Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/430

378 the kingly government, and became free states. Thus the Romans, upon the expulsion of Tarquin, found it inconvenient for them to be subject any longer to the pride, the lust, the cruelty and arbitrary will of single persons, and therefore by general consent, entirely altered the whole frame of their government. Nor do I find the proceedings of either, in this point, to have been condemned by any historian of the succeeding ages.

But a great deal has been already said by other writers upon this invidious and beaten subject; therefore I shall let it fall; though the point is commonly mistaken, especially by the lawyers; who, of all others, seem least to understand the nature of government in general; like underworkmen, who are expert enough at making a single wheel in a clock, but are utterly ignorant how to adjust the several parts, or regulate the movements.

To return therefore from this digressing: it is a church of England man's opinion, that the freedom of a nation consists in an absolute unlimited legislative power, wherein the whole body of the people are fairly represented; and in an executive duly limited; because on this side likewise, there may be dangerous degrees, and a very ill extreme. For, when two parties in a state are pretty equal in power, pretensions, merit, and virtue, (for these two last are, with relation to parties and a court, quite different things) it has been the opinion of the best writers upon government, that a prince ought not in any sort to be under the guidance or influence of either; because he declines by this means from his office of presiding over the whole, to be the head of a party; which, beside the indignity, renders him able