if #197 J ' et 
MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 
On the Instability of the @reck and 
Roman Republics ; from Whita- 
ker’s real Origin of Government. 
HEN rose republics. The first 
that made its appearance in 
the world was at Athens. The 
_keentgenius of Attica, wanting to 
try an experiment upon the univer- 
sal polity of man, to substitute a 
creature of its own reason for the 
fabrication of God’s wisdom, and 
to violate the primogenial law of 
nature in favour of a fantastical 
theory took advantage of the death 
of a self-devoted monarch, and, in 
a pretended fear of never having 
so good a monarch again, most un- 
gratefully deprived his family of the 
crown, by venturing upon the bold 
innovation ef erecting a republic. 
They thus inverted the pyramid of 
government, made it to stand upon 
Its point, and reared its base in 
the air. The example, however, 
was afterwards followed by all the 
states of Greece. They all gave 
free scope to their fancies, in mo- 
delling their governments. They 
cut them to this form, they carved 
them to that. Butthey still reduced 
them nearer and nearer to an in- 
efficient simplicity of power. They 
then considered them as more or 
less perfect in their republican na- 
_ ture. Yet they could find none 
~ that would give them the promised 
happiness. They were wretched 
under all. The grand principle of 
all, in supposing the power of go-' 
vernment to be originally in the 
people, in believing the subjects to 
be virtually the sovereigns, inafirm- 
ing the servants to be vitally the’ 
masters ; propositions surely, how. 
ever familiar to our ears at present, 
calculated only for the meridian of 
St. Luke’s Hospital ; this precluded ' 
all possibility of settlement; changes” 
succeeded to changes, all was dis- 
traction, confusion, and misery. * 
Having thrown their little world of 
society off from that central pin of 
authority, upon which it had been 
founded by God himself, they 
could never find a rest for it again. 
‘The divine equipoise had been rash- 
ly destroyed by the hand of man, 
and man felt his folly in his suffer- 
ings) The imputed power of the’ 
people was like the water of the 
ocean, now breaking through all its 
bounds as the balance of the globe 
was gone, and now sweeping in an’ 
irresistible deluge over the land. 
Yet, with something like the infa- 
tuation of the Jews in receiving 
their false Messiahs, they still wel- 
comed every pretender to the cause 
of liberty, still hailed every factious 
man as a friend, and attached them- 
selves to every reformer as a deli- 
verer. These ‘* declared,” says 
Plutarch himself at a particular pe- 
riod 
