The republick of Athens, once the seat of learning
and eloquence, the school of arts and sciences, and
the centre of wit, gaiety, and politeness, exhibits a
strong contrast to that of Sparta, as well in her form
of government, as in the genius and manners of her
inhabitants.
The government of Athens, after the abolition of
monarchy, was truly democratick, and so much convulsed
by those civil dissensions, which are the inevitable
consequences of that kind of government,
that of all the Grecian states, the Athenian may be
the most strictly termed the seat of faction. I observe
that the history of this celebrated republick is neither
very clear nor interesting until the time of Solon.
The laws of Draco (the first legislator of the Athenians
who gave his laws in writing) affixed death as
the common punishment of the most capital crimes,
or the most trivial offences; a circumstance which
implies either the most cruel austerity in the temper
of the lawgiver, or such an abandoned profligacy
in the manners of the people, as laid him under a
necessity of applying such violent remedies. As the
historians have not clearly decided which of these
was the case, I shall only remark, that the humanity
of the people, so natural to the human species, was
interested upon the occasion, and the excessive rigour
of the laws obstructed the very means of their being
carried into execution. A plain proof that a multiplicity
of rigorous penal laws are not only incompatible
with the liberty of a free state, but even
repugnant to human nature. For the natural equity
of mankind can easily distinguish between the nature
and degree of crimes; and the sentiments of humanity
will naturally be excited when the punishment
seems to be too rigorous in proportion to the demerits
of the offender. The chief reason, in my
opinion, why so many offenders in our nation escape
with impunity for want of prosecution, is because
our laws make no distinction, as to the punishment,
between the most trifling robbery on the highway,
and the most atrocious of all crimes, premeditated
murder.
The remedy which Draco proposed by his laws,
proving worse than the disease, the whole body of
the people applied to Solon, as the only person equal
to the difficult task of regulating their government.
The supreme power of the state was at that time
vested in nine magistrates, termed archons or governors,
elected annually by the people out of the
body of the nobility. But the community in general
was split into three factions, each contending for
such a form of government as was most agreeable
to their different interests. The most sensible
amongst the Athenians, dreading the consequence
of these divisions, were willing, as Plutarch informs
us, to invest Solon with absolute power; but our
disinterested philosopher was a stranger to that kind
of ambition, and preferred the freedom and happiness
of his countrymen to the splendour of a crown.48
He continued the archons in their office as usual,
but limited their authority by instituting a senate of
four hundred persons elected by the people, by way
of ballot, out of the four tribes into which the community
was at that time divided. He revived and
improved the senate and court of Areopagus, the
most sacred and most respectable tribunal, not only
of Greece, but of all which we ever read of in history.49
The integrity and equity of this celebrated
court was so remarkable, that not only the Greeks,
but the Romans, sometimes, submitted such causes
to their determination which they found too intricate
and difficult for their own decision. To prevent all
suspicion of partiality either to plaintiff or defendant,
this venerable court heard all causes and passed their
definitive sentence in the dark, and the pleaders on
either side were strictly confined to a bare representation
of the plain truth of the fact, without
either aggravation or embellishment. For all the
ornament of fine language, and those powers of rhetorick
which tended to bias the judgment by interesting
the passions of the judges, were absolutely
prohibited. Happy if the pleaders were restricted
to this righteous method in our own courts of judicature,
where great eloquence and great abilities are
too often employed to confound truth and support
injustice!
It is evident from history that Solon at first proposed
the institutions of Lycurgus as the model for
his new establishment. But the difficulty which he
met with in the abolition of all debts, the first part
of his scheme, convinced him of the utter impracticability
of introducing the laconick equality, and
deterred him from all farther attempts of that
nature. The laws of Athens gave the creditor so
absolute a power over his insolvent debtor, that he
could not only oblige the unhappy wretch to do all
his servile drudgery, but could sell him and his children
for slaves in default of payment. The creditors
had made so oppressive an use of their power, that
many of the citizens were actually obliged to sell
their children to make good their payments; and
such numbers had fled their country to avoid the
effects of their detestable inhumanity, that, as Plutarch
observes, the city was almost unpeopled by the
extortion of the usurers.50 Solon, apprehensive of an
insurrection amongst the poorer citizens, who openly
threatened to alter the government, and make an
equal partition of the lands, thought no method so
effectual to obviate this terrible evil, as to cancel all
debts, as Lycurgus had done formerly at Sparta.
But some of his friends, to whom he had privately
communicated his scheme, with an assurance that
he did not propose to meddle with the lands, were
too well versed in the art of jobbing to neglect so
fair an opportunity of making a fortune. For they
stretched their credit to the utmost in loans of large
sums from the moneyed men, which they immediately
laid out in the purchase of landed estates.
A precedent which the treacherous Agesilaus copied
too successfully afterwards at Sparta. The cheat
appeared as soon as the edict for abolishing all debts
was made publick: but the odium of so flagitious a
piece of roguery was thrown wholly upon Solon; as
the censure of the publick for all frauds and exactions
committed by officers in the inferior departments
will naturally fall upon the minister at the helm,
however disinterested and upright.
This edict was equally disagreeable to the rich and
to the poor. For the rich were violently deprived
of all that part of their property which consisted in
their loans, and the poor were disappointed of that
share of the lands which they so greedily expected.
How Solon drew himself out of this difficulty, historians
have no where informed us. All we can learn
from them is, that the decree was at last received
and submitted to, and that Solon was still continued
in his office with the same authority as before.
This experiment gave Solon a thorough insight
into the temper of his countrymen, and most probably
induced him to accommodate his subsequent
regulations to the humour and prejudices of the people.
For as he wanted the authority which naturally
arises from royal birth, as well as that which is
founded on the unlimited confidence of the people,
advantages which Lycurgus possessed in so eminent
a degree, he was obliged to consult rather what was
practicable, than what was strictly right; and endeavour,
as far as he was able, to please all parties.
That he acknowledged this, seems evident from his
answer to one who asked him “whether the laws he
had given the Athenians were the best he could possibly
have made?”51 “They are the best,” replied
Solon, “which the Athenians are capable of receiving.”
Thus whilst he confined the magistracies and the
executive part of the government solely to the rich,
he lodged the supreme power in the hands of the
poorer citizens. For though every freeman whose
fortune did not amount to a particular census or estimate,
was excluded from all state offices by the laws
of Solon; yet he had a legal right of giving his
opinion and suffrage in the Εκκλησια or assembly of
the people, which was wholly composed of this
inferior class of citizens. But as all elections, and
all cases of appeal from the superior courts were
determined by the voices of this assembly; as no law
could pass without their approbation, and the highest
officers in the republick were subject to their censure,
this assembly became the dernier resort in all
causes, and this mob government, as it may be justly
termed, was the great leading cause of the ruin of
their republick. Anacharsis the Scythian philosopher,
who at that time resided with Solon, justly
ridiculed this excess of power which he had lodged
in the people.52 For when he had heard some points
debated, first in the senate, and afterwards decided in
the assembly of the people, he humourously told
Solon, that at Athens “wise men debated, but fools
decided.” Solon was as sensible of this capital defect
as Anacharsis; but he was too well acquainted with
the licentiousness and natural levity of the people,
to divest them of a power, which he knew they would
resume by violence at the first opportunity. The
utmost therefore he could do was to fix his two
senates as the moorings of the constitution.53 That
of four hundred, to secure the state against the
fluctuating temper and tumultuous fury of the people;54
that of the areopagus, to restrain the dangerous
encroachments of the great and wealthy.55 He repealed
all the laws of Draco, those against murder
alone excepted; rightly judging, as Plutarch remarks,
that it was not only most iniquitous, but
most absurd, to inflict the same punishment upon a
man for being idle, or stealing a cabbage or an apple
out of a garden, as for committing murder or sacrilege.56
But as the account handed down to us of the
laws which Solon established is extremely lame and
imperfect, I shall only mention the sarcasm of Anacharsis
upon that occasion, as a proof of their insufficiency
to answer that end for which Solon designed
them. For that philosopher comparing the corrupt
manners of the Athenians with the coercive power
of Solon’s laws, resembled the latter to cobwebs
which would entangle only the poor and feeble;57 but
were easily broke through by the rich and powerful.
Solon is said to have replied,58 “that men would
readily stand to those mutual compacts, which it was
the interest of neither party to violate; and that he
had so rightly adapted his laws to the reason of his
countrymen, as to convince them how much more
advantageous it was to adhere to what was just, than
to be guilty of injustice.” The event, as Plutarch
truly observes, proved more correspondent to the
opinion of Anacharsis, than to the hopes of Solon.
For Pisistratus, a near relation of Solon's, having
artfully formed a strong party among the poorer
citizens, by distributing bribes under the specious
pretence of relieving their necessities, procured a
guard of fifty men armed with clubs only for the
safety of his person, by the help of which he seized
the citadel, abolished the democracy, and established
a single tyranny in spite of all the efforts of
Solon.59
This usurpation proved the source of endless faction,
and brought innumerable calamities upon the
republick. Pisistratus was expelled more than once
by the opposite party, and as often brought back in
triumph either by the fraud or force of his prevailing
faction. At his death he left the kingdom to his
two sons Hipparchus and Hippias. The former of
these was assassinated by Harmodius and Aristogiton
for a personal injury they had received;60 Hippias
was soon after driven out of Athens by the
Spartans at the instigation of some of his discontented
countrymen. Despairing of recovering his
former sovereignty by any other means, he fled to
Darius for assistance, and was the cause of the first
invasion of Greece by the Persians, in which he died
fighting against his country in the ever memorable
battle of Marathon. But the most fatal evil which
resulted from the usurpation of Pisistratus, was,
that perpetual fear of seeing the supreme power
again lodged in the hands of a single person.61 For
this fear kept the jealousy of the people in a constant
alarm, and threw them at last into the hands of the
factious demagogues. Hence superior merit was
frequently represented as an unpardonable crime,
and a kind of high treason against the republick.62
And the real patriots were rendered suspected to
the people, just as the demagogues were influenced
by envy or private pique, or even bribed by ambitious
or designing men, who aspired at the very
thing of which the others were unjustly accused.
