I cannot help observing upon this occasion, that our own constitution as settled at the revolution, so nearly coincides with Lycurgus’s general plan of government (as laid down by Polybius) where the monarchy was for life, and hereditary, that it seems, at first sight, to have been formed by that very model. For our plan of government intended to fix and preserve so just a proportion of the monarchick, aristocratick, and democratick powers, by their representatives, king, lords, and commons; that any two of those powers might be able jointly to give a check to the other, but not to destroy it, as the destruction of any one power must necessarily induce a different form of government. This is the true basis of the British constitution, the duration of which must absolutely depend upon the just equilibrium preserved between these three powers. This consequently is the unerring test, by which every unbiassed and attentive considerer may judge, whether we are in an improving state, or whether, and by what degrees, we are verging towards ruin. But as I aim at reformation not satire; as I mean no invidious reflections, but only to give my sentiments with that honest freedom, to which every Briton is entitled by birthright, I shall just state from Polybius, the means by which all mixed governments have originally deviated from those first principles, which were the basis of their rise and grandeur: how by this deviation they tended towards their decline, and that those means acquiring additional force from that very decline, necessarily produced those evils, which accelerated the destruction of every free people. As the remarks of this most judicious historian, are founded upon long experience, drawn from undeniable facts, to many of which he himself was eyewitness,[362] they will not only carry greater weight, but will enable us to form a right judgment of our own situation, as it is at present circumstanced.