gain or lose a battle; a learned nation,
in which a philosopher could not venture on a free inquiry. This was the
city which banished Themistocles, starved Aristides, forced into exile
Miltiades, drove out Anaxagoras, and poisoned Socrates. This was a city
which changed the form of its government with the moon; eternal
conspiracies, revolutions daily, nothing fixed and established. A
republic, as an ancient philosopher has observed, 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
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 she conducted her
affairs, so far as related to the ruin and oppression 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 same.
An internal dissension constantly tore to pieces the bowels of the Roman
commonwealth. You find the same confusion, the same factions, which
subsisted at Athens, the same tumults, the same revolutions, and, in
fine, the same slavery; if, perhaps, their former condition did not
deserve that name altogether as well. All other republics were of the
same character. Florence was a transcript of Athens. And the modern
republics, as they approach more or less to the democratic form, partake
more or less of the nature of those which I have described.

We are now at the close of our review of the three simple forms of
artificial society; and we have shown them, however they may differ in
name, or in some slight circumstances, to be all alike in effect: in
effect, to be all tyrannies. But suppose we were inclined to make the
most ample concessions; let us concede Athens, Rome, Carthage, and two
or three more of the ancient, 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 constitution. Yet, allowing all this, what
defence does this make for artificial society in general, that these
inconsiderable spots of the globe have for some short space of time
stood as exceptions to a charge so general? But when we call these
governments free, or concede that their citizens w