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 fpeaker. The orators no longer afcended the roftrum, but to corrupt them further with the moft 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 laft 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 immense sums fquandered in publick shows, even to the most neceffary purposes of the state. When you fee the people of this republick banishing or murdering their beft and ableft 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 sort of a complex Nero? And does it not strike 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 injuftice. In the time of Pericles, one of the most celebrated times in the history

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 largess. 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 occasionally fet up, they deprived of their share of the royal donation no less than five thoufand of their own body. They went further; they disfranchised 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 thoufand as flaves in the publick market. Observe, my Lord, that the five thousand we here speak 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 wished the Roman people but one neck; could the tyrant Caligula himself have done, nay, he could scarcely with for a greater mischief, 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 presented such a piece of flagrant and extensive wickedness? The whole history of this celebrated republick is but one tissue of rashness, folly, ingratitude, injuftice, tumult, violence, and tyranny, and indeed of every fpecies of wickedness 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 lose a battle; a learned nation, in which a philofopher could not venture

on

on a free enquiry. This was the city which baniflied 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 species; here you find every fort of it, and that in the worft form. As there is a perpetual change, one rifing 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 deftruction.

Rome has a more venerable aspect than Athens; and she conducted her affairs, fo far as related to the ruin and oppreffion of the greatest part of the world, with greater wisdom, and more uniformity. But the domestic economy of these two states was nearly or altogether the fame. An internal diffention conftantly tore to pieces the bowels of the Roman commonwealth. You find the fame confufion, 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 described.

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 con

ceffions;

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 these governments free, or concede that their citizens were happier than those which lived under different forms, it is merely ex abundanti. For we should 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 ufually from ten to thirty thousand freemen: this was the utmost. But the flaves ufually amounted to four hundred thousand, 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 slavery, even more terrible than the Athenian. Therefore ftate 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 fubfifted 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.

G

none

none which has been produced in any wife forced or ftrained, while thousands have, for brevity, been omitted; after so candid a difcuffion in all respects; what slave so paffive, what bigot fo blind, what enthufiaft fo headlong, what politician fo hardened, as to ftand up in defence of a fyftem calculated for a curfe to mankind? a curse under which they smart and groan to this hour, without thoroughly knowing the nature of the disease, and wanting understanding or courage to apply the remedy.

I need not excufe myfelf to your Lordship, nor, I think, to any honeft man, for the zeal I have fhewn in this cause; for it is an honeft zeal, and in a good cause. I have défended natural religion against a confederacy of atheists and divines. I now plead for natural fociety against politicians, and for natural reason against all three. When the world is in a fitter temper than it is at present to hear truth, or when I fhall be more indifferent about its temper; my thoughts may become more publick. In the mean time, let them repofe in my own bofom, and in the bofoms of fuch men as are fit to be initiated in the fober mysteries of truth and reafon. My antagonists have already done as much as I could defire. Parties in religion and politicks make fufficient difcoveries concerning each other, to give a sober man a proper caution against them all. The monarchick, aristocratical, and popular partizans have been jointly laying their axes to the root of all government, and have in their turns proved each other abfurd and inconvenient. In vain you tell me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the abufe. The thing! the thing itself is the abuse! Obferve, my Lord, I pray you, that grand error upon which all artificial legislative power is founded. It was obferved, that men had ungovernable paffions, which made it neceffary to guard against the vio

lence