being now forced to combat against those who were, if I may be allowed the figure, the hands with which they shackled the universe, was upon the brink of ruin; the Romans were going to be confined merely to their walls: they therefore granted this so much wished-for privilege to the allies who had not yet been wanting in fidelity; and they indulged it, by insensible degrees, to all other nations.

But now Rome was no longer that city the inhabitants of which had breathed one and the same spirit, the same love for liberty, the same hatred of tyranny; a city in which a jealousy of the power of the Senate and of the prerogatives of the great (ever accompanied with respect) was only a love of equality. The nations of Italy being made citizens of Rome, every city brought thither its genius, its particular interests, and its dependence on some mighty protector: Rome, being now rent and divided, no longer formed one entire body, and men were no longer citizens of it but in a kind of fictitious way; as there were no longer the same magistrates, the same walls, the same gods, the same temples, the same burying-places, Rome was no longer beheld with the same eyes; the citizens were no longer fired with the same love for their country, and the Roman sentiments were obliterated.

Cities and nations were now invited to Rome by the ambitious, to disconcert the suffrages, or influence them in their own favor; the public assemblies were so many conspiracies against the State, and a tumultous crowd of seditious wretches was dignified with the title of Comitia. The authority of the people and their laws-nay, that people themselves were no more than so many chimæras; and so universal was the anarchy of those times, that it was not possible to determine whether the people had made a law or not.

Authors enlarge very copiously on the divisions which proved the destruction of Rome; but their readers seldom discover those divisions to have been always necessary and inevitable. The grandeur of the republic was the only source of that calamity, and exasperated popular tumults into civil wars. Dissensions were not to be prevented; and those martial spirits which were so fierce and formidable abroad could not be habituated to any considerable moderation at home. Those who expect in a free State to see the people undaunted in war and pusillanimous in peace, are certainly desirous of impossibilities: and it may be advanced as a general rule that whenever a per

fect calm is visible, in a State that calls itself a republic, the spirit of liberty no longer subsists.

Union, in a body politic, is a very equivocal term: true union is such harmony as makes all the particular parts, as opposite as they may seem to us, concur to the general welfare of the society, in the same manner as discords in music contribute to the general melody of sound. Union may prevail in a State full of seeming commotions; or in other words, there may be a harmony from whence results prosperity, which alone is true peace; and may be considered in the same view as the various parts of this universe, which are eternally connected by the action of some and the reaction of others.

In a despotic State, indeed, which is every government where the power is immoderately exerted, a real division is perpetually kindled. The peasant, the soldier, the merchant, the magistrate, and the grandee, have no other conjunction than what arises from the ability of the one to oppress the other without resistance; and if at any time a union happens to be introduced, citizens are not then united, but dead bodies are laid in the grave contiguous to each other.

It must be acknowledged that the Roman laws were too weak to govern the republic; but experience has proved it to be an invariable fact that good laws, which raise the reputation and power of a small republic, become incommodious to it when once its grandeur is established, because it was their natural effect to make a great people but not to govern them.

The difference is very considerable between good laws and those which may be called convenient; between such laws as give a people dominion over others, and such as continue them. in the possession of power when they have once acquired it.

There is at this time a republic in the world the (Canton of Berne) of which few persons have any knowledge, and which, by plans accomplished in silence and secrecy, is daily enlarging its power. And certain it is that if it ever rises to that height of grandeur for which it seems preordained by its wisdom, it must inevitably change its laws; and the necessary innovations will not be effected by any legislator, but must spring from corruption itself.

Rome was founded for grandeur, and her laws had an admirable tendency to bestow it; for which reason, in all the variations of her government, whether monarchy, aristocracy, or popular, she constantly engaged in enterprises which required

VOL. XV. - - 21

conduct to accomplish them, and always succeeded. The experience of a day did not furnish her with more wisdom than all other nations, but she obtained it by a long succession of events. She sustained a small, a moderate, and an immense fortune with the same superiority, derived true welfare from the whole train of her prosperities, and refined every instance of calamity into beneficial instructions.

She lost her liberty because she completed her work too

soon.

USBEK AT PARIS TO IBBEN AT SMYRNA.

