and nation received much ruder fhocks than it had ever felt before; and through the chinks and breaches of our prison, we fee fuch glimmerings of light, and feel fuch refreshing airs of liberty, as daily raise our ardour for more. The miferies derived to mankind from fuperftition, under the name of religion, and of ecclefiaftical tyranny under the name of church government, have been clearly and usefully expofed. We begin to think and to act from reafon and from nature alone. This is true of feveral, but still is by far the majority in the fame old state of blindness and slavery; and much is it to be feared that we fhall perpetually relapfe, whilst the real productive cause of all this fuperftitious folly, enthusiastical nonsense, and holy tyranny, holds a reverend place in the estimation even of those who are other wife enlightened.

Civil government borrows a strength from ecclefiaftical; and artificial laws receive a fanction from artificial revelations. The ideas of religion and government are closely connected; and whilft we receive government as a thing neceffary, or even ufeful to our well-being, we fhall in fpite of ,us draw in, as a neceffary, though undefirable confequence, an artificial religion of fome kind or other. To this the vulgar will always be voluntary flaves; and even thofe of a rank of underftanding fuperiour, will now and then involuntarily

feel

г

feel its influence. It is therefore of the deepest concernment to us to be fet right in this point; and to be well fatisfied whether civil government be fuch a protector from natural evils, and fuch a nurse and increafer of bleffings, as thofe of warm imaginations promife. In fuch a difcuffion, far am I from propofing in the leaft to reflect on our moft wife form of government; no more than I would in the freer parts of my philofophical writings, mean to object to the piety, truth and perfection of our most excellent church. Both I am fenfible have their foundations on a rock. No difcovery of truth can prejudice them. On the contrary, the more clofely the origin of religion and government are examined, the more clearly their excellencies muft appear. They come purified from the fire. My bufinefs is not with them. Having -entered a protest against all objections from these quarters, I may the more freely enquire from hiftory and experience, how far policy has contributed in all times to alleviate those evils which Providence, that perhaps has defigned us for a ftate of imperfection, has impofed; how far our physical skill has cured our conftitutional diforders; and whether it may not have introduced new ones, curable perhaps by no skill.

In looking over any ftate to form a judgment on it; it presents itself in two lights, the external and the internal. The firft, that relation which

it

it bears in point of friendship or enmity to other ftates. The fecond, that relation which its component parts, the governing and the governed, bear to each other. The firft part of the external view of all states, their relation as friends, makes fo trifling a figure in hiftory, that I am very forry to fay, it affords me but little matter on which to expatiate. The good offices done by one nation to its neighbour; the fupport given in publick diftrefs; the relief afforded in general calamity; the protection granted in emergent danger; the mutual return of kindness and civility, would afford a very ample and very pleafing fubject for hiftory. But, alas! all the hiftory of all times, concerning all nations, does not afford matter enough to fill ten pages, though it should be fpun out by the wire-drawing amplification of a Guicciardini himself. The glaring fide is that of enmity. War is the matter which fills all hiftory, -and confequently the only or almost the only view in which we can see the external of political fociety, is in a hoftile fhape; and the only actions, to which we have always feen, and ftill fee all of them intent, are fuch as tend to the deftruction

* Had his Lordship lived to our days, to have feen the noble relief given by this nation to the diftreffed Portuguese, he had perhaps owned this part of his argument a little weakened, but we do not think ourselves entitled to alter his Lordship's words, but that we are bound to follow him exactly.

of

of one another. War, fays Machiavel, ought to be the only ftudy of a prince; and by a prince, he means every fort of ftate, however conftituted. He ought, fays this great political Doctor, to confider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leifure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans. A meditation on the conduct of political focieties made old Hobbes imagine, that war was the state of nature; and truly, if a man judged of the individuals of our race by their conduct when united and packed into nations and kingdoms, he might imagine that every fort of virtue was unnatural and foreign to the mind of

man.

fo

The firft accounts we have of mankind are but

many accounts of their butcheries. All empires have been cemented in blood; and in thofe early periods when the race of mankind began firft to form themselves into parties and combinations, the firft effect of the combination, and indeed the end for which it seems purposely formed, and best calculated, is their mutual deftruction. All ancient history is dark and uncertain. One thing however is clear. There were conquerors, and conquefts in those days; and confequently, all that devaftation, by which they are formed, and all that oppreffion by which they are maintained. We know little of Sefoftris, but that he led out of Egypt an army of above 700,000 men; that he

VOL. I.

C

over:

over-ran the Mediterranean coaft as far as Colchis; that in fome places, he met but little refiftance, and of course fhed not a great deal of blood; but that he found in others, a people who knew the value of their liberties, and fold them dear. Whoever confiders the army this conqueror headed, the space he traverfed, and the oppofition he frequently met, with the natural accidents of ficknefs, and the dearth and badness of provifion to which he must have been fubject in the variety of climates and countries his march lay through; if he knows any thing, he must know, that even the conqueror's army must have fuffered greatly; and that, of this immense number, but a very fmall part could have returned to enjoy the plunder accumulated by the lofs of fo many of their companions, and the devaftation of fo confiderable a part of the world. Confidering, I fay, the vaft army headed by this conqueror, whofe unwieldy weight was almoft alone fufficient to wear down its ftrength, it will be far from excess to suppose that one half was loft in the expedition. If this was the state of the victorious, and from the circumftances, it must have been this at the leaft; the vanquifhed must have had a much heavier lofs, as the greatest flaughter is always in the flight, and great carnage did in thofe times and countries ever attend the firft rage of conqueft. It will therefore be very reasonable to allow on their account as much