Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/383

Rh are to be cautious, and modest, and reserved. This was so well known in Greece, that an eagerness after employments in the state, was looked upon by wise men, as the worst title a man could set up: and made Plato say, That if all men were as good as they ought to be, the quarrel in a commonwealth would be, not as it is now, who should be ministers of state, but who should not be so. And Socrates is introduced by Xenophon severely chiding a friend of his for not entering into the publick service, when he was everyway qualified for it: such a backwardness there was at that time among good men to engage with a usurping people, and a set of pragmatical ambitious orators. And Diodorus tells us, that when the petalism was erected at Syracuse, in imitation of the ostracism at Athens, it was so notoriously levelled against all who had either birth or merit to recommend them, that whoever possessed either, withdrew for fear, and would have no concern in publick affairs. So that the people themselves were forced to abrogate it, for fear of bringing all things into confusion.

There is one thing more to be observed, wherein all the popular impeachments in Greece and Rome seem