subdued. But is such a system to be recommended to the United States of America? If the Americans had no more discretion than the Greeks, no more humanity, no more consideration for the benign and peaceful religion they profess, they would still have to consider, that the Greeks had in many places forty, and in all ten, slaves, to one free citizen; that the slaves did all the labor, and the free citizens had nothing to do but cut one another's throats. Wars did not cost money in Greece; happily for the world, at present they are very expensive. An American soldier will not serve one year, without more money for pay than many of these Greek cities had for their whole circulating medium.

There is but one possible means of realizing M. Turgot's idea. Let us examine it well before we adopt it. Let every town in the Thirteen States be a free, sovereign, and independent democracy; here you may nearly collect all authority into one centre, and that centre the nation. These towns will immediately go to war with each other, and form combinations, alliances, and political intrigues, as ably as the Grecian villages did. But these wars and negotiations cannot be carried on but by men at leisure. The first step to be taken, then, is to determine who shall be freemen, and who slaves. Let this be determined by lot. In every fifty men, forty are to be slaves, and stay at home unarmed, to labor in agriculture and mechanic arts, under certain overseers provided with good whips and scourges. All commerce and navigation, fisheries, &c. are to cease, of course. The other ten are to be free citizens, live like gentlemen, eat black broth, and go out to war; some in favor of tyrants, some for the well-born, and some for the multitude. For, even in the supposition here made, every town will have three parties in it; some will be for making the moderator a king, others for giving the whole government to the selectmen, and a third sort for making and executing all laws, and judging all causes, criminal and civil, in town meeting. Americans will well consider the consequences of such systems of policy, and such multiplications and divisions of states, and will universally see and feel the necessity of adopting the sentiments of Aratus, as reported by Plutarch: "That small cities could be preserved by nothing else but a continual and combined force, united by the bond of common interest; and as the members of the body live and breathe by their mutual communication and connection, and when once separated pine away and putrefy, in the same manner are cities ruined by being dismembered from one another, as well as preserved when, linked together in one great body, they enjoy the benefit of that providence and council that governs the whole."1 These were the sentiments which, according to the same Plutarch, acquired him so much of the confidence of the Achaians, "that, since he could not by law be chosen their general every year, yet every other year he was, and by his councils and actions was in effect always so; for they perceived that neither riches nor repute, nor the friendship of kings, nor the private interest of his own country, nor any other thing else was so dear to him as the increase of the Achaian power and greatness." 2

CRETE.

THIS celebrated island, with the fantastical honor of giving birth to some of the gods of Greece, had the real merit and glory of communicating to that country many useful improvements. Their insular situation defended the people from invasions by land, and their proximity to Egypt afforded them an easy intercourse of commerce by sea with the capital of that kingdom. Here Rhadamanthus, in his travels, had collected those inventions and institutions of a civilized people, which he had the address to apply to the confirmation of his own authority. Minos is still more distinguished. In his travels in the East, he saw certain families possessed of unrivalled honors and unlimited authority, as vicegerents of the Deity. Although the Greeks would never admit, in the fullest latitude of oriental superstition and despotism, this odious profanation, yet Minos, taking advantage of his own unbounded reputation, and that enthusiasm for his person which his skill and fortune in war, his genius for science, and talents for government, had excited among wandering credulous savages, spread a report that he was admitted to familiar conversations with Jupiter, and received from that deity his system of laws, with orders to engrave it on tables

1 "In the same manner, numerical divisions of the people connect and unite the whole, each smaller part being restrained and awed by a larger, and the whole by the resolution of the general assembly." S. 2 "A noble character of the patriot Aratus." S.

of brass. The great principle of it was, that all freemen should be equal, and, therefore, that none should have any property in lands or goods; but that citizens should be served by slaves, who should cultivate the lands upon public account. The citizens should dine at public tables, and their families subsist on the public stock. The monarch's authority was extremely limited, except in war. The magistracies were the recompense of merit and age; and superiority was allowed to nothing else. The youth were restrained to a rigid temperance, modesty, and morality, enforced by law. Their education, which was public, was directed to make them soldiers. Such regulations could not fail to secure order, and what they called freedom, to the citizens; but nine tenths of mankind were doomed to slavery to support them in total idleness, excepting those exercises proper for warriors, become more necessary to keep the slaves in subjection, than to defend the state against the pirates and robbers with whom the age abounded. Idomeneus, grandson of Minos, and commander of the Cretan forces in the Trojan war, was among the most powerful of the Grecian chiefs, and one of the few who returned in safety from that expedition. Here was a government of all authority in one centre, and that centre the most aged and meritorious persons of the nation, with little authority in the king, and none in the rest of the people; yet it was not of sufficient strength to hold together. The venerable old men could not endure the authority, or rather the preeminence of the king. Monarchy must be abolished; and every principal city became early a separate, independent commonwealth; each, no doubt, under its patriarch, baron, noble, or archon, for they all signify the same thing; and continual wars ensued between the several republics within the island; and Cretan valor and martial skill were employed and exhausted in butchering one another, until they turned all the virtues they had left against mankind in general, and exerted them in piracies and robberies, to their universal infamy throughout all Greece. Nor was Crete ever of any weight in Grecian politics after the Trojan war.

