That it is their Interest to doe, because being seated in a
higher degree and station then ordinary above the People,
they will bee then in the fairer way of satisfying their hereditary
Appetites of Covetousness, Pride Ambition and Luxury;
and with the greater Impunity exercise and case those passions
of the Spleen, which usually break out into all extreames
upon the People, for the maintenance of their Lerdly interest
and dignity.
Now for the evidencing of this Truth by example, the whole
world affords variety in every corner. In Greece wee finde,
that in the Island of Cous, in Rhodes, and Megara (which
were al free: States) they might have bin a free People indeed,
had they but taken care to knock off those golden Fetters,
wherein they were held bound by a titular Nobility; For the
People being prest under them, were forced once to drive
them out, but afterwards most foolishly letting them in again
into their former State and Order, they soon improved their
Return to an undermining, and an utter extinction of the
Peoples Freedom. We read too. that in the free State of the
Argives, the standing titular Nobility would never be at rest,
but always broaching one design or other, and at length that
State having occasion of war against the Lacedemoninas, did
very foolishly intrust many of those Nobles with Commands
in the Army: But what followed; the war being over, and
they by this means gotten into Arms, immediately made use
of the present oportunity to attempt the ruin of the Peoples
Liberty, and the Republick. This innate Treachery in the
same order of men was the ruin of the Syracusan Freedome
too; For, they never left pecking at the poor people, til they
were reduced to such extremity, that they were forced to put
more power into the hands of Diony sius than ever they could
get back again, which proved an occasion for his introducing
an absolute Tyranny; wherein all of the Nobility that formerly
had been his Enemies did side with him, after hee was
once seated, because they saw their own interest provided for
by his establishment in a Tyranny. In the Isle also of Corcyra
they never left, till they brought that State to the utmost hazard,