Page:Thoughts on civil liberty, on licentiousness and faction.djvu/81

, "The Admission of Change, first led to the Greatness, and then to the Ruin of the Republic."

All the particular Consequences that followed, were occasional and inevitable. The Rapacity, the Factions, the civil Wars; the enormous Profligacy of Individuals, the horrible Calamities of the State;—All these are finely pursued by ; and were no more than the natural and incidental Effects of this general Cause, "The Loss of Manners and Principles."

Hence, the Progress and Retreat of the Roman Power resembled the Flow and the Ebb of a vast Ocean; which, rowzed from its Bed by central Concussions, overwhelmed and forsook the Earth.