The history of Athens abounds with instances of the
levity and inconstancy of that unsteady people. For
how frequently do we find their best and ablest citizens
imprisoned or sentenced to banishment by the
ostracism, in honour of whom the same people had
just before erected statues:63 nay not unfrequently
raising statues to the memory of those illustrious
and innocent men, whom they had illegally doomed
to death in the wantonness of their power;64 at once
the monuments of their injustice and too late repentance!
This evil was the natural consequence of
that capital error in Solon’s polity, when he entrusted
the supreme power to the giddy and fluctuating populace.
A defect which (as I observed before) was
the great leading cause of the loss of that liberty
which they had so licentiously abused. For as the
removal of all the honest citizens either by death or
banishment paved an easy way for usurpation and
tyranny; so it was a measure invariably pursued,
in the democratick governments of Greece, by all
those ambitious men who aimed at subverting the
liberties of their country. This truth is so clearly
explained, and so incontestably proved, by the great
Thucydides, that whilst I peruse the annals of that
admirable historian, I cannot help grieving over the
tragick pages stained with the blood of so many
patriot citizens, who fell a sacrifice to the dire
ambition and avarice of faction. What a striking
detail does he give us of the most calamitous situation
of all the Grecian republicks during the Peloponnesian
war! How does he labour for expression
in his pathetick enumeration of the horrible consequences
of faction, after his description of the
destructive sedition at Corcyra! A contempt of all
religion, the open violation of the most sacred ties
and compacts; devastations, massacres, assassinations,
and all the savage horrors of civil discord
inflamed even to madness, are the perpetual subjects
of his instructive history. Calamities of which he
himself was at once an eyewitness and a most
faithful recorder.
Thucydides truly ascribes this destructive war to
the mutual jealousy which then subsisted between
the Spartans and Athenians.65-66 The most stale frivolous
pretences were trumped up by the Spartans, and
as strongly retorted by the Athenians. Both states
made the interests or grievances of their allies, the
constant pretext for their mutual altercations, whilst
the real cause was that ambitious scheme which
each state had formed of reducing all Greece under
its respective dominion. But an event which both
states seemed to have waited for, quickly blew up
the latent sparks of jealousy into the most violent
flame.67 The Thebans privately entered the city of
Platæa in the night (a small state at that time allied
to Athens) which had been betrayed to them by a
treacherous faction, who were enemies to the Athenians.
But the honester part of the Platæans recovering
from their surprise, and taking notice of the
small number of the Thebans, quickly regained possession
of their city by the slaughter of most of the
invaders. The Platæans immediately applied to the
Athenians for assistance; the Thebans to the Spartans.68
Both states entered eagerly into the quarrel
between their respective allies, and engaged as principals
in that destructive war which at last involved
all Greece in the common calamity. Wherever
the fortune of the Spartan prevailed, an oligarchical
aristocracy was established, and the friends to a popular
government destroyed or banished. Where the
Athenians were victors, democracy was settled or
restored, and the people glutted their revenge with
the blood of the nobility. Alternate revolts, truces
violated as soon as made, massacres, proscriptions,
and confiscations, were the perpetual consequences,
in all the petty republicks, of the alternate good or
bad success of those two contending rivals. In a
word, all Greece seems to have been seized with
an epidemick madness; and the polite, the humane
Grecians treated one another, during the whole
course of this unnatural war, with a ferocity unknown
even to the most savage barbarians. The
real cause, assigned by Thucydides, of all these
atrocious evils, was, “the lust of domination arising
from avarice and ambition:” for the leading men
in every state, whether of the democratick or aristocratick
party, affected outwardly the greatest
concern for the welfare of the republick, which in
reality was made the prize for which they all
contended.69 Thus, whilst each endeavoured by every
possible method to get the better of his antagonist,
the most audacious villanies, and the most flagrant
acts of injustice were equally perpetrated by both
sides. Whilst the moderate men amongst the citizens,
who refused to join with either side, were alike
the objects of their resentment or envy, and equally
destroyed without mercy by either faction.70
Historians unanimously agree, that the Athenians
were instigated to this fatal war by the celebrated
Pericles. Thucydides, who was not only cotemporary
with Pericles, but actually bore a command
in that war, does real honour to that great man's
character; for he assigns his desire of humbling
the Spartans, and his zeal for the glory and interest
of his country, as the real motives of his conduct
upon that occasion.71 But, as a detail of this tedious
and ruinous war is wholly foreign to my purpose, I
shall only remark, that if ever union and harmony
are necessary to the preservation of a state, they are
more essentially so when that state is engaged in a
dubious war with a powerful enemy. For not only
the continuation, but the event, of that long war, so
fatal to the Athenians, must (humanly speaking) be
wholly attributed to the disunion of their counsels,
and the perpetual fluctuation in their measures,
occasioned by the influence of the ambitious and
factious demagogues. Not the calamities of war,
nor the most dreadful plague, ever yet recorded in
history, were able to fix the volatile temper of that
unsteady people.72 Elate beyond measure with any
good success, they were deaf to the most reasonable
overtures of peace from their enemies, and their
views were unbounded. Equally dejected with any
defeat, they thought the enemy just at their doors,
and threw the whole blame upon their commanders,
who were always treated as unpardonably criminal
when unsuccessful. The demagogues, who watched
every turn of temper in that variable people, took
care to adapt every circumstance that offered to
their own ambitious views, either of gaining or supporting
an ascendency in the state, which kept up a
perpetual spirit of faction in that unhappy republick.
Thus, in the beginning of the Peloponnesian war,
Cleon, a noisy seditious demagogue, declaimed violently
against Pericles, and was the constant opposer
of all his measures:73 but the firmness and superior
abilities of that great man enabled him to baffle all
his antagonists. When Pericles was carried off
by that fatal pestilence which almost depopulated
Athens, the nobility, jealous of that sway which
Cleon had acquired over the people, set up Nicias
in opposition. Nicias was honest, and a real lover
of his country, but a man of no great abilities; and
though an experienced officer, yet cautious and
diffident even to timidity.74 In his temper he was
mild, humane, and averse to bloodshed, and laboured
to put an end to a war which spread such general
destruction: but all his measures were opposed by
the turbulent Cleon; for when the Spartans proposed
an accommodation, Cleon persuaded the Athenians
to insist upon such high terms that the treaty
broke off, and war was again renewed with the same
inveterate fury: but the incendiary Cleon, the chief
obstacle to all pacifick measures, falling in battle in
the tenth year of that war, negociations were again
set on foot, and a peace for fifty years concluded
between the Athenians and the Spartans by the
unwearied endeavours of Nicias.75 But whilst Nicias
was intent upon the enjoyment of that repose
which he had procured, a new and infinitely more
formidable rival started up, and again involved his
country and all Greece in the same calamities by his
restless and insatiable ambition.
Alcibiades now appeared upon the stage; a man
composed of a motley mixture of virtues and vices,
of good and bad qualities; one who could assume
even the most opposite characters; and with more
ease, than a chameleon can change its colours, appear
a very contrast to himself just as his interest or
ambition required.76 This state Proteus was strongly
piqued at the growing power and reputation of
Nicias. His lust of power was too great to bear
either a superior or an equal;77 and he determined
at all events to supplant him, alike regardless either
of the equity of the means, or of the consequences
of it to his country. The Athenians were not a little
displeased with the Spartans, who had not been very
punctual in fulfilling the conditions of the treaty.78
Alcibiades finding his countrymen in a humour very
proper for his purpose, inflamed them violently
against Nicias, whom he publickly accused as a secret
friend and wellwisher to that people. Nicias endeavoured
to ward off the blow, and prevent his countrymen
from coming to an open rupture; but the intrigues
of Alcibiades prevailed, who procured himself
to be elected general, and fresh hostilities to be
commenced against the allies of Sparta.79
The seventeenth year of this memorable war is
remarkable for that fatal expedition against Sicily,
which gave a mortal blow to the Athenian grandeur,
and affords a signal instance of the terrible consequences
of faction. The Egestians, a small state in
Sicily, applied to the Athenians for assistance against
the oppressions of the Syracusans. Alcibiades, looking
upon it as an object worthy of his ambition,
undertook the cause of these suppliants, and knew
so well how to flatter the vanity of his countrymen,
that a large armament was decreed by the people
for that purpose, and Nicias, Alcibiades, and Lamachus,
a daring but able officer, were elected generals.80
Nicias was the only person who had the
honesty or courage to oppose a measure which he
judged not only rash, but to the last degree impolitick;
but the Athenians were deaf to all his remonstrances.
The relief of the Egestians was only
the pretext; for the entire dominion of Sicily, as
Thucydides assures us, was the real object they had
in view when they gave orders for that powerful
armament.81 Alcibiades had promised them an easy
conquest of that island, which he looked upon only
as a prelude to much greater enterprises; and the
besotted people had already swallowed up Italy, Carthage,
and Africa in their idle imaginations.82 Both
factions concurred in the vigorous prosecution of this
measure, though from very different motives: the
friends of Alcibiades, from the view of aggrandizing
their chief by that vast accession of wealth and glory
which they hoped for from this expedition: his
enemies, from the hopes of supplanting him in his
absence, and gaining the lead in the administration.83
Thus the true interest of the state was equally sacrificed
to the selfish and private views of each party!
