in the streets of Alexandria, they rose on him and tore him limb from limb; and the excitement was so violent, that the generals overlooked the outrage for fear of insurrection!Claudius Cæsar tried to introduce a letter which was wanting in the Roman Alphabet-the consonant V as distinct from U,— they having but one character for both. He ordered that I (an F reversed) should be that character. It appears on some inscriptions in his time; but he could not establish it, though he could KILL or plunder his subjects at pleasure. So can the Emperor of Russia; but he cannot change the style. It would displace the days of saints whom his people worship; and it would produce a formidable insurrection! Other instances of this strange kind of anomaly might doubtless be produced.

Amongst the causes of sedition Bacon has not noticed what is, perhaps, the source of the most dangerous kinds of sedition, the keeping of a certain portion of the population in a state of helotism, as subjects without being citizens, or only imperfectly and partially citizens. For, men will better submit to an undistinguishing despotism that bears down all classes alike, than to an invidious distinction drawn between privileged and subject classes.

On this point I will take the liberty of citing a passage from

a former work :

'The exclusion from the rights of citizenship of all except a certain favoured class-which was the system of the Grecian and other ancient republics-has been vindicated by their example, and recommended for general adoption, by some writers, who have proposed to make sameness of religion correspond, in modern States, to the sameness of race among the ancients,-to substitute for their hereditary citizenship the profession of Christianity in one and the same National Church.

'But attentive and candid reflection will show that this would be the worst possible imitation of one of the worst of the Pagan institutions; that it would be not only still more unwise than the unwise example proposed, but also even more opposite to the spirit of the christian religion than to the maxims of sound policy.

'Of the system itself, under various modifications, and of its effects, under a variety of circumstances, we find abundant records throughout a large portion of history, ancient and modern; from that of the Israelites when sojourners in Egypt, down to that of the Turkish Empire and its Greek and other christian subjects. And in those celebrated ancient republics of which we have such copious accounts in the classic writers, it is well known that a man's being born of free parents within the territory of a certain State, had nothing to do with conferring civil rights; while his contributing towards the expenses of its government, was rather considered as the badge of an alien,' the imposing of a tax on the citizens being mentioned by Cicero2 as something calamitous and disgraceful, and not to be thought of but in some extraordinary emergency.

'Nor were the proportionate numbers at all taken into account. In Attica, the metoci or sojourners appear to have constituted about a third of the free population; but the Helots in Lacedæmon, and the subjects of the Carthaginian and Roman Republics, outnumbered the citizens, in the proportion probably of five, and sometimes of ten or twenty to one. Nor again were alien families considered as such in reference to a more recent settlement in the territory; on the contrary, they were often the ancient occupiers of the soil, who had been subdued by another race; as the Siculi (from whom Sicily derived its name), by the Siceliots or Greek colonists.

The system in question has been explained and justified, on the ground that distinctions of Race implied important religious and moral differences; such that the admixture of men thus differing in the main points of human life, would have tended, unless one Race had a complete ascendancy, to confuse all notions of right and wrong. And the principle, accordingly, of the ancient republics,-which has been thence commended as wise and good-has been represented as that of making agreement in religion and morals the test of citizenship.

"That this however was not, at least in many instances, even the professed principle, is undeniable. The Lacedæmonians reduced to helotism the Messenians, who were of Doric race, like themselves; while it appears from the best authorities, that

Matt. xvii. 25.

M

2 De Off. b. 11, ch. xxi.

the kings of those very Lacedæmonians were of a different race from the people, being not of Dorian, but of Achaian extraction. There could not have been therefore, at least universally, any such total incompatibility between the moral institutions and principles of the different races. The vindication, therefore, of the system utterly fails, even on the very grounds assumed by its advocates.

'If, however, in any instance such an incompatibility did exist, or (what is far more probable) such a mutual dislike and jealousy, originating in a narrow spirit of clanship-as to render apparently hopeless the complete amalgamation of two tribes as fellow-citizens on equal terms, the wisest-the only wise-course would have been an entire separation. Whether the one tribe migrated in a mass to settle elsewhere, or the territory were divided between the two, so as to form distinct independent States, in either mode, it would have been better for both parties, than that one should remain tributary subjects of the other. Even the expulsion of the Moors and Jews from Spain, was not, I am convinced, so great an evil, as it would have been to retain them as a degraded and tributary class; like the Greek subjects of the Turkish empire.

