Concern for their common Honour and Safety, and could bear no Advice that tended to reform them. At this time Truth became offenfive to those Lords the People, and most highly dangerous to the Speaker. The Orators no longer afcended the Roftrum, but to corrupt them further with the moft fulfome Adulation. These Orators were all bribed by foreign Princes on the one Side 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 pensioned and bribed to this iniquitous Service. The People, forgetful of all Virtue and publick Spirit, and intoxicated with the Flatteries of their Orators (these Courtiers of Republicks, and endowed with the diftinguishing Characteristicks of all other Countries) 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 propofe an Application of the immense Sums fquandered in publick Shows, even to the moft. neceffary Purposes of the State. When When you see the People of this Republick banishing or murdering their best and ableft Citizens, diffipating the publick Treasure with the most fenfelefs Extravagance, and fpending their whole Time, as Spectators or Actors, in playing, fidling, dancing and finging, does it not, my Lord, strike 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

of Folly into the fame mean and fenfeless 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 Hiftory 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 Largels. The Diftibution 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 Share of the royal Donation no less than five thousand 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 Substance; and to crown this Mafter-piece of Violence and Tyranny, they actually fold, every Man of the five thousand as Slaves in the publick Market. Observe, my Lord, that the five thoufand we here speak of, were cut off from a Body of no more than nine. teen 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 wish for a greater Mischief, than to

have cut off, at one Stroke, a fourth of his People; Or has the Cruelty of that Series of fanguine Tyrants, the Cafars, ever prefented fuch a Piece of flagrant and extenfive Wickedrefs? The whole Hiftory of this celebrated Republick is but one Tiffue of Rashness, Folly, Ingratitude, Injustice, Tumult, Violence, and Tyrany, and indeed of every Species of Wickedness that can well be imagined. This was a City of wife Men, in which a Minister could not exercise his Functions; a warlike People, amongst whom a General did not dare either to gain of lofe a Battle; a learned Nation, in which a Philofopher could not venture on a free Enquiry. This was the City which banished Themistocles, 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 Species of Government, but a Magazine of every Species; here you find every Sort of it, and that in the worst 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 the conducted her Affairs, fo far as related to the Ruin and Oppreffion of the greatest Part of the VOL. II.

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World,

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World, with greater Wisdom and more Uniformity. But the domeftic Oeconomy of these two States was nearly or altogether the fame. An internal Diffenfion 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 Slavery: If, perhaps, their former Condition did not deserve that Name altogether as well. All other Republicks were of the fame Character. Florence was a Transcript 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 Clofe of our Review of the three fimple Forms of artificial Society, and we have fhewn them, however they may differ in Name, or in fome flight Circumstances, to be all alike in Effect; in Effect, to be all Tyrannies. But suppose we were inclined to make the moft ample Conceffions; 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 Happinefs to their political Conftitution: Yet allowing all this, what Defence does this make for artificial Society in general, that these inconfiderable Spots of the Globe have for fome fhort Space of Time stood 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 fhould be greatly mistaken, if we really thought that the Majority of the People which filled thefe 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 Slaves ufually 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 thofe 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 thoufandth Part of the habitable Globe; the Freemen in thefe States were never the twentieth Part of the People, and the Time they fubfifted is fcarce any thing in that immenfe Ocean of Duration in which Time and Slavery 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 fo fair an Examen, wherein nothing has been exaggerated; no Fact produced which cannot be proved, and none which has been produced in any wife forced or ftrained, while thoufands have, for Brevity, been omitted; after fo candid a Difcuffion in all Refpects; what Slave fo paffive, what