But, in the midst of these vast preparations, an odd
accident threw the whole city into confusion, and at
once alarmed the superstition and jealousy of the
people. The terms, or statues of Mercury, were
all defaced in one and the same night by some unknown
persons; nor could the Athenians ever discover
the real authors of this reputed sacrilege.84
Proclamations were issued with a free pardon, and
reward for any of the accomplices who could make
a discovery, and the information of strangers and
slaves was allowed as legal evidence; but no information
could be procured as to the true authors of that
particular fact; a circumstance which to me does
not appear at all surprising: for it was evidently, in
my opinion, a piece of party-craft played off against
Alcibiades by the opposite faction, who knew that
to attack the established religion, was to touch the
master-spring of the passions of their
countrymen.85 Some slaves indeed, and other low persons
(suborned, as Plutarch asserts, by Androcles,86 one of
the demagogues) deposed, that long before that, some
statues had been mutilated, and the most sacred mysteries
of their religion ridiculed, in a drunken frolick
by some wild young fellows, and that Alcibiades was
of the party.87 This information, which, according to
Plutarch, was a palpable contrivance of his enemies,
enabled them to fix the odium of the last action upon
Alcibiades.88 The demagogues of the opposite faction
greatly exaggerated the whole affair to the
people. They accused him of a treasonable design
against the popular government, and produced his
contemptuous ridicule of the sacred mysteries, and
the mutilation of Mercury’s statues, in support of
their charge; as they urged his well known libertinism,
and licentious life as a proof that he must
be the author of those insults upon their religion.
Alcibiades not only denied the charge, but insisted
upon being brought immediately to a legal trial;
declaring himself ready to undergo the punishment
inflicted by the laws, if he should be found guilty.89
He beseeched the people not to receive any informations
against him in his absence, but rather to put
him to death upon the spot if they judged him to be
the offender. He urged too, how impolitick it would
be to send him with the command of so great an
army, whilst he lay under the imputation of a crime
of that nature, before they had taken thorough cognizance
of the affair: but his accusers dreading the
effect which his interest with the army, and his well
known influence over the allied troops, which had
engaged in the expedition from their personal attachment
to him, might have upon the people, if he
should be brought to immediate trial, procured other
demagogues of their party to dissuade the people
from a measure which they judged would disconcert
their scheme. These men pleaded the dangerous
delay which such a proceeding might occasion, and
urged the necessity of dispatch in an enterprise of
such vast importance. They proposed therefore that
the fleet should sail immediately, but that Alcibiades
should return when a day was appointed for his trial.90
For their intention was, as Thucydides remarks, to
recall and bring him to his trial when the popular
prejudice ran strong against him, which they knew
they could easily spirit up in his absence. It was
decreed, therefore, that Alcibiades should depart immediately
upon the expedition.
This mighty armament, which carried the flower
of the Athenian forces, was the most splendid, the
best fitted out, and the most expensive, that had ever
sailed from any of the Grecian ports to that very
time.91 But the first thing we meet with in this expedition,
is (what might naturally be expected) a
disagreement between the three generals as to the
manner of beginning their operations.92 Alcibiades
indeed brought them both over to his opinion; but
whilst he was disputing with his colleagues in Sicily,
his enemies at Athens were by no means idle. The
affair of the statues, and the pollution of the sacred
mysteries, were again brought upon the carpet. The
people, naturally suspicious, never inquired into the
character of the informers, or the validity of the
evidence, but admitted all that offered without distinction;
and, giving easy credit to the most abandoned
wretches, apprehended several of the most
eminent citizens, and committed them to prison.93
One of these persuaded another of his fellow prisoners,
who was most liable to suspicion, to take the
crime upon himself, and to impeach some others as
his accomplices.94 Urging this as a reason, that
whether what he confessed should be true or false, he
would at least secure his own pardon, and calm the
present suspicions of the people. Audocides, for
that was the name of this person according to Plutarch,
though it is omitted by Thucydides, was prevailed
upon by this kind of reasoning to acknowledge
himself guilty of defacing the statues, and to inform
against some others as accomplices in the same act
of impiety.95 Upon this declaration the informer received
his pardon, and all those who were not mentioned
in his information their liberty:96 but processes
were made out against as many as he had named,
and all who were apprehended were tried, condemned,
and executed upon his single evidence. Those who
escaped by flight were sentenced to die, and a price
set upon their heads by a publick proclamation.
Whether the persons condemned were guilty or
innocent was not at all clear, according to Thucydides.
Plutarch tells us, that the friends and acquaintance
of Alcibiades, who fell into the hands of
the people, were severely handled on this occasion.97
It is certain therefore that the information was chiefly
levelled at him by the artifice of the opposite faction;
for Thucydides informs us almost in the very next sentence,
that the people received the information against
Alcibiades with all the fury of prejudice, at the instigation
of such of his enemies as had accused him before
he sailed upon the expedition.98 And since they
now had not the least doubt of his being concerned
in the affair of defacing the statues, they were more
than ever convinced that he was equally guilty of the
pollution of the mysteries, and that both those crimes
were committed by him and his associates with the
same design of subverting the popular government.
For a body of Spartan troops happened to make an
incursion, in that very juncture, as far as the Isthmus,
upon some design or other against the Bœotians.
This unlucky incident confirmed the people in their
suspicions that this was a scheme concerted beforehand
with Alcibiades, covered with the specious pretext
of attacking the Bœotians;99 and that if the plot
had not been happily discovered in time, and the
execution of it prevented by the death of the conspirators,
their city would most inevitably have been
betrayed to the Spartans.100 Thus on every side suspicions
fell strongly upon Alcibiades, and the people
determining to put him to death, sent a private express
to Sicily to recall him and such of his friends
as were named in the information. The officers dispatched
in the Salaminian galley, which was sent on
that occasion, were ordered to acquaint Alcibiades,
that he was desired to return with them to Athens to
clear himself of those things which were objected to
him before the people; but they received a strict charge
not to offer to take him or his friends into custody;
not only from the dread of some mutiny amongst their
own soldiers upon his account, but for fear the allied
troops, whom his influence had engaged, should desert
and abandon the enterprise.101 Alcibiades obeyed
the summons, and taking his friends, who were included
in the information, into his own ship, left
Sicily in company with the Salaminian galley, seemingly
as if returning to Athens; but, whether he
only suspected, or, which is more probable, had received
intelligence of the measures taken by his
enemies in his absence, he, with his friends, went
ashore at Thuria, and gave the Athenian officers the
slip, not caring to stand the sentence of the credulous
and prejudiced people.102 The officers finding all
their search after him quite fruitless, returned to
Athens without him, and the Athenians passed sentence
of death upon him and all those who accompanied
him, and confiscated their estates for non-appearance.103
Thus, instead of uniting their joint
efforts to promote the success of an enterprise upon
which they had staked their all, the infatuated Athenians
were intent upon nothing but the cabals and
intrigues of faction; and the folly of the people,
managed by their ambitious and selfish demagogues,
deprived the state of the only commander from whom
they could rationally hope for success in that hazardous
expedition. A measure which occasioned the
total ruin both of their fleet and army, and gave a
fatal shock to their republick; for the soldiers were
not only greatly dispirited at the loss of a chief, in
whose abilities they placed the most entire confidence,
but Alcibiades, in revenge for his usage, took refuge
amongst the Spartans, and prevailed upon them to
send such supplies to the Syracusans as completed
the destruction of the Athenians in that country.104
Nicias was taken and put to death by the enemy;
not a single ship returned, and few of the men
escaped either slaughter or captivity.105 The news
of this terrible defeat threw the city into the utmost
consternation.106 They at first gave up all hopes,
and imagined they should quickly see the enemy's
fleet in the Pyræum whilst they were in this exhausted
and defenceless condition. However, the
dread of the impending danger had this good effect
that it made the populace extremely tractable, and
ready to support their magistrates in whatever measures
they judged most conducive to the common
safety.107 Nor could any thing but union and harmony
amongst themselves have possibly saved them
in the midst of so many enemies, with which they
were surrounded. For all the Greeks in general
were highly elated, as Thucydides tells us, with the
ill success of the Athenians in Sicily.108 Those who
had hitherto observed a strict neutrality in this war
wanted no solicitations to join in crushing that unhappy
people, but rather thought it glorious to have
a share in a war which they concluded would be but
of short duration. The Spartan allies were more
than ever desirous of delivering themselves from the
calamities of war which they had so long suffered;
whilst those states, which until that time had received
laws from the Athenians, exerted themselves
above their strength to support the revolt which
they were then meditating. They judged of the
situation of affairs from the blind impulse of passion,
regardless of the dictates of reason, and fancied the
next campaign would finish the ruin of the Athenians.
The Spartans, promising themselves the
certain dominion over all Greece, if the Athenians
were once reduced, made vast preparations for the
war, to which all their allies contributed their
utmost; all got ready for opening the campaign
the spring following.109
The Athenians, now harmony was restored in the
state, recovered their spirits, and begun to act with
vigour.110 They applied themselves to the re-establishment
of their marine, the repairs of their fortifications,
and the care of storing their magazines
with the greatest diligence and economy, retrenching
all such expenses as they judged useless or
superfluous. The good effects of this unanimity
were visible when the campaign opened, for they
found themselves in a condition to make head against
their numerous enemies, though strengthened by a
new alliance with the Persians, and assisted with
Persian money; and they even gained some considerable
advantages. An event too happened, which
greatly disconcerted the measures of their enemies,
and raised their state once more to its former power
and lustre. Alcibiades, a thorough libertine, who
never stuck at the most infamous means of gratifying
his passions, debauched Timæa, the wife of
Agis, king of Sparta, his great friend and protector.111
Dreading the resentment of that prince for so shameful
a breach of friendship and hospitality, as well as
the jealousy of the Peloponnesians, who had sent
private orders to Astyochus, the Lacedemonian admiral,
to cut him off, he fled to Tissaphernes, at
that time governor of the provinces in the lower Asia
under the Persian monarch.112 Alcibiades, who was
a consummate master in the art of address, quickly
insinuated himself into his good graces, and explained
to him the true interest of the Persians with
respect to the Grecian republicks.113 He showed
him the bad policy of raising one state to a superiority
over all the rest, which would deprive his
master of all his allies, and oblige him to contend
alone with the whole power of Greece. He advised
him to permit every state to enjoy its own separate
independent government; and demonstrated, that by
keeping them thus divided, his master might set
them together by the ears, and, by playing them one
against another, crush them all at last without the
least danger. He added too, that an alliance with
the Athenians would be more advantageous to the
Persian interest, and preferable to that which he had
made with the Lacedæmonians. The crafty Persian
was too able a politician not to relish his advice; he
paid the Peloponnesians their subsidy so ill, and put
off a naval engagement so long, under pretence of
waiting for the Phœnician fleet, that he wasted the
strength of their navy, which was far superior to
the Athenian, and ruined all their measures.114
Whilst Alcibiades resided with Tissaphernes, and
gave the Persians the best instructions he could
for regulating their conduct, he at the same time
formed a scheme for procuring the repeal of his
sentence, and liberty to return once more to his
native country.115 He judged the best way to obtain
this favour would be to convince the Athenians of
his intimacy with Tissaphernes. To effect this,
he wrote to the chief officers of the Athenian forces,
which then lay at Samos, directing them to inform
all those of the greatest weight and authority how
desirous he was of revisiting Athens if the government
should be once lodged in the hands of a
small number of the principal citizens; but that he
could by no means think of returning whilst the
democracy subsisted, and the state was governed
by a parcel of abandoned wretches, who had so scandalously
driven him out of his country. Upon that
condition he promised to procure the friendship of
Tissaphernes, and declared himself ready to accept
a share with them in the administration. The event
answered his expectations; for the officers and the
leading men, both of the sea and land forces, which
were at Samos, were eagerly bent upon subverting
the democracy. Thus the treaty was set on foot at
Samos, and the scheme laid for altering the government.116
The principal men were in hopes of a
share in the administration, and the inferior people
acquiesced from the expectation of large subsidies
from the Persians. Phrynicus, one of the generals,
alone opposed it, sensible that Alcibiades cared as
little for an aristocratick government as for a democracy,
and had no other point in view (which, as
Thucydides acknowledges, was the real truth) than
to procure such a change in the present administration
as might enable his friends to recall him.
