If the great affairs of the world were uniform and consistent, the opinions of the people would, no doubt, have been suffered to remain so too; but they being, from their very nature, subject to perpetual change and fluctuation, the political writers of those days saw that it was their business and duty to adjust themselves to accidents and events, and to the times which they strived to reform; to have recourse, like Proteus, to every art, and to assume every imaginable shape. Now it is well known, that it was no uncommon thing among their countrymen, chearfully to sacrifice their own fortunes, or the fortunes of other men, their own or other people’s mothers, wives, children, friends, or acquaintances, nay, themselves, as often as the more important affairs of the state required it: thus, when it became indispensably necessary for the preservation of liberty and the constitution, or for the immediate salvation of their country, they very gravely persuaded and prevailed on the people to impeach Scipio and Aristides, to banish Cicero, to poison Socrates, dissolve the union they had so eagerly courted with Sparta or Arpinum, to curse the very memories of all those able and upright counsellors who had advised it, to revile and insult every Lacedemonian or Samnite that had been invited to their hospitality, and at length to drive them out of their houses, and out of their cities. There are people who pretend, that the Clouds, a dramatic performance of Aristophanes, is a specimen of the art of writing of which I have been speaking. In my own opinion, however, whether considered as a mere comedy, or as a political composition, it is such a pert insipid piece of buffoonery, written so much in the true spirit of our Grub-street, that it could have no manner of chance to produce the effect it is supposed to have designed, and does not at all account for the problem, being, in every respect, much inferior to our own writings of that kind, the Nonjuror, and Beggar’s Opera. We know, in short, as little of their art of political writing as of their music; the rise, progress, and perfection of both seem to have been owing to the same causes. In arbitrary and despotic governments, fear, as Montesquieu justly remarks, is the principal engine of government; there the sophi, or the grand seignior, or the dey, is the sole legislator; the only person who has studied the art of politics, being the only person who is called upon by his country to practise it. This sort of writing being principally applied to the great purposes of provoking or of appeasing the people; of awaking them, or laying them asleep; of blinding them, or restoring them to sight at pleasure, is wholly useless in a country where it is the sovereign’s business to command; the subjects duty to act, to suffer, and to obey.