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• To His Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland.
• Introduction.
• Postscript.
• Political Discourses Upon Sallust.
• Discourse I.: Of Faction and Parties.
• Sect. I.: How Easily the People Are Led Into Faction, and Kept In It, By Their Own Heat and Prejudices, and the Arts of Their Leaders; How Hard They Are to Be Cured; and With What Partiality and Injustice Each Side Treats the Other.
• Sect. II.: How Apt Parties Are to Err In the Choice of Their Leaders. How Little They Regard Truth and Morality, When In Competition With Party. the Terrible Consequences of All This; Worthy Men Decried and Persecuted; Worthless and Wicked Men Popular and
• Sect. III.: Party Infers Public Weakness: Its Devilish Spirit, and Sirange Blindness: What Public Ruin It Threatens: the People Rarely Interested In It; Yet How Eager and Obstinate In It, and Bewitched By It.
• Discourse II.: Of Patriots and Parricides.
• Sect. I.: How Virtue and Vice, Public Services, and Public Crimes, May Be Said to Bring Their Own Rewards.
• Sect. II.: A Suffering Patriot More Happy Than a Successful Parricide: Public Oppressors Always Unhappy.
• Sect. III.: Cautions Against the Arts and Encroachments of Ambition. the Character of a Patriot, and That of a Parricide. How Much It Is the Duty, How Much the Interest, of All Governors to Be Patriots.
• Sect. IV.: How Apt the World Is to Be Deceived With Glare and Outside, to Admire Prosperous Iniquity, and to Slight Merit In Disgrace. Public Spirit the Duty of All Men. the Evils and Folly Attending the Want of It.
• Sect. V.: Considerations Upon Two Distinguished Romans, Cato and Cæsar; One In the Interest of His Country, the Other In His Own Interest: With the Fate and Issue of Cæsar’s Ambition, to Himself and His Race.
• Discourse III.: Of the Resignation of Sylla.
• Sect. I.: His Policy In Resigning; His Motives and Encouragement to Resign.
• Sect. II.: What Measures, and Precautions, He Had Taken For His Security, After His Resignation.
• Discourse IV.: Of the Pride and Ill Conduct of the Patricians, After the Expulsion of Kings.
• Sect. I.: The Roman Commonwealth Unequally Balanced. the Kingly Power, Upon the Expulsion of Tarquin, Engrossed, and Imperiously Exercised, By the Patricians. the Ill Policy of This to Themselves, the Injustice of It to the Plebeians.
• Sect. II.: The Plebeians, Long Oppressed, Obtain a Remedy By Force; But a Remedy Dangerous to the State.
• Discourse V.: Of the Institution and Power of the Popular Tribunes.
• Sect. I.: The Blind Confidence of the People In the Tribunes: the Ambition, and Violent Attempts, of Those Popular Leaders.
• Sect. II.: Reflections On the Plausible Professions, and Dangerous Conduct, of the Gracchi. Public Reformations, How Cautiously to Be Attempted.
• Sect. III.: The Boundless Power Assumed By the Tribunes: With What Boldness and Iniquity They Exercise It. the People Still Their Dupes.
• Discourse VI.: Of Public Corruption; Particularly That of the Romans.
• Sect. I.: The Interest of Virtue, and of the Public, Every Man’s Interest.
• Sect. II.: The Fatal Tendency of Public Corruption. the Public Sometimes Served By Encouraging Private Corruption. Other Means of Corruption, Beside That of Money. Corruption Sometimes Practised By Such Who Rail At It; In Some Instances, By Good Men, Who
• Sect. III.: Some Corruptions In the State to Be Borne, Rather Than Removed By the Introduction of Greater.
• Sect. IV.: How Hard to Prevent Corruption, Where the Means of Corruption Are Found.
• Sect. V.: Venal Men, With What Ill Grace They Complain of Any Ill Conduct, Or Corruption, In Him Who Bought Them: People Once Corrupted, How Abandoned to All Corruption.
• Sect. VI.: Amongst a Corrupt People, the Most Debauched and Desperate Leaders Are the Most Popular.
• Sect. VII.: When the People Are Thoroughly Corrupt, All True Sense of Liberty Is Lost. Outrage and Debauchery Then Pass For Liberty, Defiance of Law For Public Spirit, and Incendiaries For Patriots.
