to deal with them on account of their pride and infolence. Furious in their adverfity, tyrannical in their fucceffes, a commander had more trouble to concert his defence before the people, than to plan the operations of the campaign. It was not uncommon for a general, under the horrid defpotifm of the Roman emperors, to be ill received in proportion to the greatness of his fervices. Agricola is a ftrong inftance of this. No man had done greater things, nor with more honeft ambition. Yet on his return to court, he was obliged to enter Rome with all the fecrecy of a criminal. He went to the palace, not like a victorious commander who had merited and might demand the greatest rewards, but like an offender who had come to fupplicate a pardon for his crimes. His reception was anfwerable: "Brevi ofculo, & nullo fermone exceptus, turbæ fervientium "immiftus eft." Yet in that worst feafon of this worst of monarchical tyrannies, modefty, difcretion, and a coolness of temper, formed fome kind of fecurity even for the highest merit. But at Athens, the nicest and best ftudied behaviour was not a fufficient guard for a man of great capacity. Some of their bravest commanders were obliged to fly their country, fome to enter into the fervice of its enemies, rather than abide a popular determination on their conduct, left, as one of them faid, their giddinefs might make the people condemn where they meant to acquit; to throw in a black bean, even when they intended a white one.

The Athenians made a very rapid progress to the most enormous exceffes. The people under no reftraint foon grew diffolute, luxurious, and idle. They renounced all labour, and began to fubfift themselves from the publick

* Sciant quibus moris illicita mirari, poffe etiam fub malis principibus magnos viros, &c. See 42 to the end of it.

revenues.

revenues. They loft all concern for their common honour or fafety, and could bear no advice that tended to reform them. At this time truth became offenfive to thofe lords the people, and most highly dangerous to the speaker. The orators no longer afcended the roftrum, but to corrupt them further with the most fulfome adulation. Thefe orators were all bribed by foreign princes on the one fide or the other. And befides its own parties, in this city there were parties, and avowed ones too, for the Perfians, Spartans and Macedonians, fupported each of them by one or more demagogues penfioned and bribed to this iniquitous fervice. The people, forgetful of all virtue and publick spirit, and intoxicated with the flatteries of their orators (thefe courtiers of republicks, and endowed with the distinguishing characteristicks of all other courtiers) this people, I fay, at last arrived at that pitch of madness, that they coolly and deliberately, by an exprefs law, made it capital for any man to propose an application of the immenfe fums fquandered in publick shows, even to the most neceffary purposes of the ftate. When you see the people of this republick banishing or murdering their best and ablest citizens, diffipating the publick treasure with the moft fenfelefs extravagance, and spending their whole time, as fpectators or actors, in playing, fidling, dancing and finging, does it not, my Lord, ftrike your imagination with the image of a fort of a complex Nero? And does it not ftrike you with the greater horror, when you obferve, not one man only, but a whole city, grown drunk with pride and power, running with a rage of folly into the fame mean and fenfelefs debauchery and extravagance? But if this people refembled Nero in their extravagance, much more did they resemble and even exceed him in cruelty and injustice. In the time of Pericles, one of the most celebrated times in the history j of