(From the "Persian Letters.")

THE women of Persia are finer than those of France, but those of this country are prettier. It is difficult not to love the first and not to be pleased with the latter; the one are more delicate and modest, and the others more gay and airy. What in Persia renders the blood so pure is the regular life the women observe they neither game nor sit up late, they drink no wine, and do not expose themselves to the open air. It must be allowed that the seraglio is better adapted for health than for pleasure it is a dull, uniform kind of life, where everything turns upon subjection and duty; their very pleasures are grave, and their pastimes solemn, and they seldom taste them but as so many tokens of authority and dependence. The men themselves in Persia are not so gay as the French; there is not that freedom of mind, and that appearance of content which I meet with here in persons of all estates and ranks. It is still worse in Turkey, where there are families in which, from father to son, not one of them ever laughed from the foundation of the monarchy. The gravity of the Asiatics arises from the little conversation there is among them, who never see each other but when obliged by ceremony. Friendship, that sweet engagement of the heart, which constitutes here the pleasure of life, is there almost unknown. They retire within their own house, where they constantly find the same company, insomuch that each family may be considered as living in an island detached from all others. Discoursing one time on this subject with a person of this country, he said to me:

"That which gives me most offense among all your customs is the necessity you are under of living with slaves, whose minds and inclinations always savor of the meanness of their condition. Those

sentiments of virtue which you have in you from nature are enfeebled and destroyed by these base wretches who surround you from your infancy. For, in short, divest yourself of prejudice, and what can you expect from an education received from such a wretch, who places his whole merit in being a jailer to the wives of another man, and takes a pride in the vilest employment in society? who is despicable for that very fidelity which is his only virtue, to which he is prompted by envy, jealousy, and despair; who, inflamed with a desire of revenging himself on both sexes, of which he is an outcast, submits to the tyranny of the stronger sex provided he may distress the weaker; a wretch who, deriving from his imperfection, ugliness, and deformity, the whole lustre of his condition, is valued only because he is unworthy to be so; who, in short, riveted forever to the gate where he is placed, and harder than the hinges and bolts which secure it, boasts of having spent a life of fifty years in so ignoble a station, where, commissioned by his master's jealousy, he exercises all his cruelties."

RICA AT PARIS TO IBBEN AT SMYRNA.

(From the "Persian Letters.")

WHETHER it is better to deprive women of their liberty or to permit it them, is a great question among men it appears to me that there are good reasons for and against this practice. If the Europeans urge that there is a want of generosity in rendering those persons miserable whom we love, our Asiatics answer that it is meanness in men to renounce the empire which nature has given them over women. If they are told that a great number of women, shut up, are troublesome, they reply that ten women in subjection are less troublesome than one who is refractory.

Another question among the learned is, whether the law of nature subjects the women to the men. No, said a gallant philosopher to me the other day, nature never dictated such a law. The empire we have over them is real tyranny, which they only suffer us to assume because they have more good-nature than we, and in consequence more humanity and reason. These advantages, which ought to have given them the superiority had we acted reasonably, have made them lose it because we have not the same advantages. But if it is true that the power we have over women is only tyrannical, it is less so that they have over us a natural empire - that of beauty-which nothing can resist. Our power extends not to all countries; but that of

beauty is universal. Wherefore then do we hear of this privilege? Is it because we are the strongest? But this is really injustice. We employ every kind of means to reduce their spirits. Their abilities would be equal with ours, if their education was the same. Let us examine them in those talents which education has not enfeebled, and we shall see if ours are as great. It must be acknowledged, though it is contrary to our custom, that among the most polite people the women have always had the authority over their husbands; it was established among the Egyptians in honor of Isis, and among the Babylonians in honor of Semiramis. It is said of the Romans that they commanded all nations, but obeyed their wives. I say nothing of the Sauromates, who were in perfect slavery to the sex: they were too barbarous to be brought for an example. Thou seest, my dear Ibben, that I have contracted the fashion of this country, where they are fond of defending extraordinary opinions, and reducing everything to a paradox. The prophet has determined the question, and settled the rights of each sex: the women, says he, must honor their husbands, and the men their wives; but the husbands are allowed one degree of honor more.