Page:A Vindication of Natural Society - Burke (1756).djvu/72

 could not exercise his Functions; a warlike People, amongst whom a General did not dare either to gain or lose a Battle; a learned Nation, in which a Philosopher could not enter on a free Enquiry. This was the City which banished Themistocles, starved Aristides, forced into Exile Miltiades, drove out Anaxagoras, and poisoned Socrates. This was a City which changed the Form of it's Government with the Moon; eternal Conspiracies, Revolutions daily, nothing fixed and established. A Republick, as an antient Philosopher has observed, is no one Species of Government, but a Magazine of every Species; here you find every Sort of it, and that in the worst Form. As there is a perpetual Change, one rising and the other falling, you have all the Violence and wicked Policy, by which a beginning Power must always acquire it's Strength, and all the Weakness by which falling States are brought to a complete Destruction.