of that commonwealth, a King of Egypt fent them a donation of corn. This they were mean enough to accept. And had the Egyptian prince intended the ruin of this city of wicked Bedlamites, he could not have taken a more effectual method to do it, than by fuch an enfnaring largefs. The diftribution of this bounty caufed a quarrel; the majority fet on foot an enquiry into the title of the citizens; and upon a vain pretence of illegitimacy, newly and occafionally fet up, they deprived of their fhare of the royal donation no less than five thoufand of their own body. They went further; they disfranchifed them; and having once begun with an act of injustice, they could fet no bounds to it. Not content with cutting them off from the rights of citizens, they plundered thefe unfortunate wretches of all their fubstance; and to crown this master-piece of violence and tyranny, they actually fold every man of the five thousand as flaves in the publick market. Obferve, my Lord, that the five thousand we here fpeak of, were cut off from a body of no more than nineteen thoufand; for the entire number of citizens was no greater at that time. Could the tyrant who wifhed the Roman people but one neck; could the tyrant Caligula himself have done, nay, he could scarcely with for a greater mifchief, than to have cut off, at one ftroke, a fourth of his people? Or has the cruelty of that feries of fanguine tyrants, the Cæfar's, ever prefented fuch a piece of flagrant and extenfive wickednefs? The whole history of this celebrated republick is but one tiffue of rafhnefs, folly, ingratitude, injuftice, tumult, violence, and tyranny, and indeed of every fpecies of wickednefs that can well be imagined. This was a city of wifemen, in which a minifter could not exercife his functions; a warlike people, amongst whom a general did not dare either to gain or lofe a battle; a learned nation, in which a philofopher could not venture

on

on a free enquiry. This was the city which banished Themiftocles, ftarved Ariftides, forced into exile Miltiades, drove out Anaxagoras, and poifoned Socrates. This was a city which changed the form of its government with the moon; eternal confpiracies, revolutions daily, nothing fixed and established. A republick, as an antient philofopher has obferved, is no one fpecies of government, but a magazine of every fpecies; here you find every fort of it, and that in the worst form. As there is a perpetual change, one rising and the other falling, you have all the violence and wicked policy, by which a beginning power must always acquire its strength, and all the weakness by which falling states are brought to a complete destruction.

Rome has a more venerable aspect than Athens; and fhe conducted her affairs, fo far as related to the ruin and oppreflion of the greatest part of the world, with greater wifdom, and more uniformity. But the domestic œconomy of these two ftates was nearly or altogether the fame. An internal diffention conftantly tore to pieces the bowels of the Roman commonwealth. You find the fame confusion, the fame factions which fubfifted at Athens, the fame tumults, the fame revolutions, and in fine, the fame flavery. If perhaps their former condition did not deferve that name altogether as well. All other republicks were of the fame character. Florence was a tranfcript of Athens. And the modern republicks, as they approach more or lefs to the democratick form, partake more or lefs of the nature of those which I have defcribed.

We are now at the close of our review of the three fimple forms of artificial fociety, and we have fhewn them, however they may differ in name, or in fome flight circumftances, to be all alike in effect; in effect, to be all tyrannies. But suppose we were inclined to make the most ample conceffions;

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ceffions; let us concede Athens, Rome, Carthage, and two or three more of the antient, and as many of the modern commonwealths, to have been, or to be free and happy, and to owe their freedom and happiness to their political conftitution. Yet allowing all this, what defence does this make for artificial fociety in general, that these inconfiderable spots of the globe have for fome short space of time ftood as exceptions to a charge fo general? But when we call thefe governments free, or concede that their citizens were happier than those which lived under different forms, it is merely ex abundanti. For we fhould be greatly mistaken, if we really thought that the majority of the people which filled these cities, enjoyed even that nominal political freedom of which I have spoken fo much already. In reality, they had no part of it. In Athens there were usually from ten to thirty thousand freemen: this was the utmost. But the flaves usually amounted to four hundred thoufand, and fometimes to a great many more. The freemen of Sparta and Rome were not more numerous in proportion to those whom they held in a flavery, even more terrible than the Athenian. Therefore state the matter fairly: the free states never formed, though they were taken all together, the thousandth part of the habitable globe; the freemen in these states were never the twentieth part of the people, and the time they subsisted is fcarce any thing in that immense ocean of duration in which time and flavery are fo nearly commenfurate. Therefore call these free states, or popular governments, or what you pleafe; when we confider the majority of their inhabitants, and regard the natural rights of mankind, they must appear in reality and truth, no better than pitiful and oppreffive oligarchies.

After so fair an examen, wherein nothing has been exaggerated; no fact produced which cannot be proved, and VOL. I.

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