The Online Library of Liberty

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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. V.

The inevitable Danger of trusting Ecclesiastical Persons with any Worldly Power, or any Share in Government.

THIS Government of the Jesuits in America, the most monstrous, and the most tyrannical, that ever the World saw, is yet the most quiet. It owes its Security to the same Principles, to which it owes its Foundation; Two very short, and very simple Principles: First, that the Jesuits come commissioned from God, to declare His Will to the Indians; then, that the Indians are to submit in All Things, and to give up All Things, to the Jesuits: And these Two Principles are sufficient, nay, necessarily tend, to introduce and perpetuate the most complete Tyranny; a Consideration which ought to be an eternal Warning to all Nations, and all Governments, never to suffer any Man, or Body of Men, to make Religion a Stalking-Horse to Power or Property; since, thenceforward, all the Property and Power of the World will be found too little for any Man, or Body of Men, who pretend to preside and dictate in religious Matters: Witness the Pope, and Mahomet, and the Jesuits in Paraguay.

It seemed to be a pertinent and prophetic Conjecture in the Abyssinians, concerning the Churches erected amongst them by the Romish Missionaries, ‘That they were Forts, raised to master and bridle the Country.’ The Missionaries in Japan had such Confidence in the blind Bigotry of their Converts, who believed the Fathers to be all Vice-gods, and the Will and Wisdom of the Fathers to be the Will and Wisdom of God, that they thought themselves able to form a powerful Army, of these their bewitched Tools, against their natural Lord the Emperor; to make them Traitors and Rebels, out of Zeal for Jesuitism, abusefully called Christianity; and to sacrifice their Lives, to make these Reverend Pedants Masters of the Empire. For, had they conquered, they must have assumed the sovereign Sway, or committed it to some nominal Prince to sway it for them: And then Japan must have felt the Fate of America; namely, a Course of Barbarity, Massacre, and Desolation, with whatever was afflicting and dreadful to human Nature; all to spread Darkness and Delusion over the human Soul, for the Benefit of inhuman Deceivers. The Jesuit Xavier, who is sainted, and called, The Apostle of the Indies, made a Declaration, worthy, indeed, of his Order, but nothing savouring of an Apostle, that Missionaries without Musquets were never successful in making Converts. What a Romish Missionary in Japan owned to that Emperor, was enough to alarm him. The Emperor asked him, How the King of Spain came by such vast Territories in America? The Father replied, in the Simplicity of his Heart, ‘That the Catholic King sent over Missionaries to convert the Americans, and then Troops to master them.’

It cannot be forgot, how precariously Princes reigned formerly in Christendom, whilst the Pope presumed to guide and command; nay, to curse and depose Princes. Doubtless he was then the Monarch of Christendom; and those who were called Christian Monarchs, were, under that mock Name, no other than his Vassals and Tributaries. He published Laws binding to Prince and People, taxed their Subjects, levied Money upon them, armed them against their Sovereign, and often dethroned their Sovereign. Were not all these Demonstrations, that he was Sovereign over them All? His magic Monarchy was therefore not only the most impious, and most complete Tyranny, but the most formed for Continuance, as long as Imposture was swallowed and revered for Religion.

Dominion, founded thus in the Soul, is absolute, and ought to teach all Princes, and States, never to suffer those who profess to direct in Religion, to possess Power; since, where-ever these two are blended together, one of them must perish. It is easy to guess, because it has been always seen, which of the Two will prevail; and then worldly Ambition, covered and recommended by a holy Name, animated by the worst Passions, acting from the worst Motives, and pursuing the worst Ends, will monopolize, or taint and confound, All things, Conscience and Property, Law and Reason, sell and belye Heaven, engross and oppress the Earth. The Priests of Egypt, of old, supreme in the State, as well as in Religion, making the most of these mixt Characters, not only made and unmade Kings, not only deposed and slaughtered them, but ordered the King to slaughter himself, whenever they told him he was unfit to reign. Indeed, the more qualified he was for reigning, the less he answered their Purpose, and was the more proper Victim to holy Jealousy. It was therefore from sound and necessary Policy, that the Sophis, or Sovereigns of Persia, assumed the Headship of the Church, as well as of the State, and were as absolute in Religion as in Government. The Great Turk, without claiming the same Title, assumes the same Right, and exercises the same Authority, by making and unmaking the Mufti, or Chief Pontif, at Pleasure.

The De la Lami is not only Chief Pontif of the Eastern Tartars, but treated like a Deity, and stiled Everlasting Father. What may not an Impostor, so important, so adored, and thought to be Almighty and Immortal, undertake and accomplish? It is no Wonder, that the Tartar Princes are never crowned till they have his Blessing, which may be presumed to mean his Permission. They even eat his Dung as sanctified Dainties.

The Talapois, in the Kingdom of Lao, or Langia, in the East, are so formidable, even to the King, that when they commit the most outrageous Crimes, Robbery, Treason, Rapes, and Murder, he dare not punish them, nor suffer them to be punished. He fears, that, were he to chastise or restrain them, they would make his People, over whom they are Omnipotent, destroy him, or would destroy him themselves. He therefore excuses, or will not see, their most shocking Enormities. If they counterfeit the Coin, ‘The poor Men, says he, were in want, and found this ingenious Contrivance to relieve themselves: Besides, it was pious in them, thus to support their Temples and Convents; and their Accusers are to blame.’ Once, one of these Reverend Friers was, upon full and ocular Evidence, convicted, before the King, for having broke, by Night, into the Apartment of two Sisters, Women of Condition, and murdered them for their Jewels. The Fact was plain, the Evidence undeniable, yet the Murderer innocent. ‘An evil Spirit, says his Majesty, hath done the Murder, under the Form of a Talapoi, to bring Disgrace upon these holy Men.’ Thus that King reigns with their Leave, and they tyrannize without his.

This is, indeed, a very surprising Account; but it is still more surprising, that it comes from the European Missionaries, though it be probably very true. Have not European, Catholic Talapois opposed Princes, their natural Princes, rebelled against Princes, cursed their Princes, deposed their Princes, poisoned and stabbed their Princes? And do they not still claim to be independent of their natural Sovereign every-where, and subject only to their own Jurisdiction, and to the Sovereignty of the Pope?