years past. Many other examples of Pompey's po. pularity are left us on record, who was a perfect favourite of the people, and designed to be more; but his pretensions grew stale for want of a timely opportunity of introducing them upon the stage. For Cæsar, with his legions in Gaul, was a perpetual check upon his designs; and in the arts of pleasing the people, did soon after get many lengths beyond him. For he tells us himself, that the senate, by a bold effort, having made some severe decrees against his proceedings, and against the tribunes, these all left the city, and went over to his party, and consequently along with them the affections and interests of the people; which is farther manifest from the accounts he gives us of the citizens in several towns mutinying against their commanders, and delivering both to his devotion. Besides, Cæsar's public and avowed pretensions for beginning the civil war, were, to restore the tribunes and the people, oppressed (as he pretended) by the nobles.

This forced Pompey, against his inclinations, upon the necessity of changing sides, for fear of being forsaken by both; and of closing in with the senate and chief magistrates, by whom he was chosen general against Cæsar.

Thus at length the senate (at least the primitive part of them, the nobles) under Pompey, and the commons under Cæsar, came to a final decision of the long quarrels between them. For, I think, the ambition of private men did by no means begin or occasion this war; though civil dissensions never fail of introducing and spiriting the ambition of private men: who thus become indeed the great instruments for deciding such quarrels, and at last are sure to seize on the prize. But no man, that sees a flock of vultures hovering over two armies

ready to engage, can justly charge the blood drawn in the battle to them, though the carcases fall to their share. For, while the balance of power is equally held, the ambition of private men, whether orators or great commanders, gives neither danger nor fear, nor can possibly enslave their country; but that once broken, the divided parties are forced to unite each to its head, under whose conduct or fortune one side is at first victorious, and at last both are slaves. And to put it past dispute, that this entire subversion of the Roman liberty and constitution was altogether owing to those measures which had broke the balance between the patricians and plebeians, whereof the ambition of particular men was but an effect and consequence, we need only consider, that when the uncorrupted part of the senate had, by the death of Cæsar, made one great effort to restore the former state and liberty, the success did not answer their hopes; but that whole assembly was so sunk in its authority, that those patriots were forced to fly, and give way to the madness of the people, who by their own dispositions, stirred up with the harangues of their orators, were now wholly bent upon single and despotic slavery. Else, how could such a profligate as Antony, or a boy of eighteen, like Octavius, ever dare to dream of giving the law to such an empire and people? wherein the latter succeeded, and entailed the vilest tyranny, that Heaven in its anger ever inflicted on a corrupt and poisoned people. And this, with so little appearance at Cæsar's death, that when Cicero wrote to Brutus, how he had prevailed by his credit with Octavius to promise him (Brutus) pardon and security for his person, that great Roman received the notice with the utmost indignity, and returned Cicero an answer, yet upon

record, full of the highest resentment and contempt for such an offer, and from such a hand.

Here ended ail show or shadow of liberty in Rome. Here was the repository of all the wise contentions and struggles for power between the nobles and commons, lapped up safely in the bosom of a Nero and a Caligula, a Tiberius and a Domitian.

Let us now see, from this deduction of particular impeachments, and general dissensions in Greece and Rome, what conclusions may naturally be formed for instruction of any other state, that may haply upon many points labour under the like circumstances.

CHAP. IV.

UPON the subject of impeachments we may observe, that the custom of accusing the nobles to the people, either by themselves, or their orators, (now styled an impeachment in the name of the commons) has been very ancient both in Greece and Rome, as well as Carthage; and therefore may seem to be the inherent right of a free people, nay, perhaps it is really so: but then it is to be considered, first, that this custom was peculiar to republics, or such states where the administration lay principally in the hands of the commons, and ever raged more or less, according to their encroachments upon absolute power; having been always looked upon by the wisest men and best authors of those times, as an effect of licentiousness, and not

of liberty; a distinction, which no multitude, either represented or collective, has been at any time very nice in observing. However, perhaps this custom in a popular state of impeaching particular men, may seem to be nothing else, but the people's choosing upon occasion to exercise their own jurisdiction in person; as if a king of England should sit as chief justice in his court of King's Bench; which, they say, in former times he sometimes did. But in Sparta, which was called a kingly government, though the people were perfectly free, yet because the administration was in the two kings and the ephori, with the assistance of the senate, we read of no impeachments by the people; nor was the process against great men, either upon account of ambition or ill conduct, though it reached sometimes to kings themselves, ever formed that way, as I can recollect, but only passed through those hands where the administration lay. So likewise, during the regal government in Rome, though it was instituted a mixed monarchy, and the people made great advances in power, yet I do not remember to have read of one impeachment from the commons against a patrician, until the consular state began, and the people had made great encroachments upon the administration.

Another thing to be considered is, that allowing this right of impeachment to be as inherent as they please, yet, if the commons have been perpetually mistaken in the merits of the causes and the persons, as well as in the consequences of such impeachments upon the peace of the state, we cannot conclude less, than that the commons in Greece and Rome (whatever they may be in other states) were by no means qualified, either as prosecutors or judges in such matters; and therefore, that it would have been prudent, to have reserved these

privileges dormant, never to be produced but upon very great and urging occasions, where the state is in apparent danger, the universal body of the people in clamours against the administration, and no other remedy in view. But for a few popular orators or tribunes, upon the score of personal piques; or to employ the pride they conceive in seeing themselves at the head of a party; or as a method for advancement; or moved by certain powerful arguments that could make Demosthenes philippize for such men, I say, when the state would of itself gladly be quiet, and has, besides, affairs of the last importance upon the anvil, to impeach Miltiades after a great naval victory, for not pursuing the Persian fleet; to impeach Aristides, the person most versed among them in the knowledge and practice of their laws, for a blind suspicion of his acting in an arbitrary way, that is, as they expound it, not in concert with the people; to impeach Pericles, after all his services, for a few inconsiderable accounts; or to impeach Phocion, who had been guilty of no other crime but negociating a treaty for the peace and security of his country: what could the continuance of such proceedings end in, but the utter discouragement of all virtuous actions and persons, and consequently in the ruin of a state? therefore the historians of those ages seldom fail to set this matter in all its lights, leaving us in the highest and most honourable ideas of those persons who suffered by the persecution of the people, together with the fatal consequences they had, and how the persecutors seldom failed to repent, when it was too late.

These impeachments perpetually falling_upon many of the best men both in Greece and Rome, are a cloud of witnesses, and examples enough to discourage men of virtue and abilities from enga