not necessary, in augmented Salaries or Pensions to every Official who has distinguished himself by his Enmity to the People, and by calumniating them to their Sovereign Premier. This will make them pay it more unwillingly, and be more apt to quarrel with those that collect it, and those that imposed it, who will quarrel again with them, and all shall contribute to your main Purpose of making them weary of your Government.

If your Citizens should dare to claim Rights or complain of your Administration, order them to be harassed with repeated Dissolutions. If the same Citizens should continually return in Protest, withdraw even their legal right to mere complaint; for this, you know, is your PREROGATIVE; and an excellent one it is, as you may manage it, to promote Discontents among the People, diminish their Respect, and increase their Disaffection.

Convert the brave honest Officers of your Police into pimping custodians of travel and movement; let your Officers of the Customs turn their eyes inward upon the citizenry rather than outward in the search for contraband. Let those who in Time of War fought gallantly in Defense of the Commerce of their Countrymen, in Peace be taught to prey upon it. Let them learn to be corrupted by lack of injunctions upon their conduct and (to show their Diligence) scour with unjust surveillance every Nook and Harbor of every Citizen’s private life, stop and detain every Commuter, every Pedestrian, every Passenger, rummage their personal baggage and even their pockets, inside out and upside down; and if a Penn’eth of Pins is found, let the offender be seized as a suspected terrorist, for it is most certain that no common citizen can be trusted to bear any item so sharp as a pen. Thus shall the peace of our Society suffer more from Friends in Time of Peace than it did from Enemies in War.

If the injured and exasperated Citizens, unable to protect their own privacy, should resist their oppressors either by omission or design, you are to call this Terrorism and Treason, and threaten to carry all the Offenders into prison without charge or trial. O! this will work admirably!

If you are told of Discontents in your Colonies, never believe that they are general, or that you have given Occasion for them; therefore do not think of applying any Remedy, or of changing any offensive Measure. Redress no Grievance, lest they should be encouraged to demand the Redress of some other Grievance. Grant no Request that is just and reasonable, lest they should make another that is unreasonable. Take all your Information of the State of the Nation from your Agents and Officers in Enmity with the populace. Encourage and reward these Quisling informers; secrete their lying Accusations lest they should be confuted; but act upon them as the clearest Evidence, and believe nothing you hear from the accused or the People. Suppose all their Complaints to be invented and promoted by a few factious Demagogues, whom if you could catch and incarcerate, all would be quiet. Imprison or execute a few of them accordingly; and the Blood of the Martyrs shall work Miracles in favor of your Purpose.

If you see rival Nations rejoicing at the Prospect of your Disunion with your Citizens, and endeavoring to promote it: If they translate, publish and applaud all the Complaints of your discontented Citizenry, at the same Time privately stimulating you to severer Measures; let not that alarm or offend you. Why should it? since you all mean the same Thing.

If any individual should at their own Charge secure the defense of their families or their Persons, be the danger Terrorists, or Criminals, or even (heavens forefend) the agents of Oppression, let them be arrested and charged with bearing Offensive Weapons and Suspicion of Terrorism. If they should prove innocent or to have just cause, let them anywise be charged for their own defence, for that will provoke like Ingratitude added to Robbery. One admirable Effect of these Operations will be, to discourage every other Citizen from acquiring such Defences, and so their and your Enemies may more easily subject them to Terror, to the great Disgrace of your Government, and of course the Furtherance of your Project.

Send armed police into their streets under Pretense of protecting the Inhabitants; instead of garrisoning the Installations on your borders with Troops, to prevent Incursions, order the Troops into the Heart of the Country, that the imagined enemy may be encouraged to attack the towns, and that the Troops may be protected by the Inhabitants: This will seem to proceed from your Ill will or your Ignorance, and contribute further to produce and strengthen an Opinion among the people that you are no longer fit to govern them.

Lastly, Invest the Commissioners of your police with great and unconstitutional Powers, and free them from the Control of even your own Civil Authorities. Let them have Troops enow under their Command, to quell all protest and opposition; and who knows but (like some provincial Generals in the Roman Empire, and encouraged by the universal Discontent you have produced) one Commissioner, or more, may take it into his Head to set up for himself. If he should, and you have carefully practiced these few excellent Rules of mine, take my Word for it, all the citizens will immediately join him, and you will that Day (if you have not done it sooner) get rid of the Trouble of governing them, and all the Plagues attending their Commerce and Connection from thenceforth and for ever.