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. VI.

The Profession of the Missionaries Abroad; how notoriously insincere, and contradictory to their Tenets and Practices at Home.

THE above strange Boldness and Inconsistency in the Missionaries lead one into many Reflections. When I think particularly of the mighty Empire of China, that, in Numbers of Inhabitants, in good Policy, and consequently in Felicity, it surpasses all the other great Empires of the Earth, past and present; when I consider, what raised it so high, what preserved it so long, as also, what would sink and ruin it for ever; I cannot but wonder at the marvelous Assurance of these Missionaries, in trying to propagate and establish their shocking System of Absurdities and Impieties there; a System, as repugnant to the Simplicity of Christianity, as to that of rational Heathens! When the Moment their History, and Conduct, and Maxims, are known, all reasonable Chineses must abhor them; abhor their History, fraught with Acts of Fraud and Sedition; abhor their Conduct, black with Persecution and Cruelty; abhor their Maxims, levelled against all Conscience and common Sense, full of Blasphemy against the Deity, full of Contradiction to Reason and Figures; all intirely selfish, framed only to exalt themselves, by cheating, impoverishing, and depressing all others.

Can any sensible Chinese, without Resentment and Scorn, hear himself persuaded to renounce his Reason, as the first Step to Happiness; to stifle that Light which certainly comes from God, and to follow what flatly contradicts that Light; to take extravagant Traditions, and Fairy Tales, and Dreams, for the Will and Word of God; to believe Impossibilities as Divine Truths; to practise wonderful Fooleries, as Duties commanded by the God of Wisdom; to esteem the God of the Universe addicted to personal Fondnesses and Favourites; influenced, or rather governed, by a Mother and Kindred; subject to Caprice and Passions; nay, shifting his Passions, and even his Purposes and Decrees, upon every Request and Whim of his Creatures; unaccountably fond of one Sect, however little and obscure, generally Slaves and Vagabonds, and often, in spight of Him, and all his Menaces, obstinate Idolaters; yet, for their Sake, hating, or neglecting, all the rest of the World?

Can a rational Chinese think, that the Almighty and Impartial Being more readily hears a Prayer made by one Man, than the same Prayer made by another Man; that he regards Coats, or Colours, or Names, or Distinctions, or has given Power to particular Men to prevail with himself in Behalf of all the rest (just as a weak Prince does to his Mistress, or his Barber); though these particular Men can in no earthly or visible Thing shew, that they have any Power, or any Faculties, superior to those of the most ordinary Men; when the Morals of the most ordinary Men are, indeed, generally better than theirs, and when such Morals are the only Recommendation of Men in Society? For, God wants no Human Help, no more than he does Grimace and Flattery.

If the Chineses knew further, that these holy Strollers, professing at first only a Desire to be heard, only to instruct them, to pray for them, and to propose to them the meek Principles of the Gospel; contending for no Power, but that of Persuasion; for no Authority, but that of blaming Vice; for no Revenue, hardly for daily Bread, would yet assume a very different Style, when they had once gained sufficient Numbers of Bigots to follow and support them; that they would then boldly claim a public Establishment, and public Rents, amounting to a large Proportion of the Public Wealth; besides all that they could procure by cheating and frightening private Consciences; that they would haughtily assert an absolute Power in Spirituals, that is, in whatever they pleased to call so; even a Power to excommunicate the whole Empire, and the Prince himself with it; that is, to dethrone him, if he submitted not blindly to them, especially in sinking his Sovereignty, or employed it not in setting them above himself, and in persecuting, burning, and exterminating his best and most conscientious Subjects; namely, such as they could not force to give up all Conscience, at the Word of Command, nor to believe Lyes, nor to reverence marvelous Folly and Inhumanity; that they would raise popular Ferments, Tumults, Bloodshed, and Civil Wars, about Bowings, and Tables, and Legerdemain; would promote continual Strife, about mere Words, and dry Names, and internal, involuntary Motions of the Mind; nay, kill and destroy, for such scandalous Considerations; or, where they were not suffered to go so far, at least make these the Subjects of everlasting Strife and Rancour, to the constant Disturbance and Ruin of Society; that they would curse, and oppress, in Defence of the most shocking Blasphemy; maintaining, that the One only God, He who made all things, He who fills all Space, and, in Power and Greatness, is utterly Incomprehensible, might be eaten and multiplied; that they could damn, and save, human Souls, and open the Gates of Heaven and Hell, though they could not, without human Means, command the smallest Leaf from a Bush, or the smallest Candle to burn, or be extinguished; and that such poor weak Creatures, who had not Power to controul the Motions of a Fly, or award the lowest Insect to a common Death, would yet most impiously presume to influence, nay, to direct and determine, the God of infinite Wisdom and Power:

I say, if any Chinese knew all these frightful Truths, concerning the Missionaries, (and Truths they are, too glaring to be denied) would he not wonder at their Boldness, pity the unhappy Countries where such pestilent Instruments bore Sway, rejoice that his own had escaped them, and study to preserve it for ever from them? Indeed, there cannot be a surer Sign, that all monkish Pretensions whatsoever, to propagate Divine Worship and Opinions, by the Aids of Wealth and Power, by Terrors and Penalties, whether Positive or Negative, are utterly repugnant to the benevolent Christian Religion, and to the merciful Will of God, the common Father of all Men, than that they are found certainly baneful to Society, certainly tending to make People ignorant and slavish, utterly uncharitable, and therefore utterly unsociable, as well as few and poor.

There could not therefore be a surer Method of reducing the mighty Numbers of People in China, with all their mighty Wealth, Trade, and Happiness, than by establishing a monkish Hierarchy there, or any such Hierarchy as considers only Itself, and All things For itself.