The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• 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. III.

The signal Power of Enthusiasm, and pious Imposture, in settling, changing, or perpetuating Government.

THE most effectual Way to change Men intirely, and consequently to settle a Government absolutely new, seems to be by religious Imposture. Whoever can mould the Conscience of a Man, can mould the Man. This was the Course taken by Mahomet; by this Course he succeeded, and, from driving Camels, founded an Empire. What can resist armed Enthusiasm, when the Enthusiast thinks himself intitled to both Worlds, and, by being secure of Paradise, claims a Right from Heaven to govern the Earth? He who wields the Sword, both of the Lord and of Gideon, is much more than a Match for those who carry no such awful Weapons. The Saracens were therefore invincible: So were the Round-Heads, who attacked the Cavaliers as impetuously with the Tune of a Psalm, as the Arabs did the Greeks and Asiatics with the Sound of Allah and his Prophet; and as stern a Spirit, though not so extensive, appeared for a Fifth Monarchy, as ever there did for the Monarchy of Mahomet. What this Impostor gained at first by the Force of Delusion, be retained and increased by the Force of Arms; and the finest and richest Parts of the old World, Asia, India, Egypt, and the Coasts of Africa, to the Pillars of Hercules, with the fairest Provinces in Europe, are still darkened and subdued by his gross, but popular and prevailing, Imposture.

Error is not the less forcible for being extremely gross, but rather the more successful for that very Reason. Small and moderate Error, as it is not far removed from Reason, is in Danger of being cured by Reason; but when it is extravagant, and quite monstrous, it is above and out of the Reach of Reason, and thence safe and thriving: The more wonderful it is, the more it is reverenced; and firmly believed, because it is incredible. An Impostor carries his Followers out of the Regions of Nature, and leads and governs them in the Clouds, by Visions too glorious for Eyes which have no more Light than their own, and by Documents too refined for Philosophy and Sense. Thus he forms them his true and devoted Bubbles: They find high Transports in being such, and scorn to change their Happiness and Blindness, for Light and Conviction. Whoever would make them wiser and free, is their mortal Foe, an Enemy to God and his Elect, and They are Enemies to Him.

A Government thus founded, the most disgraceful, as well as the most pestilent of all others, to human Race, is yet the most powerful and permanent of all Governments, if the same Influence do but continue; especially if Force be joined to Fraud, and Heaven and Earth be supposed to combine to support the same Cause. For the Cause of Enthusiasm, with all its celestial Views, and Scorn of worldly Things, has never enough of worldly Succours, not, indeed, of the World itself, all for heavenly Purposes. How many Millions of Men have been Slaves in their Persons, as well as in their Faculties, to an Impostor, only for his good Word to the Deity in their Behalf! and yielded up their whole Property to a Cheat, purely for teaching them to despise it! In truth, whoever can effectually awe Men by the Dread of eternal Torture, or charm them with Assurance of eternal Bliss, will be Omnipotent amongst Men, and controul and engross this World, by being thought Master of the World to come. It will then be very easy for him to introduce that never-failing Maxim, amongst all worldly Saints, (that is, Men more holy than other Men, and therefore striving to govern all Men) ‘That Dominion is founded in Grace;’ a Maxim of more Force than any in Politics, and always adopted by every able pious Impostor.

It is indeed equally true, that whenever common Sense takes Place, there is an End of all his fairy Influence, and mock Terrors, though perhaps not of his present and temporal Dread. But, alas! common Sense, which is treated as his common Enemy, and depressed by all the Engines of Art and Fury, may be persecured, banished, and extinct, for many Ages together. Who has dared, in Turkey, to dispute Mahomet’s divine Mission, or his lewd and voluptuous Paradise, during a Thousand Years past? Who has ventured (at least without incurring a terrible Doom) to question the Pope’s fanatic Supremacy over Heaven and Earth; or his wealthy Heirship to the poor Apostles; or the Kindred of a miserable Frier to the Deity; or his Power of damning and saving Souls for Money, or for want of it; or of drawing Holiness, and Miracles, and Treasures, out of dead Dust, and rotten Bones; or his Title to the Keys of St. Peter; or his Right to a tributary Purgatory, or to his Toll from Souls released from it by his Command; or to his Lease of Provinces from the Emperor Constantine, who gave him none? Yet all these shocking Forgeries, all these blasphemous Impieties, were, for many Centuries, Sacred throughout Christendom, and still are so in Italy, Spain, and other Countries, cowed by Superstition, and blind with Bigotry.

This Sort of Government therefore is as lasting, as it is dreadful and infamous. Enthusiasm is perfectly satisfied with itself, and its Situation; nor will Enthusiasts venture their Soul by venturing upon a Change, or upon inquiring whether a Change be expedient. Great is the Charm of being deceived; great the Pleasure, as well as the Profit, of deceiving! Few good Governments have lasted like that of Mahomet, and of Popery; both founded upon the Delusion, upon the Misery and Affliction of Men, all with the Consent of Men, enslaving and destroying them with their own Assistance.

So that the Means of annoying the best Governments are much more successful, as well as much more readily found, than those of restraining the worst.