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The Fifth Query. - James Harrington, The Oceana and Other Works [1656]

Edition used:

The Oceana and Other Works of James Harrington, with an Account of His Life by John Toland (London: Becket and Cadell, 1771).

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The Fifth Query.

Whether Men, as they become richer or poorer, free or servile, be not of a different Genius, or become new model’d; and whether these Things happen not as the Balance changes?

The Doctor’s Answer.

SUCH sudden changes of the genius and nature of men, I leave to the pipe of Orpheus, or Ovid’s Metamorphosis.

REPLY.

A Pretty jeer; but there is one in that book metamorphosed into the bird that cannot see by day. Now, a change that happens in the revolution of one hundred and forty years, is not sudden; but so long hath the government in question been changing from aristocratical to popular. And if the acts of popular councils from that time, have still been and be to this hour more and more popular, the genius of the people is as clear as the day with the alteration of it, in those opinions you in your first letter are pleased to call the ignorance or wilfulness of these days, that since the aristocratical balance of the clergy is gone, shake the yoke of the priest. The butcher sought his knife, and had it in his mouth.