claim in a tone that would not be louder from a trumpet, that party will not tolerate any resistance to its will. All the supposed independent orders of the commonwealth must be its servile instruments, or its victims. We should experience the same despotism in Massachusetts, New-Hampshire, and Connecticut, but the battle is not yet won. It will be won; and they who already display the temper of their Southern and French allies, will not linger or reluct in imitating the worst extremes of their example.

WHAT, then, is to be our condition?

FACTION will inevitably triumph. Where the government is both stable and free, there may be parties. There will be differences of opinion, and the pride of opinion will be sufficient to generate contests, and to inflame them with bitterness and rancour. There will be rivalships among those whom genius, fame, or station have made great, and these will deeply agitate the state without often hazarding its safety. Such parties will excite alarm, but they may be safely left, like the elements, to exhaust their fury upon each other.

THE object of their strife is to get power under the government; for, where that is constituted as it should be, the power over the government will not seem attainable, and, of course, will not be attempted.

BUT in democratick states there will be factions. The sovereign power being nominally in the hands of all, will be effectively within the grasp of a FEW; and, therefore, by the very laws of our nature, a few will combine, intrigue, lie, and fight to engross it to themselves. All history bears testimony, that this attempt has never yet been disappointed.

WHO will be the associates? Certainly not the virtuous, who do not wish to control the society, but quietly to enjoy its protection. The enterprising merchant, the thriving tradesman, the careful farmer will be engrossed by the toils of their business, and will have little time or inclination for the unprofit able and disquieting pursuits of politicks. It is not the industrious, sober husbandman, who will plough that barren field; it is the lazy and dissolute bankrupt, who has no other to

plough. The idle, the ambitious, and the needy will band together to break the hold that law has upon them, and then to get hold of law. Faction is a Hercules, whose first labour is to strangle this lion, and then to make armour of his skin. In every democratick state the ruling faction will have law to keep down its enemies; but it will arrogate to itself an undisputed power over law. If our ruling faction has found any impediments, we ask, which of them is now remaining? And is it not absurd to suppose, that the conquerors will be contented with half the fruits of victory?

WE are to be subject, then, to a despotick faction, irritated by the resistance that has delayed, and the scorn that pursues their triumph, elate with the insolence of an arbitrary and uncontrollable domination, and who will exercise their sway, not according to the rules of integrity or national policy, but in conformity with their own exclusive interests and passions.

THIS is a state of things, which admits of progress, but not of reformation: it is the beginning of a revolution, which must advance. Our affairs, as first observed, no longer depend on counsel. The opinion of a majority is no longer invited or permitted to control our destinies, or even to retard their consummation. The men in power may, and, no doubt, will give place to some other faction, who will succeed, because they are abler men, or, possibly, in candour we say it, because they are worse. Intrigue will for some time answer instead of force, or the mob will supply it. But by degrees force only will be relied on by those who are in, and employed by those who are out. The vis major will prevail, and some bold chieftain will conquer liberty, and triumph and reign in her

name.

YET, it is confessed we have hopes, that this event is not very near. We have no cities as large as London or Paris; and, of course, the ambitious demagogues may find the ranks of their STANDING ARMY too thin to rule by them alone. It is also worth remark, that our mobs are not, like those of Europe, excitable by the cry of no bread. The dread of famine is every where else a power of political electricity, that

glides through all the haunts of filth, and vice, and want in a city with incredible speed, and in times of insurrection rives and scorches with a sudden force, like heaven's own thunder. Accordingly, we find the sober men of Europe more afraid of the despotism of the rabble than of the government.

BUT, as in the United States we see less of this description of low vulgar, and as, in the essential circumstance alluded to, they are so much less manageable by their demagogues, we are to expect, that our affairs will be long guided by courting the mob, before they are violently changed by employing them. While the passions of the multitude can be conciliated to confer power and to overcome all impediments to its action, our rulers have a plain and easy task to perform. It costs them nothing but hypocrisy. As soon, however, as rival favourites of the people may happen to contend by the practice of the same arts, we are to look for the sanguinary strife of ambition. Brissot will fall by the hand of Danton, and he will be supplanted by Robespiere. The revolution will proceed in exactly the same way, but not with so rapid a pace, as that of France.

HINTS AND CONJECTURES

CONCERNING

THE INSTITUTIONS OF LYCURGUS.

WRITTEN IN 1805.

THE institutions of Lycurgus have engrossed, and, perhaps,

have deserved the praises of all antiquity. Even the Athenians, the rivals and enemies of Sparta, do not withhold or stint their admiration of the sublime genius and profound wisdom of this legislator. Such a general concurrence of opinions, and for so many ages, in favour of the laws of Lycurgus, can scarcely be imagined to proceed from errour, accident, or caprice.

WHEN to this we add, that for seven hundred years the Lacedæmonian state continued to respect, if not rigidly to observe, these laws, we are not permitted at this late day to arraign their wisdom, especially by attempting to ridicule their singularity. We are the less authorized to pronounce their condemnation, as the ancients have taken more pains to make them appear admirable than intelligible. A complete and satisfactory view of the Spartan policy, if any such were exhibited of old, has not reached our times. Besides, so unlike are our manners and institutions to those of Greece, and particularly of Sparta, that the representations of Xenophon, Aristotle, Polybius, and Plutarch, though amply sufficient for the information of their countrymen, cannot fail to appear defective and obscure to us.

THE chief articles of the system of Lycurgus seem so much more extraordinary than any thing else that has happened in the world, except their political consequences, that we should be induced to deny the facts, if the historical evidence of them were not complete. As we are not permitted to do this, we submit to the authority of history, with a sort of vague and uninstructed astonishment at the strangeness of its testimony.

SPARTA or Lacedæmon, ancient writers tell us, was rent with factions, one of the two kings being at the head of each, without laws, and so deeply corrupted, that neither morals nor manners could supply their place. In this exigency Lycurgus appeared, and by his genius took the ascendant over the kings and demagogues, and, indeed, over all the men of his age and nation, as the pasture oak towers above the shrubs, or like a giant among dwarfs. The oracle of Delphi gave him, moreover, all the authority that superstition can maintain over ignorance. Thus far all is easy of comprehension.

BUT, when we are required to believe, that a whole people readily submitted to give up their property to be divided anew; that they renounced luxury, ostentation, and pleasure, and even the use of money, except iron; that they were obliged, under severe penalties, from which their kings were not exempted, to dine in publick and on wretched fare; that their children were taken from them and exposed to death, if adjudged weakly and infirm, or, if permitted to live, placed under the tutelage of publick officers; and that such was the intolerable rigour of their regulations, that actual service in camp was a welcome relaxation-when we read all this, surely, if there is nothing to justify our doubts, there is nothing that can suppress our wonder. We yield our faith at once, that the Lacedæmonians immediately became a nation of heroes, who had extinguished nature, and silenced appetite and passion, save only the passion to live and die for their country.

By this expedient we make the Spartan story somewhat more credible. As we can know nothing of what demigods would do, we may imagine just what we please. But men nowadays, we are sure, would not be brought to adopt such laws, nor, if they did, long to observe them.

NEVERTHELESS, we know, that the success of the system of Lycurgus did not arise from the superiority of his race of Spartans. On the contrary, so far were they from being superiour to other men, that he found them, we are told, worse. This we are forced to believe; for he found them factiousand faction, we know, is as sure to degrade and corrupt the