If we look at the convention of Antalkidas apart from its form and warranty, and with reference to its substance, we shall find that though its first article was unequivocally disgraceful, its last was at least popular as a promise to the ear. Universal autonomy, to each city, small or great, was dear to Grecian political instinct. I have already remarked more than once that the exaggerated force of this desire was the chief cause of the short duration of Grecian freedom. Absorbing all the powers of life to the separate parts, it left no vital force or integrity to the whole; especially, it robbed both each and all of the power of self-defence against foreign assailants. Though indispensable up to a certain point and under certain modifications, yet beyond these modifications, which Grecian political instinct was far from recognizing, it produced a great preponderance of mischief. Although, therefore, this item of the convention was in its promise acceptable and popular,—and although we shall find it hereafter invoked as a protection in various individual cases of injustice,—we must inquire how it was carried into execution, before we can pronounce whether it was good or evil, the present of a friend or of an enemy. The succeeding pages will furnish an answer to this inquiry. The Lacedæmonians, as “presidents (guarantees or executors) of the peace, sent down by the king,”[23] undertook the duty of execution; and we shall see that from the beginning they meant nothing sincerely. They did not even attempt any sincere and steady compliance with the honest, though undistinguishing, political instinct of the Greek mind; much less did they seek to grant as much as was really good, and to withhold the remainder. They defined autonomy in such manner, and meted it out in such portions, as suited their own political interests and purposes. The promise made by the convention, except in so far as it enabled them to increase their own power by dismemberment or party intervention, proved altogether false and hollow. For if we look back to the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, when they sent to Athens to require general autonomy throughout Greece, we shall find that the word had then a distinct and serious import; demanding that the cities held in dependence by Athens should be left free, which freedom Sparta might have ensured for them herself at the close of the war, had she not preferred to convert it into a far harsher empire. But in 387 (the date of the peace of Antalkidas) there were no large body of subjects to be emancipated, except the allies of Sparta herself, to whom it was by no means intended to apply. So that in fact, what was promised, as well as what was realized, even by the most specious item of this disgraceful convention, was—“that cities should enjoy autonomy, not for their own comfort and in their own way, but for Lacedæmonian convenience;” a significant phrase (employed by Perikles,[24] in the debates