108 The Admirable Crichton. 



same attention with which you have already favoured me, I will 

 set forth in a few words which may be not unfruitful in pleasure 

 or utility. 



The State, which is the name applied to a group of citizens 

 honourably associated together, in which the consultations and 

 assemblies of men are comprised, is most pleasing to God as the 

 Supreme Power, and there can be nothing amongst men more 

 agreeable to Him than a free republic administered by good laws 

 and institutions, where, altogether remote from corruption, the 

 principle of the divine worship, of virtue, and of merit is main- 

 tained. It was on this principle that the republics of the Cretans 

 and the Lacedfemonians, and likewise those of the Athenians 

 and the Romans, flourished to the utmost, and spread the limits of 

 their rule and sovereignty far and wide through the distant regions 

 of the world. And, indeed, anyone who wished to form a perfect 

 and absolutely unfettered State has modelled it on such institu- 

 tions. Some legislators have accepted from Adra.steia or from 

 Pallas the form for the government of a State which they have 

 transmitted ; as Zoroaster, the laws which he professed to have 

 learned from Hormuzd, gave to the Bactrians ; as Charondas 

 promulgated amongst the Scythians the laws which Saturn 

 revealed to him ; as Egeria was the author of the constitutions of 

 Numa Pompilius ; Mercurius Trismigistus proposed to the 

 Egyptians the laws which he professed had been declared to him 

 by Mercury himself. But what shall I say about that buffoon, 

 Mahomed, who promulgated amongst the Arabs the impious and 

 detestable doctrines in which he affirmed Tie had been instructed 

 by Gabriel ? But the Republic of Genoa is settled and regulated 

 by the most inviolable ordinances, founded in accordance with 

 the most scrupulous laws, and protected by magistrates and up- 

 right men placed in authority for the guardianship of the State 

 and the splendour of the Republic ; and presenting the appear- 

 ance of a heavenly Republic, and adorned with the most excel- 

 lent citizens, and bearing a semblance in no wise derived from 

 human inventions or the futile fictions of the Greeks, but from 

 God himself. Who is the Legislator, the Prince, and the Immortal 

 Author of All Things, to Whom endless thanks are to be offered by 

 you, most excellent citizens of Genoa, amongst whom the autho- 

 rity of the laws flourishes so greatly that men are not governed by 



