CHAPTER

IX.

A farther Difadvantage of Republican Governments.-The People are neceffarily betrayed by thofe in whom they trust.

UT thofe general Affemblies of a Peo

BUT

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ple who were made to determine upon things which they neither understood nor examined, that general confufion in which the Ambitious could at all times hide their artifices, and carry on their schemes with fafety, were not the only evils attending the ancient Commonwealths. There was a more fecret defect, and a defect that struck immediately at the very vitals of it, inherent in that kind of Government.

It was impoffible for the people ever to have faithful defenders. Neither those whom they had exprefsly chofen, nor those whom fome perfonal advantages enabled to govern the Affemblies, (for the only use, I must

repeat it, which the People ever make of their power, is to give it away, or allow it to be taken from them) could poffibly be united to them by any common feeling of the fame concerns. Their influence placing them, in a great measure, upon a level with those who were invefted with the executive power, they cared little to restrain oppreffions out of the reach of which they faw themfelves placed. Nay, they feared left they should thereby leffen a power which they knew was one day to be their own;-if they had not even already an actual fhare in it. (a)

Thus, at Rome, the only end which the Tribunes ever pursued with any degree of earneftness and perfeverance, was to procure to the People, that is, to themselves, an admiffion into all the different dignities in the Republick. After having obtained a law

(a) How could it be expected, that Men who entertained views of being Prætors, would endeavour to restrain the power of the Prætors,--that Men who aimed at being one day Confuls, would wish to limit the power of the Confuls, that Men whom their intereft with the People made fure of getting into the Senate, would seriously endeavour to confine the authority of the Senate ?

for admitting the Plebeians to the Confulfhip, they procured for them the liberty of intermarrying with the Patricians. They afterwards got them admitted to the Dictatorship,

to

the office of military Tribune, to the Censorship:—in a word, the only use they made of the power of the People, was to increafe prerogatives which they called the prerogatives of all, but which they, and their friends, alone, were ever. likely to enjoy.

But we do not find, that they ever employed the power of the People in things really beneficial to the People. We do not find, that they ever fet bounds to the terrible power of its Magiftrates;-that they ever repreffed that clafs of Citizens who knew how to make their crimes to be refpected ;-in a word, that they ever endeavoured, on the one hand, to regulate, and on the other, to strengthen, the judicial power: precautions thefe, without which men might ftruggle to the end of the world without ever attaining liberty. (a)

(a) Without fuch precautions, laws muft always be, as Mr. Pope expreffes it,

Still for the ftrong too weak, the weak too strong."

And indeed the judicial power, that sure criterion of the goodness of a Government, was always, at Rome, a mere inftrument of tyranny. The Confuls were, at all times, invested with an abfolute power over the lives of the Citizens. The Dictators poffeffed the fame right: fo did the Prætors, the Tribunes of the People, the judicial Commiffioners named by the Senate, and fo, of confequence, did the Senate itfelf; and the fact of the three hundred and feventy deferters whom it commanded to be thrown down, at one time, as Livy relates, from the Tarpeian rock, fufficiently fhews that they well knew how to exert it upon occafion.

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It even may be faid, that, at Rome, the power of life and death, or rather the right of killing, was annexed to every kind of authority whatever, even to that which results from mere influence, or wealth; and the only confequence of the murder of the Gracchi, which was accompanied by those of three hundred, and afterwards of four thoufand, unarmed Citizens, whom the Nobles knocked on the head, was to engage the Senate to erect a

Temple to Concord. The Lex Porcia de tergo civium, which has been fo much celebrated, was attended with no other effect but that of more compleatly fecuring against the danger of a retaliation, fuch Confuls, Prætors, Quæftors, &c. as, like Verres, caufed the inferiour Citizens of Rome to be fcourged with rods, and put to death upon croffes, through mere caprice and cruelty. (a)

In fine, nothing can more compleatly fhew to what degree the Tribunes had forfaken the interefts of the People, whom they were appointed to defend, than that they had allowed

(a) If we turn our eyes to Lacedæmon, we fhall fee, from several inftances of the juftice of the Ephori, that matters were little better ordered there. And in Athens itself, which is the only one of the ancient Commonwealths in which the people feem to have enjoyed any degree of real liberty, we fee the Magiftrates proceed nearly in the fame manner as they now do among the Turks and I think no other proof needs be given of this than the story of the Barber in the Piræus, who having spread about the Town the news of the overthrow of the Athenians in Sicily, which he had heard from a stranger who had stopped at his fhop, was put to the torture, by the command of the Archons, because he could not tell the name of his author.-See Plut. Life of Nicias.