• Sect. VIII.: The Swift Progress of Corruption In the Roman Republic. Its Final Triumph In the Dissolution of the State.
• Discourse VII.: Of the Corruption In the Roman Seats of Justice, and the Oppression In the Provinces.
• Sect. I.: Of the Extreme Difficulty In Procuring Justice At Rome, Against Any Considerable Criminal.
• Sect. II.: The Wonderful Guilt and Enormities of Verres In Sicily, Confidently Committed, From Assurance of Impunity. Cicero’ S Character of the Judges: Their Bold and Constant Venality.
• Sect. III.: The Virtue of the Old Romans, In the Administration of Justice, and Government of Provinces. Their Posterity, and Successors, How Unlike Them. the Wise and Righteous Administration of Cicero, With That of the Provincial Governors In China
• Discourse VIII.: Of Civil Wars.
• Sect. I.: Who the First Authors of Civil War: What Inslames It Most, and Why It Is So Hard to Be Checked.
• Sect. II.: The Chief Power In a Civil War, Vested In the Generals, Yet Little Reverenced By the Soldiers. Both Soldiers and People Grow Hardened and Ungovernable.
• Sect. III.: The Shocking Corruption, and Dissolute Manners, Produced By Civil War; With the Dreadful Barbarities and Devastations Attending It.
• Sect. IV.: The Soldiery, In a Civil War, Only Consider Themselves: What Low Instruments and Causes Serve to Begin and Continue It.
• Sect. V.: How Hard to Put an End to a Civil War. the Tendency of One, to Produce More. How It Sharpens the Spirits of Men, Shocks the Civil Constitution, and Produces Tyranny.
• Sect. VI.: The Evils, and Sudden Changes, Brought By Civil War Upon Particular Families, and Upon a Country In General; With the Fierce Discontents, and Animosities, and Ill Morals, Which It Entails.
• Sect. VII.: A View of the Affecting Horrors, and Calamities, Produced By Civil War; Taken From the History of Greece.
• Discourse IX.: To His Grace Archibald, Duke of Argyll. of the Mutability of Government.
• Sect. I.: Why Free Governments Are More Changeable In Their Frame, Than Such As Are Single and Arbitrary.
• Sect. II.: The Danger to Free Government From Popular Maxims, and Popular Men; With the Advantages It Furnishes Against Itself.
• Sect. III.: The Signal Power of Enthusiasm, and Pious Imposture, In Settling, Changing, Or Perpetuating Government.
• Sect. IV.: The Surprising, Despotic, But Pacific Government, Established By the Jesuits, By the Force of Imposture, In Paraguay.
• Sect. V.: The Inevitable Danger of Trusting Ecclesiastical Persons With Any Worldly Power, Or Any Share In Government.
• Sect. VI.: The Profession of the Missionaries Abroad; How Notoriously Insincere, and Contradictory to Their Tenets and Practices At Home.
• Sect. VII.: The Duration of Tyrannical Single Governments, and the Changeable Nature of Such As Are Popular and Free, Further Considered and Illustrated.
• Sect. VIII.: An Inquiry, Which Is the Most Equal and Perfect Government: Our Own Proved to Be So.
• Postscript.
• The Conspiracy of Cataline
• To His Grace Evelyn, Duke of Kingston.
• The First Oration of Cicero Against Catiline. Spoken In the Senate.
• The Second Oration of Cicero Against Catiline. Addressed to the People.
• The Third Oration of Cicero Against Catiline. Addressed to the People.
• The Fourth Oration of Cicero Against Catiline. Spoken In the Senate.
• The War Against Jugurtha.
• To the Right Honourable the Earl of Cholmondeley.
• The War Against Jugurtha.
• The Speech of M. Æmilius Lepidus, the Consul, Against Sylla.
• The Speech of L. Philippus Against Lepidus.
• Pompey ’s Letter to the Senate.
• The Oration of Licinius, the Tribune: Addressed to the People.
• The Letter Which Mithridates, King of Pontus, Sent to Arsaces, King of Parthia.
• The First Epistle of Sallust to Caius Julius CÆsar: Concerning the Regulation of the Commonwealth.
• The Second Epistle of Sallust to Caius Julius CÆsar: Concerning the Regulation of the Commonwealth.