The terms, however, which Alcibiades offered, were
agreed to by the rest, and Pisander, one of the leading
men, was sent to Athens to manage the affair.117
Pisander at first met with violent opposition from
the people;118 and the enemies of Alcibiades in particular
clamoured loudly against the violation of the
laws, when his return was proposed, which they
chiefly dreaded. But Pisander applied so artfully to
the fears of the people, and showed them so plainly
that it was the only resource they had left which
could possibly save the state, that they at last agreed
to it, though with great reluctance.119 He therefore,
with ten others, was appointed to settle the affair
with Tissaphernes and Alcibiades as they should
judge most conducive to the interest of the republick;
but Tissaphernes, who dreaded the power of
the Peloponnesians, was not so ready to enter into a
convention with the Athenians, as they were taught
to believe.120 Alcibiades therefore, to save his credit,
and conceal from the Athenians his inability to make
good what he had promised, insisted, in the name of
Tissaphernes, upon such high terms that the treaty
broke off, and the deputies returned to Samos,
enraged at the trick which they thought had been
put upon them by Alcibiades. Determined however,
at all events, to pursue their scheme, Pisander, with
some of the deputies, returned to Athens, where
their party had already made a considerable progress,
for they had privately assassinated such of the leading
men as were averse to an aristocracy, and though
they permitted the senate and people to assemble
and vote as usual, yet they would not allow any thing
to be decreed but what they thought proper;121 besides,
none but those of their own faction durst venture to
harangue the people; for if any one attempted to
speak in opposition, he was sure to be dispatched at
the first convenient opportunity; nor was any inquiry
made after the assassins, or any process issued out
against those who were strongly suspected of the
murders. The people were so terrified with these
bloody executions, that they acquiesced to whatever
was proposed, and every man thought himself happy
if no violence was offered him, even though he continued
quiet and silent. They were deprived even of
the power of bewailing the common calamity to each
other, in order to concert measures for revenge:
for the faction had artfully spread so strong and so
universal a diffidence amongst the popular party,
that no one durst venture to confide in his neighbour,
but each man suspected every other as an
accomplice of the crimes which were daily perpetrated.
In this situation Pisander found the city at his
arrival,122 and immediately prepared to finish what
his friends had so successfully begun: convoking
therefore an assembly of the people, the aristocratick
faction openly declared their resolution to abolish
the ancient form of government, and to lodge the
supreme power in the hands of four hundred of the
nobility, who should govern the state in the manner
they thought best, with the power of assembling
five thousand of the citizens to consult with as oft as
they thought proper. Pisander was the man who
acquainted the people with this definitive resolution,123
but Antiphon was the person who formed the plan,
and was chief manager of the whole affair: a man,
according to the testimony of Thucydides, who knew
him personally, master of the greatest abilities, and
of by far the most nervous eloquence of any of his
contemporaries. Thus the oligarchy was established,
and the Athenians deprived of that liberty which
they had enjoyed near one hundred years from the
expulsion of Hippias: during which whole space
they had been subject to none, but had been accustomed,
above half that time, to lord it over others;
for as soon as this decree had passed in the assembly
without opposition,124 the chiefs of the conspiracy
artfully permitted such citizens as were upon duty,
but had not been let into the secret, to go wherever
they pleased; but directed their own friends to continue
under arms, and disposed them in such a manner
as might best favour their enterprise: for the
Athenians kept at that time a constant guard upon
their walls, as the Spartan army was encamped in
their neighbourhood. When they had made their
disposition, the four hundred nobles with poignards
concealed under their habits, and attended by an hundred
and twenty daring young fellows, whom they
employed in their assassinations, surrounded the
senators,125 and paying them what was due upon their
salaries, commanded them to depart the court.
The senators tamely submitting,126 and not the least
stir happening amongst the citizens, they proceeded
to elect magistrates out of their own body, and performed
all the religious ceremonies usually practised
upon those occasions. When they had thus got
possession of the government, they did not think
proper to recall those whom the people had formerly
banished, for fear of being obliged to include Alcibiades
in the number, whose enterprising genius
they dreaded extremely; but they behaved most
tyrannically to the citizens, putting some to death,
throwing some into prison, and banishing others.
The spirit of liberty however is not so easily extinguished.
Pisander had brought mercenary troops
with him out of some of the cities which he passed
through on his return to Athens, who were of great
service to the new governors in their enterprise:127 but
the forces at Samos consisted of Athenian citizens,
jealous even of the least attempt upon the liberty of
their country, and declared enemies to every species
of tyranny. The first news which these brave fellows
received of the usurpation, brought such exaggerated
accounts of the cruelty and insolence of the four
hundred, that they were with great difficulty restrained
from cutting every one to pieces who was
in the interest of the oligarchy. However,128 they
took the command from their former generals, and
cashiered every officer they suspected, substituting
others in their places; the chief of whom were Thrasybulus
and Thrasyllus. Alcibiades was recalled,129
and unanimously declared their captain general both
by the sea and land forces; which gave such a turn
to affairs at Athens, that the four hundred were
deposed, in spite of all their efforts to continue in
power, and the publick tranquillity once more established.
The people confirmed Alcibiades in the command,
and committed the whole management of the war
to his conduct.130 But his soul was too great to receive
his recall from banishment, and even his high
post as an act of favour.131 He determined to merit
both by some signal service, and not to revisit Athens
until he could return with glory. His usual success
attended him in this war, and he seemed to bring
victory with him wherever he appeared; for he
gained so many victories both by sea and land, and
distressed the Peloponnesians so much by his address
and conduct, that he once more retrieved the dominion
of the sea, and returned triumphant to Athens.132
His entry was splendidly magnificent, adorned with
the trophies of two hundred ships of war, which he
had destroyed or taken, and a vast number of prisoners.133
His reception was attended with all the
honours and applause he had so justly merited.
The people, conscious of the late happy change in
their affairs under the administration of Alcibiades,
lamented with tears their miscarriage in Sicily, and
other subsequent calamities; all which they imputed
to their own fatal error in not trusting the sole command
to so able and successful a commander.
The fortune however of this great man was perpetually
fluctuating, and seemed to be ever on the
extreme; and Plutarch remarks,134 that if ever man
owed his ruin to his own glory, it must be Alcibiades;
for the people were so prepossessed with the opinion
of his courage and conduct, that they looked upon
him as absolutely invincible. Whenever therefore
he failed in any one point, they imputed it entirely
to his neglect, or want of will; for they could imagine
nothing so difficult, but what they thought him able
to surmount, if he applied to it with earnestness and
vigour. Thus, in the same campaign, he sailed to
the isle of Andros with a powerful fleet, where he
defeated the joint forces of the inhabitants and Spartans;
but, as he did not take the city, he gave his
enemies a fresh handle for renewing their usual
accusations; for the people already fancied themselves
masters of Chios and the rest of Ionia, and
were extremely out of humour because his conquests
did not keep pace with their heated imaginations.
They made no allowance for the wretched state of
their finances, which frequently obliged him to quit
his army to go in search of money to pay, and provisions
to subsist, his forces, whilst their enemies
had a constant resource for all their wants in the
treasures of Persia. To one of these excursions,
which necessity obliged him to make in order to
raise money, he properly owed his ruin: for leaving
the command of the fleet to one Antiochus, an able
seaman indeed, but rash, in every other respect
unequal to such a charge, he gave him the most
positive orders not to fight the enemy upon any
account whatsoever during his absence; but the vain
Antiochus treated his orders with so much contempt,
that he sailed out with a few ships to brave the Spartan
admiral Lysander, which brought on a general
engagement. The event was, the death of Antiochus,
the defeat of the Athenians, who lost many of their
ships, and a trophy erected by the Spartans in honour
of their victory. Alcibiades, at the first news of this
misfortune, returned to Samos with precipitation,
and endeavoured to bring Lysander to a decisive
action; but the wary Spartan knew too well how
different a man he had now to deal with, and would
by no means hazard a second engagement.
In the mean time one Thrasybulus,135 who bore a
mortal enmity to Alcibiades, posted to Athens, and
impeached him as the cause of the late defeat,
affirming that he committed the care of the fleet to
his potcompanions, whilst he rambled at pleasure
amongst the provinces, raising money, and living in
a state of riot and dissipation with wine and women.
