Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/418

366 is no longer a security; and with which, a very ill one may subsist and flourish; whereof there are two pregnant instances now in Europe. The first is, the aristocracy of Venice, which, founded upon the wisest maxims, and digested by a great length of time, has, in our age, admitted so many abuses through the degeneracy of the nobles, that the period of its duration seems to approach. The other is, the united republicks of the states-general, where a vein of temperance, industry, parsimony, and a publick spirit, running through the whole body of the people, has preserved an infant commonwealth, of an untimely birth and sickly constitution, for above a hundred years, through so many dangers and difficulties, as a much more healthy one could never have struggled against, without those advantages.

Where security of person and property are preserved by laws, which none but the whole can repeal, there the great ends of government are provided for, whether the administration be in the hands of one, or of many. Where any one person, or body of men, who do not represent the whole, seize into their hands the power in the last resort, there is properly no longer a government, but what Aristotle and his followers call the abuse and corruption of one. This distinction excludes arbitrary power, in whatever numbers; which, notwithstanding all that Hobbes, Filmer, and others have said to its advantage, I look upon as a greater evil than anarchy itself, as much as a savage is in a happier state of life, than a slave at the oar.

It is reckoned ill-manners, as well as unreasonable for men to quarrel upon difference in opinion; cause