158 on the constitution. -^ug. 8. 



war was their trade, and rapine was deemed he- 

 roism. The real ends of government were not of 

 course answered by the political institutions they 

 adopted. It is not, therefore, among the ancients 

 that we are to look for lefsons in the art of govern- 

 ment. Mankind were then evidently unacquainted 

 with the circumstanqfs which constitute the efsence 

 of political freedom. And, were we not accustomed ■ 

 from our infancy to admire the institutions of th<? \ 

 states of Greece and Rome, without understanding 

 them, we Ihould perhaps execrate them as the basest 

 political establilhments that ever existed on the globe. 

 What we have been accustomed to adore under the 

 name of struggles for freedom, if they had been deno- 

 minated, as they really were, contentions for power, 

 would have excited our disgust instead of admiration. 

 So little was the prosperity of the country, by which 

 I mean the general happinefs and tranquillity of the 

 people, attended to, or understood, that there is not, 

 among all their squabbles, which are recorded with so 

 much pomp and parade by their historians, one single 

 institution, either proposed or adopted, that had a 

 clear and direct tendency to that end. It is a con- 

 tinuec bustle for that, which, if it had been obtained, 

 could have profited them nothing. It is not therefore 

 from the models of antiquity that " the friends of the 

 people''' wifli to borrow their ideas of improving the 

 constitution of Britain, but from other lefs objection- 

 able sources. 



The great object which seems to have been aimed at 1 

 by the constitution-makers of antiquity, was to limit 

 the time during which the supreme authority of the 



