Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/422

370 indifferently. There may be something in the climate, naturally disposing men toward one sort of obedience; as it is manifest all over Asia, where we never read of any commonwealth, except some small ones on the western coasts, established by the Greeks. There may be a great deal in the situation of a country, and in the present genius of the people. It has been observed, that the temperate climates usually run into moderate governments, and the extremes, into despotick power. It is a remark of Hobbes, that the youth of England are corrupted in their principles of government, by reading the authors of Greece and Rome, who writ under commonwealths. But it might have been more fairly offered for the honour of liberty, that while the rest of the known world was overrun with the arbitrary government of single persons, arts and sciences took their rise, and flourished, only in those few small territories, where the people were free. And though learning may continue after liberty is lost, as it did in Rome for a while, upon the foundations laid under the commonwealth, and the particular patronage of some emperors, yet it hardly ever began under a tyranny in any nation: because slavery is of all things the greatest clog and obstacle to speculation. And indeed, arbitrary power is but the first natural step, from anarchy or the savage life; the adjusting of power and freedom being an effect and consequence of maturer thinking: and this is no where so duly regulated, as in a limited monarchy: because I believe it may pass for a maxim in state, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many. Now, in this material point, the constitution of the English government, far