Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/376

324 of them in their consulships having used all endeavours and occasions for sinking the authority of the patricians, and giving way to all encroachments of the people, wherein they expected best to find their own account.

From this deduction of popular encroachments in Rome, the reader will easily judge, how much the balance was fallen upon that side. Indeed by this time the very foundation was removed, and it was a moral impossibility that the republick could subsist any longer: for the commons having usurped the offices of state, and trampled on the senate, there was no government left but a dominatio plebis. Let us therefore examine how they proceeded in this conjuncture.

I think it is a universal truth, that the people are much more dexterous at pulling down and setting up, than at preserving what is fixed; and they are not fonder of seizing more than their own, than they are of delivering it up again to the worst bidder, with their own into the bargain. For, although in their corrupt notions of divine worship, they are apt to multiply their gods; yet their earthly devotion is seldom paid to above one idol at a time of their own creation, whose oar they pull with less murmuring and much more skill, than when they share the lading, or even hold the helm.

The several provinces of the Roman empire were now governed by the great men of their state; those upon the frontiers, with powerful armies, either for conquest or defence. These governors, upon any designs of revenge or ambition, were sure to meet with a divided power at home, and therefore bent all their thoughts and applications to close in with the people,