The Thebans, by a fatal error in politicks, had chosen Ismenias and Leontidas, who were at that time heads of two opposite parties, their supreme annual magistrates. Ismenias was a steady assertor of the liberty and just rights of the people, and laboured to preserve a due balance in the powers of the constitution. Leontidas wanted to engross the whole power into his own hands, and to govern, by a small, but select number of his own creatures. It was impossible for union and harmony to subsist between two men, who had views so diametrically opposite. Leontidas therefore, who found his party the weakest, bargained by a private convention with Phæbidas, the Spartan general, to deliver up his country to the Lacedæmonians upon condition that the government should be lodged in himself, and such as he should think proper to intrust. The agreement was made, and Leontidas conveyed Phæbidas with a strong body of troops into the citadel, at a time when the poor Thebans, wholly unapprehensive of any danger from the Spartans, with whom they had lately concluded a peace, were celebrating a publick religious festival. Leontidas, now sole governor, gave an immediate loose to his passions. He seized his colleague Ismenias, and, by the assistance of the Spartans, procured him to be tried, condemned and executed, for caballing against the state. A pretence however stale, yet constantly urged by every iniquitous administration against all who have the resolution to oppose their measures. The party of Ismenias, upon the first news of the imprisonment of their chief, fled the city, and were afterwards banished by a publick decree. A strong proof of the fatal lengths a faction will run, which is composed of those profligate wretches whose sole aim is their own private emolument! Yet such a faction, in all free states, when once luxury and corruption are introduced, is generally the most numerous, and most prevalent. Athens, not long before, had been betrayed to the Spartans in the same manner, and on the same infamous terms by a detestable faction, composed of the most abandoned of her citizens, and groaned under the same species of tyranny until she was freed by the great Thrasybulus. And, I believe, we have not yet forgot the strong apprehensions we were lately under, that a certain free state, upon the continent, was on the point of being sold to a powerful neighbour by a similar faction, and by a like iniquitous contract. We must remember too, after what manner that scheme was defeated by the glorious efforts of patriotism and publick spirit. I shall make no apology for this digression, because I thought the remark too apposite to be omitted.