As our own country is blessed with the greatest share of liberty, so is it more subject to civil dissensions than any other nation in Europe. Every man is a politician, and warmly attached to his respective party; and this law of Solon’s seems to take place as strongly in Britain, as ever it did in the most factious times at Athens. Freedom of thought, or the liberty of the mind, arises naturally from the very essence of our constitution; and the liberty of the press, that peculiar privilege of the British subject, gives every man a continual opportunity of laying his sentiments before the publick. Would our political writers pursue the salutary intention of Solon, as delivered to us by A. Gellius in his explication of that extraordinary law, they might contribute greatly to the establishment of that harmony and union, which can alone preserve and perpetuate the duration of our constitution. But the opposite views and interests of parties make the altercation endless; and the victory over an antagonist is generally the aim, whilst the investigation of truth only, ought ever to be the real end proposed in all controversial inquiries. The points which have lately exercised so many pens, turn upon the present expediency, or absolute insignificancy, of a _militia_; or, what principles conduce most to the power, the happiness, and the duration of a free people. The dispute has been carried on, not only with warmth, but even with virulence. The chicane of sophistry has been employed, whilst indecent personal reflections, and the unfair charge of disaffection, have been too often made use of to supply the defect of argument, and to prejudice the reader, where they despaired of confuting the writer. Historical facts have been either misrepresented, or ascribed to wrong principles; the history of ancient nations has been quoted in general terms, without marking the different periods distinguished by some memorable change in the manners or constitution of the same people, which will ever make a wide difference in the application. Anxious after truth, and unsatisfied with so many bold assertions destitute of all proof but the writer’s word, which I daily met with, I determined coolly and impartially to examine the evidence arising from ancient history, which both sides so frequently appealed to: for bare speculative reasoning is no more conclusive in political inquiries than in physical. Facts and experience alone must decide: and political facts and experience must alone be learned from history. Determined therefore to judge for myself, I carefully read over the histories of the most celebrated republicks of antiquity in their original languages, unbiased either by comments or translations; a part of history of all others the most instructive, and most interesting to an Englishman.