and nation received much ruder fhocks than it had ever felt before; and through the chinks and breaches of our prifon, we fee fuch glimmerings of light, and feel fuch refreshing airs, of liberty, as daily raise our ardour for more. The miseries derived to mankind from fuperftition, under the name of religion, and of ecclefiaftical tyranny under the name of church government, have been clearly and ufefully expofed. We begin to think and to act from reafon and from nature alone. This is true of several, 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 relapse, whilst the real productive cause of all this fuperftitious folly, enthusiastical nonsense, and holy tyranny, holds a reverend place in the eftimation even of those who are otherwife enlightened.

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

feet

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 nurfe and increafer of bleffings, as thofe of warm imaginations promife. In fuch a difcuffion, far am I from propofing in the least to reflect on our most 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 moft excellent church. Both I am fenfible have their foundations on a rock. No difcovery of truth can prejudice them. On the contrary, the more closely the origin of religion and got vernment are examined, the more clearly their excellencies must appear. They come purified from the fire. My business is not with them. Having entered a protest against all objections from these quarters, I may the more freely enquire from hif tory and experience, how far policy has contributed in all times to alleviate thofe evils which Providence, that perhaps has defigned us for a ftate of imperfection, has impofed; how far our phyfical skill has cured our conftitutional difor, ders; and whether it may not have introduced new ones, curable perhaps by no fkill."

In looking over any state 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 af ford a very ample and very pleasing subject for history. But, alas! all the hiftory of all times, concerning all nations, does not afford matter enough to fill ten pages, though it should be spun 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 almoft the only view in which we can fee the external of political fociety, is in a hoftile fhape; and the only actions, to which we have always feen, and still see all of them intent, are fuch as tend to the destruction

Had his Lordship lived to our days, to have seen 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.

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of one another. War, fays Machiavel, ought to be the only study of a prince; and by a prince, he means every fort of state, however conftituted. He ought, fays this great political Doctor, to confider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure 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.

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The firft accounts we have of mankind are but so many accounts of their butcheries. All empires have been cemented in blood; and in thofe early periods when the race of mankind began first to form themselves into parties and combinations, the first 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 conquests in those days; and confequently, all that devastation, 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.

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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 fre quently 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 muft have fuffered greatly; and that, of this immenfe number, but a very small part could have returned to enjoy the plunder accumulated by the lofs of fo many of their compa nions, and the devastation of fo confiderable a part of the world. Confidering, I fay, the vast army headed by this conqueror, whofe unwieldy weight was almoft alone fufficient to wear down its ftrength, it will be far from excefs to fuppofe that one half was loft in the expedition. If this was the ftate 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 slaughter is always in the flight, and great carnage did in thofe times and countries ever attend the first rage of conqueft. It will therefore be very reasonable to allow on their account as much