pofed. We begin to think and to act from reason and from nature alone. This is true of several, but ftill is by far the majority in the fame old ftate of blindness and slavery; and much is it to be feared that we fhall perpetually relapfe, whilst the real productive caufe of all this fuperftitious. folly, enthusiastical nonfenfe, and holy tyranny, holds a reverend place in the estimation even of those who are otherwise enlightened.

Civil government borrows a strength from ecclefiaftical; and artificial laws receive a fanction from artificial revelations. The ideas of religion and government are closely 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 undesirable consequence, an artificial religion of some kind or other. To this the vulgar will always be voluntary flaves; and even those of a rank of understanding fuperior, will now and then involuntarily 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 nurse and increaser of bleffings, as thofe of warm imaginations promise.. 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 discovery of truth can prejudice them. On the contrary, the more closely the origin of religion and government are examined, the more clearly their excellencies muft appear. They come purified from the fire. My business is not with them. Having entered a protest against all objections from thefe quarters, I may the

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more freely enquire from history and experience, how far policy has contributed in all times to alleviate those evils which Providence, that perhaps has designed us for a state of imperfection, has impofed; how far our phyfical fkill has cured our conftitutional diforders; and whether, it may not have introduced new ones, curable perhaps by nó fkill.

In looking over any state to form a judgment on it; it presents itself in two lights, the external and the internal. The first, that relation which it bears in point of friendship or enmity to other ftates. The fecond, that relation its component parts, the governing, and the governed, bear to each other. The first part of the external view of all states, their relation as friends, makes so trifling a figure in history, that I am very forry to say, it affords me but little matter on which to expatiate. The good offices done by one nation to its neighbour*; the support given in publick diftrefs; the relief afforded in general calamity; the protection granted in emergent danger; the mutual return of kindness and civility, would afford a very ample and very pleafing fubject for hiftory. But, alas! all the history of all times, concerning all nations, does not afford matter enough to fill ten pages, though it should be fpun out by the wire-drawing amplification of a Guicciardini himself. The glaring fide is that of enmity. War is the matter which fills all history, and confequently the only, or almost 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

* 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 intitled to alter his Lordship's words, but that we are bound to follow him exactly.

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tend to the destruction of one another. War, fays Machiavel, ought to be the only study of a prince; and by a prince, he means every sort 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.

The first accounts we have of mankind are but so many accounts of their butcheries. All empires have been cemented in blood; and in those early periods when the race of mankind began firft 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 destruction. All antient history is dark and uncertain. One thing however is clear. There were conquerors, and conquefts, 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 over-ran the Mediterranean coast as far as Colchis; that in fome places, he met but little resistance, and of course shed 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 traversed, and the oppofition he frequently met; with the natural accidents of fickness, and the dearth and badness of provision to which he must have been fubject in the variety of climates and countries

countries his march lay through, if he knows any thing, he must know, that even the conqueror's army must have suffered greatly; and that, of this immense number, but a very fmall part could have returned to enjoy the plunder accumulated by the lofs of fo many of their companions, and the devastation of so confiderable a part of the world. Confidering, I say, the vast army headed by this conqueror, whose unwieldy weight was almoft alone fufficient to wear down. its strength, it will be far from excess to suppose that one half was loft in the expedition. If this was the state of the victorious, and from the circumftances, it must have been this at the leaft; the vanquished 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 as, added to the loffes of the conqueror, may amount to a million of deaths, and then we shall see this conqueror, the oldest we have on the records of history, (though, as we have obferved before, the chronology of these remote times is extremely uncertain), opening the scene by a deftruction of at least one million of his fpecies, unprovoked but by his ambition, without any motives but pride, cruelty, and madness, and without any benefit to himself; (for Juftin exprefsly tells us he did not maintain his conquests) but folely to make fo many people, in so distant countries, feel experimentally, how severe a scourge Providence intends for the human race, when he gives one man the power over many, and arms his naturally impotent, and feeble rage, with the hands of millions, who know no common principle of action, but a blind obedience to the paffions of their ruler.

The next perfonage who figures in the tragedies of this ancient theatre is Simiramis: for we have no particulars

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of Ninus, but that he made immenfe and rapid conquefts, which doubtlefs were not compaffed without the ufual carnage. We fee an army of above three millions employed by this martial queen in a war against the Indians. We fee the Indians arming a yet greater; and we behold a war continued with much fury, and with various fuccefs. This ends in the retreat of the queen, with scarce a third of the troops employed in the expedition; an expedition, which at this rate must have coft two millions of fouls on her part; and it is not unreasonable to judge that the country which was the feat of war, must have been an equal fufferer. But I am content to detract from this, and to fuppofe that the Indians loft only half fo much, and then the account ftands thus: In this war alone, (for Semiramis had other wars) in this single reign, and in this one spot of the globe, did three millions of fouls expire, with all the horrid and shocking 'circumstances which attend all wars, and in a quarrel, in which none of the fufferers could have the leaft rational concern.

The Babylonian, Affyrian, Median, and Perfian monarchies must have poured out feas of blood in their formation, and in their deftruction. The armies and fleets of Xerxes, their numbers, the glorious stand made against them, and the unfortunate event of all his mighty preparations, are known to every body. In this expedition, draining half Asia of its inhabitants, he led an army of about two millions to be flaughtered, and wafted, by a thousand fatal accidents, in the fame place where his predeceffors had before by a fimilar madness consumed the flower of so many kingdoms, and wafted the force of fo extenfive an empire. It is a cheap calculation to fay, that the Perfian empire in its wars, against the Greeks, and Scythians, threw away at least four millions of VOL. I. its

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