this young king and his projects, and treating the opposition made to
him as originating in no better feelings than meanness and cupidity. The
philosophical thinkers on politics conceived--and to a great degree
justly, as I shall show hereafter--that the conditions of security, in
the ancient world, imposed upon the citizens generally the absolute
necessity of keeping up a military spirit and willingness to brave at
all times personal hardship and discomfort: so that increase of wealth,
on account of the habits of self-indulgence which it commonly
introduces, was regarded by them with more or less of disfavor. If in
their estimation any Grecian community had become corrupt, they were
willing to sanction great interference with preexisting rights for the
purpose of bringing it back nearer to their ideal standard. And the real
security for the maintenance of these rights lay in the conservative
feelings of the citizens generally, much more than in the opinions which
superior minds imbibed from the philosophers.

Such conservative feelings were in the subsequent Athenian democracy
peculiarly deep-rooted. The mass of the Athenian people identified
inseparably the maintenance of property in all its various shapes with
that of their laws and constitution. And it is a remarkable fact, that
though the admiration entertained at Athens for Solon was universal, the
principle of his Seisachtheia and of his money-depreciation was not only
never imitated, but found the strongest tacit reprobation; whereas at
Rome, as well as in most of the kingdoms of modern Europe, we know that
one debasement of the coin succeeded another. The temptation of thus
partially eluding the pressure of financial embarrassments proved, after
one successful trial, too strong to be resisted, and brought down the
coin by successive depreciations from the full pound of twelve ounces to
the standard of one half ounce. It is of some importance to take notice
of this fact, when we reflect how much "Grecian faith" has been degraded
by the Roman writers into a byword for duplicity in pecuniary dealings.
The democracy of Athens--and indeed the cities of Greece generally, both
oligarchies and democracies--stands far above the senate of Rome, and
far above the modern kingdoms of France and England until comparatively
recent times, in respect of honest dealing with the coinage. Moreover,
while there occurred at Rome several political changes which brought
about new table