I have here given a short, but plain general analysis of government, founded upon experience drawn from historical truths, and adapted to the general capacity of my countrymen. But if any one desires to be acquainted with the philosophy of government, and to investigate the ratio and series of all these mutations, or revolutions of governments within themselves, I must (with Polybius) refer him to Plato’s republick. The plan of a good and happy government, which Plato lays down, by the mouth of Socrates, in the former part of that work, is wholly ideal, and impossible to be executed, unless mankind could be new moulded. But the various revolutions of government (described above) which he treats of in the latter part, was founded upon facts, facts which he himself had been eyewitness to in the numerous republicks of Greece and Sicily, and had fatally experienced in his own country Athens. The divine philosopher, in that part of his admirable treatise, traces all these mutations up to their first source, “the intemperance of the human passions,” and accounts for their various progress, effects and consequences, from the various combinations of the same perpetually conflicting passions. His maxims are founded solely upon the sublimest truths, his allusions beautiful and apposite, and his instructions alike applicable to publick or private life, equally capable of forming the statesman or the man. [360] Polyb. Hist. lib. 6. p. 628. [361] Id. ibid. p. 638-9. [362] Polyb. lib. 3. p. 223. [363] Δημοκρατία θηριώδης. Polyb. p. 638. [364] Πολιτειῶν ἀνακύκλωσις. Polyb. p. 637. CHAPTER IX. OF THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION.