The last-named party of Thebes corresponded precisely with the Republican party of this country. When the contention between these two parties was at fever heat, it happened that Phoebidas, a Lacedaemonian general, was sent with an army to punish the people of Olynthus, a Thracian city, for an alleged infraction of a treaty of peace formed not long before. While Phoebidas was on this expedition, Leontiades, the head of the oligarchic party at Thebes, prevailed on him to second the attempts of his party against the liberties of their country. The Spartan general yielded to the suggestion, and, while the unsuspecting Thebans were celebrating the festival of Ceres, Phoebidas marched his army into the city and took possession of their citadel. When the republicans of Thebes protested against this, the Spartans acknowledged it an act of treason in Leontiades to have thus betrayed his country, and they reprobated the conduct of Phoebidas in giving his aid to a measure which was a direct infraction of a national treaty; but being now masters of Thebes, they did not choose to abandon their acquisition. If through the influence and aid of Lord John Brewerton (the particulars of which are given in the fifth chapter of this volume) and others like him, the heads, the Leontiadeses, of the Democratic party of this country, could have betrayed our government into the hands of Great Britain, and thereby pleased every other kingly government of Europe, every Englishman would have acknowledged that somebody had played the traitor, and that it constituted not only a direct infraction of the treaty between their government and ours, but an infraction of the law of nations as well; yet, like the Spartans, they would have been unequal to the conflict between virtue and self-interest, and, like them, would have replied, Now that we have the country, we'll keep it!