Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/388

336 have thought, that if it were practicable to keep the several humours of the body in an exact equal balance of each with its opposite, it might be immortal, and so perhaps would a political body, if the balance of power could be always held exactly even. But, I doubt, this is as impossible in practice as the other.

It has an appearance of fatality, and that the period of a state approaches, when a concurrence of many circumstances, both within and without, unite toward its ruin; while the whole body of the people are either stupidly negligent, or else giving in with all their might to those very practices, that are working their destruction. To see whole bodies of men breaking a constitution by the very same errours, that so many have been broke before; to observe opposite parties, who can agree in nothing else, yet firmly united in such measures, as must certainly ruin their country; in short, to be encompassed with the greatest dangers from without, to be torn by many virulent factions within; then to be secure and senseless under all this, and to make it the very least of our concern; these, and some others that might be named, appear to me to be the most likely symptoms in a state of a sickness unto death.

Quod procul a nobis flectat fortuna gubernans: Et ratio potius, quam res persuadeat ipsa. Author:Titus Lucretius Carus.

There are some conjunctures, wherein the death or dissolution of government is more lamentable in its consequences, than it would be in others. And, I think, a state can never arrive to its period in a more deplorable crisis, than at a time when some prince