A violent charge, besides, was brought against him
for fortifying a place near Bizanthe,136 as a retreat
upon occasion, which his enemies urged as a proof
that he either was not able, or not willing, to reside
in his native country.
Jealousy and inconstancy were the characteristicks
of the Athenian people. They gave implicit belief
to the suggestions of his enemies, and discharged, as
Plutarch tells us, the fury of their gall upon the
unfortunate Alcibiades, whom they deprived immediately
of the command.
Thucydides,137 speaking of the behaviour of his
countrymen to Alcibiades upon the impeachment
brought against him for defacing the statues, imputes
their ruin to that jealousy which they constantly
harboured both of his ambition and abilities. For
though he had done the state many great and signal
services, yet his way of life made him so odious to
every individual, that the command was taken from
him and given to others, which not long after drew
on the destruction of the republick.
For Tydeus,138 Menander, and Adimantus, the new
generals, who lay with the Athenian fleet, in the river
Ægos, were so weak as to sail out every morning at
daybreak to defy Lysander, who kept his station at
Lampsacus; and, at their return from this idle
bravado, spent the rest of the day without order or
discipline, or keeping any look-out, from an affected
contempt of the enemy. Alcibiades, who was at that
time in the neighbourhood, and thoroughly sensible
of their danger, came and informed them of the inconveniences
of the place where their fleet then lay,
and the absurdity of suffering their men to go ashore
and ramble about the country. He assured them
too, that Lysander was an experienced and vigilant
enemy, who knew how to make the most of every
advantage: but they, vain of their new power, despised
his advice, and treated him with the utmost
rudeness. Tydeus, in particular, ordered him to be
gone, and told him insolently, that not he, but they
were now commanders, and knew best what to do.
The event happened as Alcibiades had foreseen. Lysander
attacked them unexpectedly whilst they lay
in their usual disorder, and gained so complete a victory,
that of all their fleet eight vessels alone escaped,
which fled at the first onset. The able Spartan, who
knew as well how to make use of, as to gain, a victory,
soon after compelled Athens itself to surrender
at discretion. As soon as he was master of the city,139
he burnt all their shipping, placed a garrison in their
citadel, and demolished the rest of their fortifications.
When he had thus reduced them to a state of absolute
subjection, he abolished their constitution, and
left them to the mercy of thirty governors of his own
choosing, well known in history by the appellation of
the Thirty Tyrants.
This tyranny, though of very short duration, was
to the last degree inhuman. The tyrants sacrificed
all whom they suspected to their fear, and all who
were rich to their avarice. The carnage was so
great, that, according to Xenophon,140 the thirty put
more Athenians to death in eight months only, than
had fallen in battle, against the whole force of the
Peloponnesians, during ten years of the war. But
the publick virtue of Thrasybulus141 could not bear to
see his country enslaved by such inhuman monsters:
collecting therefore about seventy determined
citizens, who, like him, had fled to Thebes
for refuge, he first seized upon Phyle,142 a strong fort
near Athens; and, strengthened by the accession of
fresh numbers, which flocked in to him from every
side, he got possession of the Pyræum.143 The thirty
tyrants endeavoured to retake it, but were repulsed,
and Critias144 and Hippomachus, two of their number,
slain in the attempt. The people now, weary of
the tyrants,145 drove them out of the city, and chose
ten magistrates, one out of each tribe, to supply their
places. The tyrants applied to their friend Lysander,
who sailed and invested the Pyræum, and
reduced Thrasybulus, and his party, to an extreme
want of necessaries, for they were yet confined to
the Pyræum, as the people, though they had deposed
the tyrants, yet refused to receive them into the
city; but Pausanias,146 one of the kings of Sparta,
who commanded the land forces in this expedition,
jealous of the reputation which that great man had
acquired, gained over two of the ephori, who accompanied
him, and granted peace to the Athenians
notwithstanding all the opposition of Lysander.
Pausanias returned to Sparta with his army, and
the tyrants,147 despairing of assistance, began to hire
foreign troops, and were determined to re-establish
themselves by force in that power of which they
had been so lately deprived. But Thrasybulus, informed
of their design, marched out with all his
forces, and, drawing them to a parley, punished them
with that death their crimes so justly merited. After
the execution of the tyrants, Thrasybulus proclaimed
a general act of indemnity and oblivion, and
by that salutary measure restored peace and liberty
to his country without further bloodshed.
The conclusion of the Peloponnesian war may
properly be termed the period of the Athenian
grandeur; for though, by the assistance of the Persians,
they made some figure after that time, yet it
was of but short duration. The manners of the people
were greatly degenerated, and the extreme scarcity
of virtuous characters, so visible in their subsequent
history, marks at once the progress and the
degree of their degeneracy. Conon, who escaped
with eight ships only when they were so totally
defeated by Lysander, had convinced the Persian
monarch how much his interest was concerned in
supporting the Athenians, and obtained the command
of a powerful armament in their favour.
Whilst the artful Tithraustus,148 general of the Persian
forces in Asia, raised a strong confederacy
against the Spartans by properly distributing large
sums amongst the leading men of the Grecian
republicks. Conon149 totally defeated the
Spartan fleet commanded by Pisander, and, by the help of
the Persian money, rebuilt150 the strong walls and
other fortifications of Athens, which Lysander
had demolished. The Spartans,151 jealous of the
rising power of the Athenians who seemed to aspire
at recovering their former grandeur, made such
advantageous offers to the Persians by their admiral
Antalcidas, that they once more drew them over to
their party. Conon152 was recalled and imprisoned
upon the suggestions of Antalcidas, that he had
embezzled the money allotted for the re-establishment
of Athens, and was no friend to the Persian
interest. The Athenians now sent Thrasybulus,
their great deliverer, with a fleet of forty sail
to annoy the Spartans: he reduced several cities
which had revolted to the enemy, but was slain by
the Rhodians in an unsuccessful attempt upon their
island. Conon,153 according to Justin, was executed at
Susa by the Persians. Xenophon, who lived at
the same time, is silent as to his death; but, whatever
might be his fate, it is certain he is no more
mentioned in history. After the death of these two
great men we meet with none but Chabrias, Iphicrates,
and Timotheus, the son of Conon, whose
characters are worthy of our notice, until the time
of Demosthenes and Phocion. The martial spirit
of the Athenians subsided in proportion as luxury
and corruption gained ground amongst them. The
love of ease, and a most insatiable fondness for
diversions, now took place of those generous sentiments
which before knew no other object but the
liberty and glory of their country. If we trace the
rise of publick virtue up to its first source, and show
the different effects arising from the prevailing influence
of the different ruling passions, we may justly
account for the fatal and amazing change in that
once glorious republick. A short digression therefore,
on that subject, may perhaps be neither unuseful
nor unentertaining.
Of all human passions, ambition may prove the
most useful, or the most destructive to a people.
The....
...
Digito monstrari et dicier hic est;
154
the fondness for admiration and applause seems coeval
with man, and accompanies us from the cradle
to the grave. Every man pants after distinction,
and even in this world affects a kind of immortality.
When this love of admiration and applause is the
only end proposed by ambition, it then becomes a
primary passion; all the other passions are compelled
to be subservient, and will be wholly employed
on the means conducive to that end. But
whether this passion for fame, this eagerness after
that imaginary life, which exists only in the breath
of other people, be laudable or criminal, useful or
frivolous, must be determined by the means employed,
which will always be directed to whatever
happens to be the reigning object of applause. Upon
this principle, however the means may differ, the
end will be still the same; from the hero down to
the boxer in the bear-garden; from the legislator
who new-models a state, down to the humbler genius
who strikes out the newest cut for a coat-sleeve.
For it was the same principle directing to the same
end, which impelled Erostratus to set fire to the
temple of Diana, and Alexander to set the world in
a flame so quickly after.
There is no mark which so surely indicates the
reigning manners of a people at different periods,
as that quality or turn of mind, which happens to be
the reigning object of publick applause. For as the
reigning object of applause will necessarily constitute
the leading fashion, and as the leading fashion
always takes rise among the great or leading people;
if the object of applause be praiseworthy, the example
of the great will have a due influence upon
the inferior classes; if frivolous or vicious, the
whole body of the people will take the same cast,
and be quickly infected by the contagion. There
cannot, therefore, be a more certain criterion, by
which we may form our judgment of the national virtue
or national degeneracy of any people, in any period
of their existence, than from those characters, which
are the most distinguished in every period of their
respective histories. To analyze these remarkable
characters, to investigate the end proposed by all
their actions, which opens to us all their secret
springs; and to develop the means employed for
the acquisition of that end, is not only the most
entertaining, but, in my opinion, by much the most
useful, part of history. For as the reigning object
of applause arises from the prevailing manners of a
people, it will necessarily be the reigning object of
desire, and continue to influence the manners of
succeeding generations, until it is opposed, and
gradually gives way to some new object. Consequently
the prevailing manners of any people may
be investigated without much difficulty, in my opinion,
if we attend to the increase or decrease of good
or bad characters, as recorded in any period of their
history; because the greater number will generally
endeavour to distinguish themselves by whatever
happens at that time to be the reigning object of
applause. Hence too we may observe the progressive
order, in which the manners of any people
prepared the way for every remarkable mutation in
their government. For no essential mutation can
ever be effected in any government (unless by the
violence of external force) until the prevailing manners
of the people are ripe for such a change.
Consequently, as like causes will ever produce like
effects; when we observe the same similarity of
manners prevailing amongst our own people, with
that which preceded the last fatal mutation of government
in any other free nation; we may, at such
a time, give a shrewd guess at the approaching
fate of our constitution and country. Thus in the
infancy and rise of the Grecian republicks, when
necessity of self-defence had given a manly and warlike
turn to the temper of the people, and the continuance
of the same necessity had fixed it into a
habit, the love of their country soon became the
reigning object of publick applause. As this reigning
object consequently became the chief object of
desire to every one who was ambitious of publick
applause, it quickly grew to be the fashion. The
whole people in those states glowed with the generous
principle of publick virtue to the highest degree
of enthusiasm. Wealth had then no charms,
and all the bewitching pleasures of luxury were
unknown, or despised. And those brave people
courted and embraced toils, danger, and even death
itself, with the greatest ardour, in pursuit of this
darling object of their universal wishes. Every
man planned, toiled, and bled, not for himself, but
for his country. Hence the produce of those ages
was a race of patriot statesmen and real heroes.