'For, if there be any one truth which the deductions of reason alone, independent of history, would lead us to anticipate, and which again history alone would establish independently of antecedent reasoning, it is this: that a whole class of men placed permanently under the ascendancy of another as subjects, without the rights of citizens, must be a source, at the best, of weakness, and generally of danger, to the State. They cannot well be expected, and have rarely been found, to evince much hearty patriotic feeling towards a community in which their neighbours look down on them as an inferior and permanently degraded species. While kept in brutish ignorance, poverty, and weakness, they are likely to feel-like the ass in the fable— indifferent whose panniers they bear. If they increase in power, wealth, and mental development, they are likely to be ever on the watch for an opportunity of shaking off a degrading yoke.

1 It is very remarkable that this fact has been adverted to, and prominently set forth by an author who, in the very same work, maintains the impossibility of different Races being amalgamated together in the same community. He appears to have quite forgotten that he had completely disproved his own theory.

Even a complete general despotism, weighing down all classes without exception, is, in general, far more readily borne, than invidious distinctions drawn between a favoured and a depressed race of subjects; for men feel an insult more than a mischief done to them; and feel no insult so much as one daily and bourly inflicted by their immediate neighbours. A Persian subject of the Great King had probably no greater share of civil rights than a Helot; but he was likely to be less galled by his depression, from being surrounded by those who, though some of them possessed power and dignity, as compared with himself, yet were equally destitute of civil rights, and abject slaves, in common with him, of the one great despot.

'It is notorious, accordingly, how much Sparta was weakened and endangered by the Helots, always ready to avail themselves of any public disaster as an occasion for revolt. The frightful expedient was resorted to of thinning their numbers from time to time by an organized system of massacre; yet, though a great part of the territory held by Lacedæmon was left a desert,2 security could not be purchased, even at this price.

'We find Hannibal, again, maintaining himself for sixteen years in Italy against the Romans; and though scantily supplied from Carthage, recruiting his ranks, and maintaining his positions, by the aid of subjects of the Romans. Indeed, almost every page of history teaches the same lesson, and proclaims in every different form, 'How long shall these men be a snare unto us? Let the people go, that they may serve their God: knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed ?' 'The remnant of these nations which thou shalt not drive out, shall be pricks in thine eyes, and thorns in thy side.'"

'But beside the other causes which have always operated to perpetuate, in spite of experience, so impolitic a system, the difficulty of changing it, when once established, is one of the greatest. The false step is one which it is peculiarly difficult to retrace. Men long debarred from civil rights, almost always become ill-fitted to enjoy them. The brutalizing effects of oppression, which cannot immediately be done away by its

1 Αδικούμενοι, ὡς ἔοικεν, οἱ ἄνθρωποι μᾶλλον ὀργίζονται, ἤ βιαζόμενοι.-Thucyd.

b. i. § 77.

2 Thucyd. b. iv.

3 Exodus X. 7.

4 Numbers xxxiii. 55.

removal, at once furnish a pretext for justifying it, and make relief hazardous. Kind and liberal treatment, if very cautiously and judiciously bestowed, will gradually and slowly advance men towards the condition of being worthy of such treatment; but treat men as aliens or enemies-as slaves, as children, or as brutes, and they will speedily and completely justify your conduct.'1

To which purpose (the removing of sedition) serveth

the repressing of waste and excess by sumptuary laws the regulating of prices of things vendible.

Bacon here falls into the error which always prevails in the earlier stages of civilization, and which accordingly was more prevalent in his age than in ours-that of over-governing.

It may be reckoned a kind of puerility: for you will generally find young persons prone to it, and also those legislators who lived in the younger (ie., the earlier) ages of the world. They naturally wish to enforce by law everything that they consider to be good, and forcibly to prevent men from doing anything that is unadvisable. And the amount of mischief is incalculable that has been caused by this meddlesome kind of legislation. For not only have such legislators been, as often as not, mistaken, as to what really is beneficial or hurtful, but also when they have been right in their judgment on that point, they have often done more harm than good by attempting to enforce by law what had better be left to each man's own discretion.

As an example of the first kind of error, may be taken the many efforts made by the legislators of various countries to restrict foreign commerce, on the supposition that it would be advantageous to supply all our wants ourselves, and that we must be losers by purchasing anything from abroad. If a weaver were to spend half his time in attempting to make shoes and furniture for himself, or a shoemaker to neglect his trade while endeavouring to raise corn for his own consumption, they would be guilty of no greater folly than has often been, and in many instances still is, forced on many nations by

1 Essays on some of the Dangers to the Christian Faith. 2nd edition, note F, pp. 212-217.