It is an undoubted truth, that our own constitution has at different times suffered very severe shocks, and been reduced more than once to the very point of ruin: but because it has hitherto providentially escaped, we are not to flatter ourselves that opportunities of recovery will always offer. To me therefore the method of proof drawn from example, seemed more striking, as well as more level to every capacity, than all speculative reasoning: for as the same causes will, by the stated laws of sublunary affairs, sooner or later invariably produce the same effects, so whenever we see the same maxims of government prevail, the same measures pursued, and the same coincidences of circumstances happen in our own country, which brought on, and attend the subversion of those states, we may plainly read our own fate in their catastrophe, unless we apply speedy and effectual remedies, before our case is past recovery. It is the best way to learn wisdom in time from the fate of others; and if examples will not instruct and make us wiser, I confess myself utterly at a loss to know what will. In my reflections, which naturally arose in the course of these researches, truth and impartiality have been my only guides. I have endeavoured to show the principal causes of that degeneracy of manners, which reduced those once brave and free people into the most abject slavery. I have marked the alarming progress which the same evils have already made, and still continue to make amongst us, with that honest freedom which is the birthright of every Englishman. My sole aim is to excite those who have the welfare of their country at heart, to unite their endeavours in opposing the fatal tendency of those evils, whilst they are within the power of remedy. With this view, and this only, I have marked out the remote as well as immediate causes of the ruin of those states, as so many beacons warning us to avoid the same rocks upon which they struck, and at last suffered shipwreck. Truth will ever be unpalatable to those who are determined not to relinquish error, but can never give offence to the honest and well-meaning amongst my countrymen. For the plain-dealing remonstrances of a friend differ as widely from the rancour of an enemy, as the friendly probe of the physician from the dagger of the assassin. REFLECTIONS ON THE RISE AND FALL OF THE ANCIENT REPUBLICKS. CHAPTER I. OF THE REPUBLICK OF SPARTA. All the free states of Greece were at first monarchical,[5] and seem to owe their liberty rather to the injudicious oppressions of their respective kings, than to any natural propensity in the people to alter their form of government. But as they had smarted so severely under an excess of power lodged in the hands of one man, they were too apt to run into the other extreme, democracy; a state of government the most subject of all others to disunion and faction.