France time to retrieve her affairs, and recover from that low state to which the duke of Marlborough had reduced her, and even to arrive at that power, at present so terrible to us and to all Europe? To what can we attribute the late ill conducted war with Spain, but to the ambition of party. How was the nation stunned with the noise of Spanish depredations from the press! how loudly did the same outcry resound in parliament! yet when the leaders of that powerful opposition had carried their point by their popular clamours; when they had pushed the nation into that war; when they had drove an overgrown minister from the helm, and nestled themselves in power, how quickly did they turn their backs upon the honest men of their party, who refused to concur in their measures! how soon did they convince the nation, by screening that very minister who had been so many years the object of their resentment, and by carrying on their own war (as I may term it) with the same or greater lukewarmness than what they had so lately exclaimed against in the same minister. They convinced, I say, the whole nation, that the welfare of the publick, and the protection of our trade, had not the least share in the real motives of their conduct. But as the Carthaginian history, during this period, is intimately blended with the Roman, to avoid repetition, I am obliged to defer my farther remarks upon the conduct of this people, until I speak of the difference between the civil and military polity, and manners of both those nations. [197] Arist. de Republ. lib. 2. cap. 9. lit. 4. [198] Polyb. lib. 6. p. 692. [199] Id. ibid. [200] Ibid. [201] Polyb. lib 6. p. 681. [202] Excerpt. ex Polyb. de virtutibus et vitiis, p. 1426. [203] Perses, &c. [204] Varro. [205] Excudent alii spirantia mollius æra: Credo equidem, vivos ducent de marmore vultus. Virg. Æneid. lib. 6. Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento (Hæ tibi erunt artes) pacique imponere morem Parcere subjectis, &c. Ibid. [206] Polyb. lib. 1. p. 92...3. [207] Polyb. p. 98...9. [208] Diodor. Sicul. lib. 20. p. 735...36. [209] Livy. lib. 28. p. 58...9. [210] Appian, de Bell. Punick. p. 36. [211] Polyb. lib. 1. p. 104....5. [212] Polyb. lib. 1. p. 115. [213] Ibid. lib. 1. p. 115. [214] Polyb. lib. 1. p. 115. [215] Idem. ibid. 117. [216] Polyb. Ἀγαθὸς πεττευτὴς ibid. p. 119. [217] Id. ibid. Πολιτικοὺς ἱππεῖς καὶ πεζοὺς p. 120. [218] Polyb. lib. 1. p. 119. [219] Polyb. lib. 1. p. 119. [220] Polyb. Id. ibid. p. 121. [221] Polyb. lib. 1. p. 122. [222] Τοὺς ὑπολοίπους τῶν ἐν ταῖς ἡλικίαις καθοπλίσαντες (οἷον ἐσχάτην τρέχοντες ταύτην) ἐξαπέστελλον πρὸς τὸν Βάρκαν Polyb. lib. 1. p. 122. [223] Polyb. lib. 2. p. 172. [224] Μιᾷ γνώμῃ. Polyb. lib. 3. p. 234. [225] This will be explained in another place. [226] Lib. 3. p. 236. [227] Id. ibid. p. 237. [228] Polyb. lib. 3. 243....44.