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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. VIII.

The swift Progress of Corruption in the Roman Republic. Its final Triumph in the Dissolution of the State.

CAN it seem at all strange, that, when the Roman People were become so debauched, so idle, credulous, venal, and corrupt, their popular Meetings should prove, as they did, rather Tumults than regular Assemblies? They met, not to make equal and just Laws, or to prefer able and worthy Men; but to sell themselves, to form Factions, often to exalt the most wicked and dangerous of all Men, often to depress, or to disappoint, the most virtuous Patriots. Their Assemblies were no longer formed with Deliberation, according to the Laws, but in a Heat and Hurry; insomuch that popular Decrees, which had never passed, came to be forged: Several such were made, when only a few of the People, the Simplest, and the Worst, were present; some only by the lowest and vilest Rabble, where not a Man of Sense, or Honour, or Weight, was present. Nay, popular Decrees, of the highest Moment, then passed, such as conferred Legions, public Treasure, nay, the Government of Provinces, and the Command of Armies; vacuo non solum a bonis, sed etiam a liberis, atque inani foro, ignaro populo Rom. quid ageretur. The Candidates for public Employments came at last, in spight of all the penal Laws, to bribe openly, and were chosen sometimes by Arms, as well as Money.

In the Senate, things were not always carried much better, sometimes Decrees of great Consequence were made, when very few Senators were there, and sometimes such Decrees were forged; as I have lately observed. Sometimes the Leaders of the People, and those of the Senate, agreed, (when it suited their particular Interests) the former, to publish fictitious Ordinances of the People; the latter, to frame false Decrees of Senate.

Could there be more crying Corruption than this, blacker Imposture, or a more terrible Prospect? When Laws were made, not by the Legislature, but by private Knaves, in a Corner, for dirty Self-ends, yet binding all Men, and changing, or perverting, the Course of the Government? Who now can wonder at the Fall of Rome? Enfeebled by continual Faction and Corruption, (Two potent Engines to destroy a State!) and thence ripe for an absolute Master, she fell into the Hands of many Masters, Marius, Sylla, Saturninus, Cinna, Clodius, and many others, all occasional Tyrants; that is, sovereign Controllers of the Multitude, and the Laws; till, at last, Cæsar seized her; and, after he was slain, when she might have re-assumed her Liberty, at least, for some time, (And surely, as Cato expresses it in the Tragedy,

• A Day, an Hour, of virtuous Liberty
• Is worth a whole Eternity in Bondage)

she refused the invaluable Blessing, joined with his Friends, that is, her Enemies; and thus transferred herself to a Series of Tyrants for ever.

The Balance was never properly nor equally fixed between the Patricians and People; and it was the constant Pursuit of each to destroy all Balance; not to govern in Conjunction, but of one to govern the other. The Senate, which had the most Power at first, exercised it too rigorously; and, upon all Occasions, manifested great Contempt, and often great Bitterness, towards the People; and forced them to seek a Remedy in the Institution of popular Tribunes, who, under the Mask of protecting the People, sought and acquired enormous Power to themselves. For the People will be ever the Tools and Dupes of their false Friends, and pretended Patrons. These Tribunes fed them with continual Jealousies, dressed up the Senate as a Bugbear of Tyranny, and still wanted new Authority to themselves, all for the Benefit of the People against the Patricians. The Patricians too, studying their own Defence, sometimes used unrighteous Means to defeat unrighteous Designs. The Struggle, going still on, produced some temporary Tyrannies; whilst single Men, usurping and abusing the Authority of Magistrates, enslaved both Parties, to be avenged of one. At last, in a few Years, the Tyranny became lasting and settled. Then the two Factions had Leisure to look back upon their own blind Phrensy; when, by struggling who should be Masters, they were both become Slaves: Nor did they seem to have reflected upon the Tendency of their pernicious Corruption, of their mad and fatal Feuds, till such Reflection could only serve to reproach and distract them.

It were well, that all Parties, all People, would grow wise by the Example of those at Rome, nor suffer a Passion for Party, or for Money, to drive them on to such Mistakes, and hasty Measures, as Reason cannot afterwards retract or cure. Party is Corruption, as well as it is Folly. The Revenge which they seek, often falls as heavy, sometimes heaviest, upon themselves; and what they call Redress proves Destruction. But Rage considers nothing but present Gratification. The Plebeians, piqued at the Patricians, who had used them ill, set up, for their Head, the savage Marius; at first, against Rules; afterwards, in Defiance of Law. The Patricians, to stem the Fury of the bloody Marius, exalt Sylla, or enable him to exalt himself, as their Patron and Champion, a Man no less bloody. Both Marius and Sylla play the Tyrant in their Turn, and both Parties are, by one or the other, enslaved and slaughtered by turns.

DISCOURSE VII.

Of the Corruption in the Roman Seats of Justice, and the Oppression in the Provinces.