the constitution. They drove out or
massacred the rich, and divided their property. If the superior union or
military skill of the rich rendered them victorious, they took measures
equally violent, disarmed all in whom they could not confide, often
slaughtered great numbers, and occasionally expelled the whole
commonalty from the city, and remained, with their slaves, the sole
inhabitants.

From such calamities Athens and Lacedaemon alone were almost completely
free. At Athens the purses of the rich were laid under regular
contribution for the support of the poor; and this, rightly considered,
was as much a favour to the givers as to the receivers, since no other
measure could possibly have saved their houses from pillage and their
persons from violence. It is singular that Mr Mitford should perpetually
reprobate a policy which was the best that could be pursued in such
a state of things, and which alone saved Athens from the frightful
outrages which were perpetrated at Corcyra.

Lacedaemon, cursed with a system of slavery more odious than has ever
existed in any other country, avoided this evil by almost totally
annihilating private property. Lycurgus began by an agrarian law. He
abolished all professions except that of arms; he made the whole of his
community a standing army, every member of which had a common right to
the services of a crowd of miserable bondmen; he secured the state from
sedition at the expense of the Helots. Of all the parts of his system
this is the most creditable to his head, and the most disgraceful to his
heart.

These considerations, and many others of equal importance, Mr Mitford
has neglected; but he has yet a heavier charge to answer. He has made
not only illogical inferences, but false statements. While he never
states, without qualifications and objections, the charges which the
earliest and best historians have brought against his favourite tyrants,
Pisistratus, Hippias, and Gelon, he transcribes, without any hesitation,
the grossest abuse of the least authoritative writers against every
democracy and every demagogue. Such an accusation should not be made
without being supported; and I will therefore select one out of many
passages which will fully substantiate the charge, and convict Mr
Mitford of wilful misrepresentation, or of negligence scarcely less
culpable. Mr Mitford is speaking of one of the greatest men that ever
lived, Demosthenes, and comparing him with his rival, Aeschi