This generous principle gave rise to those seminaries
of manly bravery and heroick emulation, the
Olympick, Isthmian, and other publick games. To
obtain the victory at those scenes of publick glory
was esteemed the utmost summit of human felicity,
a wreath of wild olive, laurel or parsley (the victor's
prize) that palma nobilis, as Horace terms it, which
Terrarum dominos evehit ad Deos,
was infinitely more the object of emulation in those
generous times, than coronets and garters are of
modern ambition. Let me add too, that as the former
were invariably the reward of merit only, they
reflected a very different lustre upon the wearer.
The honours acquired at these games quickly became
the darling themes of the poets, and the
charms of musick were called in to give additional
graces to poetry. Panegyrick swelled with the
most nervous strokes of eloquence, and decked up
with all the flowers of rhetorick, was joined to the
fidelity and dignity of history; whilst the canvass
glowing with mimick life, and the animated marble
contributed all the powers of art to perpetuate the
memory of the victors. These were the noble incentives,
which fired the Grecian youth with the glorious
emulation of treading in the steps of those publick-spirited
heroes, who were the first institutors of these
celebrated games. Hence that refined taste for arts
and sciences arose in Greece, and produced those
masterpieces of every kind, the inimitable remains
of which not only charm, but raise the justest admiration
of the present times.
This taste raised a new object of applause, and at
last supplanted the parents which gave it birth.
Poetry, eloquence, and musick became equally the
subjects of emulation at the publick games, were
allotted their respective crowns, and opened a new
road to fame and immortality. Fame was the end
proposed and hoped for by all; and those who despaired
of attaining it by the rugged and dangerous
paths of honour, struck into the new and flowery
road,155 which was quickly crowded with the servile
herd of imitators. Monarchs turned poets,156 and
great men, fiddlers; and money was employed to
bias the judges at the publick games to crown
wretched verses and bungling performers with the
wreaths appropriated only to superior merit. This
taste prevailed more or less in every state of Greece
(Sparta alone excepted) according to the different
turn of genius of each people; but it obtained the
most ready admission at Athens, which quickly became
the chief seat of the muses and graces.
Thus a new object of applause introducing a new
taste, produced that fatal alteration in the manners
of the Athenians, which became a concurrent cause
of the ruin of their republick. For though the
manners of the Athenians grew more polite, yet
they grew more corrupt, and publick virtue ceased
gradually to be the object of publick applause and
publick emulation. As dramatick poetry affected
most the taste of the Athenians; the ambition of
excelling in that species of poetry was so violent,
that Æschylus died with grief, because in a publick
contention with Sophocles the prize was adjudged
to his antagonist.157 But though we owe the finest
pieces of that kind now extant to that prevailing
taste, yet it introduced such a rage for theatrical
entertainments as fatally contributed to the ruin of
the republick.
Justin informs us that the publick virtue of Athens
declined immediately after the death of Epaminondas.158
No longer awed by the virtue of that great
man, which had been a perpetual spur to their ambition,
they sunk into a lethargy of effeminate indolence.
The publick revenues appropriated for the
service of the fleet and army were squandered in
publick festivals and publick entertainments. The
stage was the chief object of the publick concern,
and the theatres were crowded whilst the camp was
a desert. Who trod the stage with the greatest
dignity, or who excelled most in the conduct of the
drama; not who was the ablest general, or most experienced
admiral, was the object of the publick
research and publick applause. Military virtue and
the science of war were held cheap, and poets and
players engrossed those honours due only to the
patriot and the hero; whilst the hard-earned pay of
the soldier and the sailor was employed in corrupting
the indolent pleasure-taking citizen. The fatal
consequence of this degeneracy of manners, as Justin
assures, was this: that the able Philip, taking advantage
of the indolence and effeminacy of the Athenians,
who before took the lead in defence of the liberty of
Greece, drew his beggarly kingdom of Macedon out
of its primitive obscurity, and at last reduced all
Greece under the yoke of servitude. Plutarch, in
his inquiry whether the Athenians were more eminent
in the arts of war or in the arts of peace,
severely censures their insatiable fondness for diversions.159
He asserts, that the money idly thrown away
upon the representation of the tragedies of Sophocles
and Euripides alone, amounted to a much greater
sum than had been expended in all their wars
against the Persians, in defence of their liberty and
common safety. That judicious philosopher and
historian, to the eternal infamy of the Athenians,
records a severe but sensible reflection of a Lacedemonian
who happened to be present at these diversions.
The generous Spartan, trained up in a state
where publick virtue still continued to be the object
of publick applause could not behold the ridiculous
assiduity of the choragi, or magistrates who presided
at the publick shows, and the immense sums which
they lavished in the decorations of a new tragedy,
without indignation. “He therefore, frankly told
the Athenians, that they were highly criminal in
wasting so much time, and giving that serious attention
to trifles, which ought to be dedicated to the
affairs of the publick.160 That it was still more criminal
to throw away upon such bawbles as the decorations
of a theatre, that money which ought to be
applied to the equipment of their fleet, or the support
of their army. That diversions ought to be treated
merely as diversions, and might serve to relax the
mind at our idle hours,161 or when over a bottle;
if any kind of utility could arise from such trifling
pleasures. But to see the Athenians make the duty
they owed to their country give way to their passion
for the entertainments of the theatre, and to
waste unprofitably that time and money upon such
frivolous diversions, which ought to be appropriated
to the affairs and the necessities of the state, appeared
to him to be the height of infatuation.”
Could we raise the venerable philosopher from the
grave to take a short survey of the present manners
of our own countrymen, would he not find them an
amazingly exact copy of those of the Athenians, in
the times immediately preceding their subjection to
Macedon? Would he not see the same series of
daily and nightly diversions, adapted to the taste of
every class of people, from the publick breakfasting
(that bane to the time and industry of the tradesman)
up to our modern orgies, the midnight-revels of
the masquerade? If he censured the Athenians for
throwing away so much time and attention upon the
chaste and manly scenes of Sophocles and Euripides,
what must he have thought of that strange Shakespearomania
(as I may term it) which prevailed so lately,
and so universally amongst all ranks and all ages?
Had he inquired of those multitudes who so long
crowded both theatres at the representation of Romeo
and Juliet, what were the striking beauties which so
strongly and so repeatedly engaged their attention,
could a tenth part of the affected admirers of that
pathetick poet, have given him a more satisfactory
answer than, “that it was the fashion?” would he
not be convinced that fashion was the only motive,
when he saw the same people thronging with the
same eagerness, and swallowing the ribaldry of
modern farce, and the buffoonery of pantomime with
the same fury of applause? must he not have pronounced,
that they as much exceeded the Athenians
in thoughtless levity and folly, as they sunk beneath
them in taste and judgment? For Plutarch does not
find fault with the fine taste of the Athenians for the
noble compositions of those incomparable poets; but
for that excess of passion for the theatre, which, by
setting up a new object of applause, had almost extinguished
that publick virtue, for which they had
been so greatly eminent; and made them more solicitous
about the fate of a new tragedy, or the decision
of the pretensions of two rival players, than about
the fate of their country. But what idea must he
have of the higher class of our people, when he saw
those who should be foremost in a time of distress
and danger, to animate the drooping spirit of their
countrymen by the lustre of their example, attentive
only to the unmanning trills of an opera; a degree of
effeminacy which would have disgraced even the
women of Greece, in times of greatest degeneracy.
If he was informed that this species of diversion was
so little natural to the rougher genius, as well as
climate of Britain, that we were obliged to purchase
and fetch over the worst performers of Italy at the
expense of vast sums; what opinion must he form
of our understanding? but if he was to see the insolence
of these hirelings, and the servile prostration
of their paymasters to these idols of their own
making, how must such egregious folly excite his
contempt and indignation! In the midst of these
scenes of dissipation, this varying round of unceasing
diversions, how must he be astonished at
the complaint of poverty, taxes, the decay of trade,
and the great difficulty of raising the necessary supplies
for the publick service, which would strike his
ear from every quarter! would not his censure upon
our inconsistent conduct be just the same which the
honest Spartan passed upon the infatuated Athenians?
when a national militia of sixty thousand men only
was asked for, would he not have blushed for those
who opposed a measure (once the support and glory
of every free state in Greece) and whittled it down
to half the number from a pretended principle of
economy? but could his philosophick gravity refrain
a smile, when he saw the same people lavishing
their thousands in subscriptions to balls, concerts,
operas, and a long train of expensive et cætera's, yet
so wonderous frugal in pounds, shillings, and pence,
in a measure so essential to the very safety of the
nation? If therefore he saw a people bending under
an accumulating load of debt, almost to bankruptcy,
yet sinking more and more into a luxury, known in
his time only to the effeminate Persians, and which
required the wealth of Persia to support it: involved
in a war, unsuccessful until measures were changed
with ministers; yet indulging in all the pleasures of
pomp and triumph, in the midst of national losses
and national dishonour: ... contracting daily fresh
debts of millions, to carry on that war, yet idly consuming
more wealth in the useless pageantry of
equipage, dress, table, and the almost innumerable
articles of expensive luxury, than would support their
fleets and armies; he could not help pronouncing
such a people mad past the cure of Hellebore, and
self-devoted to destruction.