SECT. I.

The Interest of Virtue, and of the Public, every Man’s Interest.

THERE are, in Sallust, so many Reflections about public Corruption, such strong Instances of it at Rome, not only in the People, but amongst the great Men, who ought to have been the soundest of all, and Patterns of Probity to the rest of the Commonwealth; especially of their Venality, during the Jugurthine War; and public Corruption is in itself of such fatal Effect; that I shall take it into large Consideration in the following Discourse.

Whoever would cure public Evils and Corruption, can never do it so effectually, as by convincing such who promote them, that whatever is injurious to their Country is likewise prejudicial to Themselves; whether they consider their Innocence, or their Fame, or the Permanence and Stability of their Family and Fortune. This seems, to me, so true, that I cannot, in all History, recollect an Instance which does not confirm it. That no Man can be called happy, who betrays public Trust, or enslaves his Country, is as certain, as that there is such a Thing as Happiness or Unhappiness, such a Thing as Honour or Dishonour, in the World: Where there is no Virtue, there can be no Merit nor Praise; neither can there be any Breach of Trust, or Failure of Duty, without Reproach and Infamy: Besides that, it is often accompanied, as it ought to be, with personal Peril and Ruin: But this Peril is not the greatest Peril; that of losing Honour and Reputation, and inward Peace, is by much the most terrible. Virtue, and a good Name, is the best Wealth: It is Wealth which cannot perish; and he who is rich in Virtue, can never be poor: Whereas the Man who is rich without it, still labours under the worst of all Poverty, and is liable withal to lose his Treasures and Revenues; and, when these are gone, what remains to comfort or support him? In his highest Pomp and Prosperity; all Men of Sense and Probity despise him; and, when deserted by Fortune, even the Vulgar ridicule and scorn him. This was the Fate of that miserable Voluptuary the Emperor Vitellius; who had earned such Infamy by the Vileness of his Life, that the Manner of his Death, though very sad and tragical, procured him no Compassion. So true is that Maxim of the Philosopher’s, ‘That only is miserable, which is base and dishonest.’

The good, the upright Man, he whose Heart is pure, whose Hands are clean, has a continual Resource in himself, out of the Reach of Power or Fortune. The Man who keeps his Integrity, and does his Duty, is always sure of one Reward, even when he is oppressed, persecuted, and ungratefully used. To be conscious of having acted virtuously, is a Reward for Virtue; such a Reward as the Power and Malice of Men cannot obstruct nor diminish. And where this Recompence is wanting, any other Recompence, however splendid and sounding, is but Farce and Mockery, Satire and Reproach: It is like melted Gold poured down the Throat of a Miser; it is like loading a Traitor with Bags of Money, till he expire under the Wages of his Treason.

There have been Men distinguished with very high Titles and Preferments, for Actions which merited Gibbets and Dungeons: But what Man of Sense or Honour would have chosen their miserable Lot? Their unnatural Exaltation only added to the former Detestation of their Persons and Crimes; and they were considered as double Criminals, for having usurped and defiled the Rewards only due to Merit, to cover their Deformity, and adorn their Guilt. Had they any Pleasure in such bloated Greatness? Then they were stupid, and in the Condition of the lowest and most unperceiving Quadrupeds; a Situation not to be envied; indeed, to a reasonable Being, worse, and more wretched, than Non-existence. At best, they were seared, and had hardened their Hearts with such a continual Bent to Vice, to depraved Habits, and the Repetition of Crimes, as to be insensible, that Wickedness was wicked, and that Crimes were criminal.

Can a higher, or more shocking Curse than this befall a Man, to become an habitual Enemy to Virtue, and, consequently, to Men, and human Society; and to be continually abandoned to a Passion for Evil and Mischief? This is the Character and Curse of a Dæmon; yet it is a Character which is too often found amongst the Sons of Men: And if they find no Delight at all in these their unsuitable Trappings, but still feel their own pungent Guilt, in the midst of all that Glare intended to hide it from others, then are these Trappings only fresh Burdens; which, by being wickedly obtained, do but bring new Guilt and Pain; and their Dignities and Distinctions are so many importunate Monitors and Remembrances, how little they deserve them, and how much they deserve another and an opposite Lot.

Prosperity, Wealth, and Power, cast a false Lustre upon Characters, and disguise Crimes and Defects, especially from the Eyes of the Rabble: But when that faise Lustre is lost in the Loss of what caused it; that is to say, when the Prosperity of the Guilty ceases; such Crimes and Defects become apparent, exposed, and hated. All Men then see, what wise Men always saw, that where there was no real Merit, there could be no real Honour or Fame. Imagine any Two Men, one vicious and criminal, but continually prosperous; the other virtuous and innocent, but always unfortunate, or rather unsuccessful; which of these Two Characters would appear the more eligible to a wise Man? Undoubtedly the latter, at first Sight; for Vice and Wickedness are the highest Misfortune; and Virtue brings Felicity, even in Distress.