great man not only enabled them to throw off that inhuman yoke, but to make a respectable figure amongst the first powers in Europe. All the different states in Europe, founded by our Gothic ancestors, were originally free. Liberty was as truly their birthright as it is ours, and though they have been wormed out of it by fraud, or robbed of it by violence, yet their inherent right to it still subsists, though the exercise of that right is superseded, and restrained by force. Hence no despotick government can ever subsist without the support of that instrument of tyranny and oppression, a standing army. For all illegal power must ever be supported by the same means by which it was at first acquired. France was not broke into the yoke of slavery until the infamous administrations of Richelieu and Mazarin. But though loyalty and zeal for the glory of their prince seem to form the characteristick of the French nation, yet the late glorious stand against the arbitrary impositions of the crown, which will immortalize the parliament of Paris, proves that they submit to their chains with reluctance. Luxury is the real bane of publick virtue, and consequently of liberty, which gradually sinks in proportion as the manners of a people are softened and corrupted. Whenever, therefore, this essential spirit, as I may term it, of a free nation is totally dissipated, the people become a mere _caput mortuum_, a dead inert mass, incapable of resuscitation, and ready to receive the deepest impressions of slavery. Thus the publick virtue of Thrasybulus, Pelopidas, and Epaminondas, Philopœmen, Aratus, Dion, &c. restored their respective states to freedom and power, because though liberty was suppressed, yet the spirit of it still remained, and acquired new vigour from oppression. Phocion and Demosthenes failed, because corruption had extinguished publick virtue, and luxury had changed the spirit of liberty into licentiousness and servility.