This strange degeneracy of the Athenian manners,
which Plutarch so severely censures, was first
introduced (as that great man informs us) by
Pericles.162 That ambitious man determined to supplant
his rival Cimon, who, by the eclat of his victories,
and the services he had done the publick,
was considered as the first man in Athens, and supported
his popularity by the distribution of a large
fortune. Pericles, greatly inferior in point of fortune,
and no way able to contend with him in liberality
and magnificence, struck out a new method of
gaining over the people to his party. He procured
a law, by which every citizen was entitled to a
gratuity out of the publick money, not only for
attending at the courts of judicature, and assemblies
of the states; but even at the entertainments of the
theatre, and the publick games and sacrifices on their
numerous days of festivity. Thus Pericles bought
the people with their own money; a precedent which
has been so successfully followed by corrupt and
ambitious statesmen in all succeeding ages. To this
piece of state-craft, not to superior abilities, late
ministers owed their long reigns, which enabled them
to reduce corruption into system.
The consequence of this corruption, as we may
gather from the writings of Demosthenes, was, that
in a few years time the Athenians were no more the
same people. The annual fund, appropriated to the
publick service for the army and navy, was wholly
diverted to the support of the theatre. Their officers
regarding nothing but their rank and pay, instead of
patriots, were degenerated into mere mercenaries.163
The emulation, of who should serve their country
best, no longer subsisted amongst them; but of who
should obtain the most lucrative command. The people
tasting the sweets of corruption, and enervated
by the luxury of a city, which was one perpetual
scene of festivals and diversions, grew averse to the
toils and dangers of war, which now seemed an insupportable
slavery, and beneath the dignity of free
citizens. The defence of the state was committed to
mercenary hirelings, who behaved so ill that their
affairs were in the utmost disorder. Of all their
leading men, Demosthenes and Phocion were alone
proof against the gold of Macedon; the rest were
Philip’s known and avowed pensioners. Demosthenes,
at this alarming juncture, laid before the people
the ambitious views of Philip, and the distressed
situation of their country, with the utmost freedom.
He employed all the energy and pathos of eloquence,
to rouse them out of that lethargy of indolence and
inattention to the publick safety, into which their own
luxury, and the flatteries of their corrupt demagogues,
had thrown them.
He demonstrated to them, that the glorious principle,
which had so long preserved the liberty of
Greece, and had enabled them to triumph over the
whole force and opulence of the mighty power of
Persia, was that common hatred, that general detestation
of corruption, which prevailed so universally
amongst their generous forefathers.164 That, in those
times of publick virtue, to receive presents from any
foreign power was deemed a capital crime. That
if any man should be found so shamefully profligate,
as to sell himself to any one, who had designs upon
the liberty of Greece; or should endeavour to introduce
corruption into his own country; death without
mercy would have been his punishment here, and
his memory branded with indelible and eternal infamy
hereafter. That the statesmen and generals of those
happier times, were absolute strangers to that most
criminal and infamous kind of traffick; which was
grown so common and so universal, that honour,
fame, character, the liberty and welfare of their
country were all set to sale, and sold publickly by
auction to the best bidder.165 He then made use of his
utmost art, backed with the greatest strength of reasoning,
to persuade the people, to give up that fund
to the support of the army and navy (the service to
which it had been originally appropriated) which
from the time of Pericles had been applied solely to
defray the expenses of the theatre. He showed next
the folly and danger of confiding the defence of the
state to mercenary forces, who had already served
them so ill. He informed them, that their allies the
Olynthians earnestly insisted, that the troops sent to
their assistance might no longer be composed of
venal hirelings as before, but of native Athenians,
animated with a zeal for the glory of their country,
and warm in the interest of the common cause.
Both these motions were opposed by the corrupt
party who adhered to Philip. The people were unwilling
to give up that fund, even to the most pressing
exigencies of the state, which enabled them to
gratify their favourite passion; thus the opposition
of the people quashed the former of these motions.
But though the urgent, and repeated remonstrances
of Demosthenes prevailed in favour of the latter, yet
the demagogues, who omitted no opportunity of convincing
Philip, how well he employed his money,
took care to reduce the promised succours to a very
small number, and to procure Chares, a creature of
their own, to be placed at the head of the expedition.166
Small as those succours were, yet they did the Olynthians
essential service. But as all the eloquence
of Demosthenes could not prevail upon his countrymen
to make more vigorous efforts, the city of
Olynthus fell the year following into the hands of
Philip by the treachery of Euthycrates and Lasthenes,
two of the leading citizens.167 Philip still continued
his encroachments upon the allies of Athens; sometimes
cajoling, sometimes bullying the Athenians;
just as he found either method most conducive to his
purpose, in which he was punctually seconded by the
corrupt demagogues. But at last the joint attack
which he made upon the cities of Perynthus and
Byzantium, from whose territories the Athenians
drew their chief supplies of corn, at once opened
their eyes, and roused them from their indolence.
They equipped a very large armament with great
expedition; but the Philippick faction had still influence
enough with the people, to obtain the command
of it for their friend Chares. The conduct of this
general was exactly answerable to the opinion and
hopes of his friends, who had procured him that employment.
Chares, voluptuous, yet sordidly avaricious;
vain and assuming, yet without either courage
or capacity; rapacious, and intent only upon enriching
himself at the expense either of friend or foe,
was refused admittance by the inhabitants of Byzantium;
who from experience were too well acquainted
with his character. Enraged at such an unexpected
affront; this doughty general employed his time in
parading along the coasts, detested by his allies whom
he plundered, and despised by his enemies whom he
had not the courage to face. The Athenians, sensible
of their folly, displaced Chares, and gave the command
to Phocion. The able and honest Phocion
was received with open arms by the Byzantines, and
quickly convinced his countrymen, that he was more
than a match for Philip. He not only drove that
ambitious monarch out of the territories of the allies;
but compelled him to retire with great loss and precipitation
into his own dominions, where Phocion
made several glorious and successful incursions.
Philip now throwing off the masque, marched his
army towards Athens, with a resolution to humble
that people, who were the chief obstacle to his ambitious
views. Demosthenes alone took the lead
upon this occasion, and persuaded his countrymen to
join the Thebans with all the force they could raise,
and make head against the invader. Philip finding
his measures quite disconcerted by this confederacy,
sent an embassy to Athens to propose terms of peace,
and to profess his desire of living in amity with the
Athenians. Phocion, anxious about the success of a
war, which he knew his countrymen had not virtue
enough to support, and where the loss of a single
battle must be fatal to the state, pleaded strongly for
pacifick measures. But the flaming zeal of Demosthenes
prevailed. Phocion was not only insulted, but
excluded from all share in the command of the army
by the infatuated people. Chares, so notorious for
his cowardice and incapacity, who (as Diodorus Siculus
informs us168) knew no more the duty of a general
than the meanest private soldier in the army, and
one Lysicles, a man of daring courage, but rash and
ignorant, were appointed commanders in chief. As
Demosthenes had pushed on the people to this war,
and was at that time at the head of affairs, this fatal
step must be entirely attributed to his private pique
at Phocion for opposing his measures. Phocion had
more than once beaten Philip with much inferior
forces, and was indisputably the ablest general of
the age, and the only man whom Philip was afraid
of. The conduct therefore of Demosthenes was so
rash and weak in the management of this war,169 that
Plutarch resolves the whole into a certain divine fatality;
which, in the circumvolution of mundane
affairs, had limited the freedom of Greece to that
particular point of time. The battle of Chæronea,
which ensued quickly after, gave the Athenians a
too fatal proof of the superior foresight and sagacity
of Phocion, and their own superlative folly in the
choice of their generals. The battle was fought with
equal bravery and obstinacy on both sides, and the
confederates behaved as well as men could do upon
the occasion; but their defeat was owing entirely to
the incapacity of the Athenian commanders. This
was so apparent,170 that Philip observing a capital blunder
committed by Lysicles in the heat of the action,171
turned about coolly, and remarked to his officers,
“that the Athenians knew not how to conquer.”
This fault in point of generalship quickly turned the
scale in favour of the abler Philip, who knew his trade
too well to let slip so material an advantage. The
Athenians were totally routed, and that fatal day put
a period to the liberty and independency of Greece.172
Thus fell the Athenians, and their fall involved
the rest of Greece in one common ruin. The decadence
of this once glorious and free state was begun
by Pericles, who first introduced venality amongst
the people for the support of luxury; continued by
the venal orators, who encouraged that corruption
to maintain their influence over the people; but
finished by that fatal disunion between the only two
men, whose publick virtue and abilities could have
saved their country from destruction.
Athens, however, by her fall, has left us some
instructions highly useful for our present conduct.
Warned by her fate we may learn ... that the most
effectual method which a bad minister can take, to
tame the spirit of a brave and free people, and to
melt them down to slavery, is to promote luxury,
and encourage and diffuse a taste for publick diversions
... that luxury, and a prevailing fondness for
publick diversions, are the never-failing forerunners
of universal idleness, effeminacy, and corruption ...
that there cannot be a more certain symptom of
the approaching ruin of a state than when a firm
adherence to party is fixed upon as the only test of
merit, and all the qualifications requisite to a right
discharge of every employment, are reduced to that
single standard ... that these evils take root, and
spread by almost imperceptible degrees in time of
peace and national affluence; but, if left to their full
and natural effects without controul, they will inevitably
undermine and destroy the most flourishing
and best founded constitution ... that in times of
peace and affluence, luxury, and a fondness for diversions,
will assume the specious names of politeness,
taste, and magnificence. Corruption will put on
different masks. In the corruptors it will be termed
able management, encouraging the friends of the
administration, and cementing a mutual harmony,
and mutual dependence between the three different
estates of the government.173 In the corrupted it will
be denominated loyalty, attachment to the government,
and prudence in providing for one’s own
family. That in such times these evils will gain
a fresh accession of strength from their very
effects; because corruption will occasion a greater
circulation of the publick money; and the dissipation
of luxury, by promoting trade,174 will gild over
private vices with the plausible appearance of
publick benefits ... that when a state so circumstanced,
is forced into a war with any formidable
power, then, and not until then, these baleful evils
will show themselves in their true colours, and produce
their proper effects. The counsels in such a
state will be weak and pusillanimous, because the
able and honest citizens, who aim solely at the publick
welfare, will be excluded from all share in the
government from party motives ... their measures
will terminate in poor shifts, and temporary expedients,
calculated only to amuse, or divert the attention
of the people from prying too closely into their
iniquitous conduct. Their fleets and armies will be
either employed in useless parade, or will miscarry
in action from the incapacity of their commanders,
because, as all the chief posts will be filled up with
the creatures of the prevailing faction, such officers
will be more intent upon enriching themselves than
annoying the enemy; and will act as shall be judged
most conducive to the private interest of their party,
not to the publick service of their country. For
they will naturally imagine, that the same power,
which placed them in the command, will have weight
enough to screen them from the resentment of an
injured people ... their supplies for the extraordinary
expenses of the war will be raised with difficulty; ...
