principal person finds that, let the
want, misery, and indigence of his subjects be what they will, he can
yet possess abundantly of everything to gratify his most insatiable
wishes. He does more. He finds that these gratifications increase in
proportion to the wretchedness and slavery of his subjects. Thus
encouraged both by passion and interest to trample on the public
welfare, and by his station placed above both shame and fear, he
proceeds to the most horrid and shocking outrages upon mankind. Their
persons become victims of his suspicions. The slightest displeasure is
death; and a disagreeable aspect is often as great a crime as high
treason. In the court of Nero, a person of learning, of unquestioned
merit, and of unsuspected loyalty, was put to death for no other reason,
than that he had a pedantic countenance which displeased the emperor.
This very monster of mankind appeared in the beginning of his reign to
be a person of virtue. Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of
history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth
is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding.
And to prevent the least hope of amendment, a king is ever surrounded by
a crowd of infamous flatterers, who find their account in keeping him
from the least light of reason, till all ideas of rectitude and justice
are utterly erased from his mind. When Alexander had in his fury
inhumanly butchered one of his best friends and bravest captains; on the
return of reason he began to conceive an horror suitable to the guilt of
such a murder. In this juncture his council came to his assistance. But
what did his council? They found him out a philosopher who gave him
comfort. And in what manner did this philosopher comfort him for the
loss of such a man, and heal his conscience, flagrant with the smart of
such a crime? You have the matter at length in Plutarch. He told him,
"_that let a sovereign do what he wilt, all his actions are just and
lawful, because they are his_." The palaces of all princes abound with
such courtly philosophers. The consequence was such as might be
expected. He grew every day a monster more abandoned to unnatural lust,
to debauchery, to drunkenness, and to murder. And yet this was
originally a great man, of uncommon capacity, and a strong propensity to
virtue. But unbounded power proceeds step by step, until it has
eradicated every laudable principle. It has been remarked, that there i