CORINTH.

MONARCHY remained in this emporium of Greece longer than in any other of the principal cities; but the noble families here could no better endure the superiority of a monarch, than others in all countries; and with numerous branches of the royal family, (named Bacchidæ, from Bacchis, fifth monarch in succession from Aletes,) at their head, they accordingly put to death Telestes, the reigning monarch; and, usurping the government, under an association among themselves, they instituted an oligarchy. An annual first magistrate, with the title of Prytanis, but with very limited prerogatives, like a doge of Venice, was chosen from among themselves. Several generations passed away under the administration of this odious oligarchy; but the people at length finding it intolerably oppressive, expelled the whole junto, and set up Cypselus as a monarch or tyrant. He had long been the head of the popular party, and was deservedly a popular character, possessed of the confidence and affection of his fellow citizens to a great degree, or he never could have refused the guard which was offered him for the protection of his person against the attempts of the defeated oligarchy. His moderation and clemency are allowed by all; yet he is universally called by the Grecian writers Tyrant of Corinth, and his government a Tyranny. Aristotle † informs us that his tyranny continued thirty years, because he was a popular man and governed without guards. Periander, one of the seven wise men, his son and successor, reigned forty-four years, because he was an able general. Psammetichus, the son of Gordius, succeeded, but his reign was short; yet this space of seventy-seven years is thought by Aristotle one of the longest examples of a tyranny or an oligarchy. At the end of this period the nobles again prevailed; but not without courting the people. The tyranny was demolished, and a new commonwealth established, in which there was a mixture of oligarchy and democracy, to prevent the first from running into excess of oppression, and the other into turbulence and license. Here we find the usual circle. Monarchy first limited by nobles only; then the nobles, becoming envious and impatient of the monarch's preeminence, demolish him, and set up oligarchy. This grows insolent and oppressive to the people, who set up a favorite to pull it down. The new idol's posterity grow insolent; and the people finally think of introducing a mixture of three regular branches of power, in the one, the few, and the many, to control one another, to be guardians in turn to the laws, and secure equal liberty to all.

Aristotle, in this chapter, censures some parts of the eighth book of Plato, and says, "That in general, when governments alter, they alter into the contrary species to what they before were, and not into one like the former. And this reasoning holds true of other changes. For he says, that from the Lacedæmonian form it changes into an oligarchy, and from thence into a democracy, and from a democracy into a tyranny; and sometimes a contrary change takes place, as from a democracy into an oligarchy, rather than into a monarchy. With respect to a tyranny, he neither says whether there will be any change in it; or, if not, to what cause it will be owing; or, if there is, into what other state it will alter. But the reason of this is, that a tyranny is an indeterminate government, and, according to him, every state ought to alter into the first and most perfect. Thus, the continuity and circle would be preserved. But one tyranny often changed into another; as at Sicyon, from Myron to Clisthenes; or into an oligarchy, as was Antileon's at Chalcis; or into a democracy, as was Gelo's at Syracuse; or into an aristocracy, as was Charilaus's at Lacedæmon and at Carthage. An oligarchy is also changed into a tyranny. Such was the rise of most of the ancient tyrannies in Sicily; at Leontium, into the tyranny of Panætius; at Gela, into that of Cleander; at Rhegium, into that of Anaxilaus; and the like in many other cities. It is absurd also to suppose, that a state is changed into an oligarchy, because those who are in power are avaricious and greedy of money; and not because those, who are by far richer than their fellow citizens, think it unfair that those who have nothing should have an equal share in the rule of the state with themselves, who possess so much. For in many oligarchies it is not allowable to be employed in money-getting, and there are many laws to prevent it. But in Carthage, which is a democracy, money-getting is creditable; and yet their form of government remains unaltered."

Whether these observations of Aristotle upon Plato be all just or not, they only serve to strengthen our argument, by showing the mutability of simple governments in a fuller light. Not denying any of the changes stated by Plato, he only enumerates