because, as so great a part of the publick money
will be absorbed by the number of pensions and
lucrative employments, and diverted to other purposes
of corruption, the funds destined for the publick
service will be found greatly deficient. If the
rich are applied to, in such depraved times, to contribute
their superfluous wealth towards the publick
expenses, their answer will be the same which Scopas
the rich Thessalian made to a friend, who asked him
for a piece of furniture, which he judged wholly
useless to the possessor, because it was quite superfluous.175
“You mistake, my friend; the supreme
happiness of our lives consists in those things which
you call superfluous, not in those things which you
call necessaries.” The people, accustomed to sell
themselves to the best bidder, will look upon the
wages of corruption as their birthright, and will
necessarily rise in their demands, in proportion as
luxury, like other fashions, descends from the higher
to the lower classes. Heavy and unequal taxes
must consequently be imposed to make up this
deficiency; and the operations of the war must either
be retarded by the slowness in collecting the produce,
or the money must be borrowed at high interest and
excessive premiums, and the publick given up a
prey to the extortion of usurers. If a venal and
luxurious Demades should be at the head of the
ruling party,176 such an administration would hardly
find credit sufficient to support their measures, as
the moneyed men would be averse to trusting their
property in such rapacious hands;177 for the chain of
self-interest, which links such a set of men together,
will reach from the highest quite down to the lowest
officer of the state; because the higher officers, for
the mutual support of the whole, must connive at
the frauds and rapines of the inferior, or screen
them if detected.
If therefore the united voice of a people, exhausted
by the oppressions of a weak and iniquitous administration,
should call a truly disinterested patriot to the
helm, such a man must be exposed to all the malice
of detected villany, backed by the whole weight of
disappointed faction. Plutarch has handed down to
us a striking instance of this truth in the case of
Aristides, which is too remarkable to be omitted.
When Aristides was created quæstor, or high
treasurer of Athens, he fairly laid before the Athenians
what immense sums the publick had been
robbed of by their former treasurers,178 but especially
by Themistocles, whom he proved to be more criminal
than any of the others. This warm and
honest remonstrance produced such a powerful coalition
between these publick plunderers, that when
Aristides, at the expiration of his office, (which was
annual and elective) came to give up his accompts
to the people, Themistocles publickly impeached
him of the same crime, and, by the artifice of his
corrupt party, procured him to be condemned and
fined; but the honester, and more respectable part of
the citizens highly resenting such an infamous
method of proceeding, not only acquitted Aristides
honourably, and remitted his fine, but, to show their
approbation of his conduct, elected him treasurer for
the following year. At his entrance upon his office
the second time, he affected to appear sensible of his
former error, and, by winking at the frauds of the
inferior officers, and neglecting to scrutinize into
their accompts, he suffered them to plunder with
impunity. These state-leeches thus gorged with
the publick money, grew so extremely fond of Aristides,
that they employed all their interest to persuade
the people to elect him a third time to that
important office. On the day of election, when the
voices of the Athenians were unanimous in his
favour, this real patriot stood up with honest indignation,
and gave the people this severe, but just reprimand.
“When,” says he, “I discharged my duty
in this office the first time, with that zeal and fidelity
which every honest man owes to his country, I was
vilified, insulted, and condemned. Now I have given
full liberty to all these robbers of the publick here
present to pilfer, and prey upon your finances at
pleasure, I am, it seems, a most upright minister, and
a most worthy citizen. Believe me, O Athenians! I
am more ashamed of the honour, which you have so
unanimously conferred upon me this day, than of
that unjust sentence which you passed upon me
with so much infamy the year before. But it gives
me the utmost concern, upon your account, when I
see that it is easier to merit your favour and applause
by flattering, and conniving at the rogueries of a
pack of villains, than by a frugal and uncorrupt
administration of the publick revenues.” He then
disclosed all the frauds and thefts, which had been
committed that year in the treasury, which he had
privately minuted down for that purpose. The consequence
was, that all those, who just before had
been so loud in his praise, were struck dumb with
shame and confusion; but he himself received those
high encomiums, which he had so justly merited,
from every honest citizen. It is evident from this
whole passage, as related by Plutarch, that Aristides
might have made his own fortune, at the expense
of the publick, with the same ease, and to as great a
degree, as any of his predecessors had done before,
or any ministers in modern states have done since.
For the rest of the officers, who seemed to think
their chief duty consisted in making the most of
their places, showed themselves extremely ready to
conceal the speculation of their chief, because it
gave them a right to claim the same indulgence
from him in return. A remark not restricted to the
Athenians alone, but equally applicable to every
corrupt administration under every government.
History, both ancient and modern, will furnish us
with numerous instances of this truth, and posterity
will probably make the same remark, when the
genuine history of some late administrations shall
see the light in a future age.
If the Athenians were so corrupt in the time when
Aristides lived, ought we to wonder at that amazing
height to which that corruption arrived in the time
of Demosthenes, when left to its full effects for so
long a term of years? Could the state of Athens at
that time have been preserved by human means;
the indefatigable zeal of Demosthenes, joined to the
strict economy, the inflexible integrity, and superior
abilities of Phocion, might have raised her once more
to her ancient lustre. But the event showed, that
luxury, corruption and faction, the causes of her
ruin, had taken too deep root in the very vitals of the
republick. The Grecian history indeed affords us
ever memorable instances of republicks bending under
the yoke of foreign or domestick oppression, yet
freed and restored to their former liberty and dignity
by the courage and virtue of some eminent patriot-citizen.
But if we reflect upon the means, by which
these great events were so successfully conducted,
we shall always find, that there yet remained in the
people a fund of publick virtue sufficient to support
their chiefs in those arduous enterprises. The spirit
of liberty in a free people may be cramped and pressed
down by external violence; but can scarce ever
be totally extinguished. Oppression will only increase
its elastick force, and when roused to action
by some daring chief, it will break out, like fired
gunpowder, with irresistible impetuosity. We have
no occasion to look back to antiquity for convincing
proofs of this most important truth. Our own history
is but one continued scene of alternate struggles
between encroaching princes, aiming at absolute
power, and a brave people resolutely determined to
vindicate their freedom. The genius of liberty has
hitherto rose superior in all those conflicts, and acquired
strength from opposition. May it continue
to prevail to the end of time! The United Provinces
are a striking proof that the spirit of liberty, when
animated and conducted by publick virtue, is invincible.
Whilst under the dominion of the house of
Austria, they were little better than a poor assemblage
of fishing towns and villages. But the virtue
of one great man not only enabled them to throw off
that inhuman yoke, but to make a respectable figure
amongst the first powers in Europe. All the different
states in Europe, founded by our Gothic ancestors,
were originally free. Liberty was as truly
their birthright as it is ours, and though they have
been wormed out of it by fraud, or robbed of it by
violence, yet their inherent right to it still subsists,
though the exercise of that right is superseded, and
restrained by force. Hence no despotick government
can ever subsist without the support of that instrument
of tyranny and oppression, a standing army.
For all illegal power must ever be supported by the
same means by which it was at first acquired. France
was not broke into the yoke of slavery until the in
famous
administrations of Richelieu and Mazarin.
But though loyalty and zeal for the glory of their
prince seem to form the characteristick of the French
nation, yet the late glorious stand against the arbitrary
impositions of the crown, which will immortalize
the parliament of Paris, proves that they submit
to their chains with reluctance. Luxury is the real
bane of publick virtue, and consequently of liberty,
which gradually sinks in proportion as the manners
of a people are softened and corrupted. Whenever,
therefore, this essential spirit, as I may term it, of a
free nation is totally dissipated, the people become a
mere caput mortuum, a dead inert mass, incapable
of resuscitation, and ready to receive the deepest
impressions of slavery. Thus the publick virtue of
Thrasybulus, Pelopidas, and Epaminondas, Philopœmen,
Aratus, Dion, &c. restored their respective
states to freedom and power, because though liberty
was suppressed, yet the spirit of it still remained,
and acquired new vigour from oppression. Phocion
and Demosthenes failed, because corruption had extinguished
publick virtue, and luxury had changed
the spirit of liberty into licentiousness and servility.
That luxury and corruption, encouraged and propagated
by a most abandoned faction, have made an
alarming progress in our nation, is a truth too evident
to be denied. The effects have been too sensibly
felt during the course of the late and present wars,
which, until the last campaign, were the most expensive,
and the least successful of any we ever yet
engaged in. But a late signal change must convince
our enemies, that we have a fund of publick virtue
still remaining capable of vindicating our just rights,
and raising us out of that calamitous situation, into
which we were plunged, under some late administrations.
When the publick imagined the helm in the
hands of corruption, pusillanimity and ignorance,
they transferred it to a virtuous citizen, possessed, in
their opinion, of the zeal and eloquence of Demosthenes,
joined to the publick economy, incorrupt
honesty, and immovable fortitude of Aristides and
Phocion. The numerous disinterested marks of approbation,
so lately given from every part of this
kingdom, demonstrate the resolution and ability of
the publick to support that minister, as long as he
pursues his upright plan of conduct with undeviating
firmness.
From the time of Phocion, the Athenian history
affords little more than a detail of scandalous decrees,
and despicable instances of the levity and servile
adulation of that abject people.179 Reduced at last to
a province of the Romans, Athens contributed her
taste for arts and sciences towards polishing, and her
passion for theatrical performances towards corrupting
the manners of that warlike people.