Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

Among several objections that might be made to it, I think the chief are those that affect the consular power, which had only the ornaments without the force of the regal authority. Their number had not a casting voice in it; for which reason if one did not chance to be employed abroad, while the other sat at home, the public business was sometimes at a stand, while the consuls pulled two different ways in it. Besides, I do not find that the consuls had ever a negative voice in the passing of a law, or decree of the senate, so that indeed they were rather the 10 chief body of the nobility, or the first ministers of state, than a distinct branch of the sovereignty, in which none can be looked upon as a part, who are not a part of the legislature. Had the consuls been invested with the regal authority to as great a degree as our monarchs, there would never have been any occasion for a dictatorship, which had in it the power of all the three orders, and ended in the subversion of the whole constitution.

Such an history as that of Suetonius ", which gives us a succession of absolute princes, is to me an unanswerable argument against despotic power. Where the prince is a man of wisdom and 20 virtue, it is indeed happy for his people that he is absolute; but since, in the common run of mankind, for one that is wise and good you find ten of a contrary character, it is very dangerous for a nation to stand to its chance, or to have its public happiness or misery depend on the virtue or vices of a single person. Look into the history I have mentioned, or into any series of absolute princes, how many tyrants must you read through, before you come to an emperor that is supportable. But this is not all; an honest private man often grows cruel and abandoned, when converted into an absolute prince. Give a man power of doing what 30 he pleases with impunity, you extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great pillars of morality. This too we find confirmed by matter of fact. How many hopeful heirs apparent to grand empires, when in the possession of them, have become such monsters of lust and cruelty as are a reproach to human nature?

Some tell us we ought to make our governments on earth like that in heaven, which, say they, is altogether monarchical and unlimited. Was man like his Creator in goodness and justice, I should be for following this great model; but where goodness 40 and justice are not essential to the ruler, I would by no means

[blocks in formation]

put myself into his hands to be disposed of according to his particular will and pleasure.

It is odd to consider the connexion between despotic government and barbarity, and how the making of one person more than man, makes the rest less. About nine parts of the world in ten are in the lowest state of slavery, and consequently sunk in the most gross and brutal ignorance. European slavery is indeed a state of liberty, if compared with that which prevails in the other three divisions of the world; and therefore it is no 10 wonder that those who grovel under it have many tracks of light among them, of which the others are wholly destitute.

Riches and plenty are the natural fruits of liberty, and where these abound, learning and all the liberal arts will immediately lift up their heads and flourish. As a man must have no slavish fears and apprehensions hanging upon his mind, who will indulge the flights of fancy or speculation, and push his researches into all the abstruse corners of truth, so it is necessary for him to have about him a competency of all the conveniences of life.

The first thing every one looks after, is to provide himself 20 with necessaries. This point will engross our thoughts till it be satisfied. If this is taken care of to our hands, we look out for pleasures and amusements; and among a great number of idle people, there will be many whose pleasures will lie in reading and contemplation. These are the two great sources of knowledge; and as men grow wise, they naturally love to communicate their discoveries; and others, seeing the happiness of such a learned life, and improving by their conversation, emulate, imitate, and surpass one another, till a nation is filled with races of wise and understanding persons 1. Ease and plenty are therefore 30 the great cherishers of knowledge; and as most of the despotic governments of the world have neither of them, they are naturally over-run with ignorance and barbarity. In Europe, indeed, notwithstanding several of its princes are absolute, there are men famous for knowledge and learning; but the reason is, because the subjects are many of them rich and wealthy, the prince not thinking fit to exert himself in his full tyranny like the princes of the eastern nations, lest his subjects should be invited to newmould their constitution, having so many prospects of liberty within their view. But in all despotic governments, though a 40 particular prince may favour arts and letters, there is a natural

degeneracy of mankind, as you may observe from Augustus's reign, how the Romans lost themselves by degrees till they fell to an equality with the most barbarous nations that surrounded them. Look upon Greece under its free state, and you would think its inhabitants lived in different climates, and under different heavens, from those at present; so different are the geniuses which are formed under Turkish slavery and Grecian liberty o.

Besides poverty and want, there are other reasons that debase the minds of men, who live under slavery, though I look on it 10 as the principal. This natural tendency of despotic power to ignorance and barbarity, though not insisted upon by others, is, I think, an unanswerable argument against that form of government, as it shews how repugnant it is to the good of mankind and the perfection of human nature, which ought to be the great ends of all civil institutions.-L.

RELIGION, MORALS,

SUPERSTITION.

[ocr errors]

No. 7. Belief in omens; thirteen at table; reflections on the inconvenience and folly of superstition.

Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas,
Nocturnos lemures, portentaque Thessala rides.

HOR. Epist. ii. 2. 208.

[blocks in formation]

Going yesterday to dine with an old acquaintance, I had the misfortune to find his whole family very much dejected. Upon asking him the occasion of it, he told me, that his wife had dreamed a strange dream the night before, which they were afraid portended some misfortune to themselves, or to their children. At her coming into the room, I observed a settled melancholy in her countenance, which I should have been troubled for, had I not heard from whence it proceeded. We were no sooner sat down, but after looking upon me a little while,

'My dear,' says she, turning to her husband, 'you may now see the stranger that was in the candle last night.'

Soon after this, as they began to talk of family affairs, a little boy at the lower end of the table told her that he was to go into join-hand on Thursday.

n

'Thursday?' says she, 'No, child, if it please God, you shall not begin upon Childermas-day "; tell your writing-master that Friday will be soon enough.'

I was reflecting with myself on the oddness of her fancy, and wondering that any body would establish it as a rule to lose a day 20 in every week. In the midst of these my musings she desired

me to reach her a little salt upon the point of my knife, which I did in such a trepidation, and hurry of obedience, that I let it drop by the way; at which she immediately startled, and said it fell towards her. Upon this I looked very blank; and, observing the concern of the whole table, began to consider myself with some confusion as person that had brought a disaster upon the family. The lady, however, recovering herself after a little space, said to her husband, with a sigh, 'My dear, misfortunes never come single.' My friend, I found, acted but an under part at his 10 table, and being a man of more good-nature than understanding, thinks himself obliged to fall in with all the passions and humours of his yoke-fellow.

'Do not you remember, child,' says she, 'that the pigeon-house fell the very afternoon that our careless wench spilt the salt upon the table?'

'Yes,' says he, 'my dear, and the next post brought us an account of the battle of Almanza ".'

The reader may guess at the figure I made, after having done all this mischief. I dispatched my dinner as soon as I could, 20 with my usual taciturnity, when, to my utter confusion, the lady seeing me quitting my knife and fork, and laying them across one another upon my plate, desired me that I would humour her so far as to take them out of that figure, and place them side by side. What the absurdity was which I had committed I did not know, but I suppose there was some traditionary superstition in it; and therefore, in obedience to the lady of the house, I disposed of my knife and fork in two parallel lines, which is the figure I shall always lay them in for the future, though I do not know any reason for it.

30

It is not difficult for a man to see that a person has conceived an aversion to him. For my own part, I quickly found by the lady's looks that she regarded me as a very odd kind of fellow, with an unfortunate aspect. For which reason I took my leave immediately after dinner, and withdrew to my own lodgings. Upon my return home, I fell into a profound contemplation on the evils that attend these superstitious follies of mankind; how they subject us to imaginary afflictions, and additional sorrows, that do not properly come within our lot. As if the natural calamities of life were not sufficient for us, we turn the 40 most indifferent circumstances into misfortunes, and suffer as

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »