ページの画像
PDF
ePub

able imagination, which gives elegance to simplicity, and dignity to the most vulgar and obvious truths. I have heard, indeed, that your countrymen are less sensible of the beauty of your genius and style than any of their neighbours. What has so much depraved their taste?

Fen.-That which depraved the taste of the Romans after the age of Augustus; an immoderate love of wit, of paradox, of refinement. The works of their writers, like the faces of their women, must be painted and adorned with artificial embellishments, to attract their regards. And thus the natural beauty of both is lost. But it is no wonder if few of them esteem my Telemachus: as the maxims I have principally inculcated there are thought by many inconsistent with the grandeur of their monarchy, and with the splendour of a refined and opulent nation. They seem generally to be falling into opinions, that the chief end of society is to procure the pleasures of luxury; that a nice and elegant taste of voluptuous enjoyments is the perfection of merit; and that a king, who is gallant, magnificent, liberal, who builds a fine palace, who furnishes it well with good statues and pictures, who encourages the fine arts, and makes them subservient to every modish vice, who has a restless ambition, a perfidious policy, and a spirit of conquest, is better for them than a Numa or a Marcus Aurelius. Whereas, to check the excesses of luxury, those excesses, I mean, which enfeeble the spirit of a nation; to ease the people, as much as is possible, of the burden of taxes; to give them the blessings of peace and tranquillity, when they can be obtained without injury or dishonour; to make them frugal and hardy, and masculine in the temper of their bodies and minds, that they may be the fitter for war whenever it does come upon them; but, above all, to watch diligently over their morals, and discourage whatever may defile or corrupt them; is the great business of government, and ought to be in all circumstances the principal object of a wise legislature. Unquestionably that is the happiest country which has most virtue in it; and to the eye of sober reason the poorest Swiss canton is a much nobler state than the kingdom of France, if it has more liberty, better morals, a more settled tranquillity, more moderation in prosperity, and more firmness in danger.

Pla.-Your notions are just; and, if your country

rejects them, she will not long hold the rank of the first nation in Europe. Her declension is begun, her ruin approaches. For, omitting all other arguments, can a state be well served, when the raising of an opulent fortune in its service, and making a splendid use of that fortune, is a distinction more envied than any which arises from integrity in office, or public spirit in government? Can that spirit, which is the parent of national greatness, continue vigorous and diffusive where the desire of wealth, for the sake of a luxury which wealth alone can support, and an ambition aspiring, not to glory, but to profit, are the predominant passions? If it exists in a king, or a minister of state, how will either of them find, among a people so disposed, the necessary instruments to execute his great designs? or rather, what obstruction will he not find from the continual opposition of private interest to public? But if, on the contrary, a court incline to tyranny, what a facility will be given by these dispositions to that evil purpose! How will men, with minds relaxed by the enervating ease and softness of luxury, have vigour to oppose it? Will not most of them lean to servitude, as their natural state, as that in which the extravagant and insatiable cravings of their artificial wants may best be gratified at the charge of a bountiful master, or by the spoils of an enslaved and ruined people? When all sense of public virtue is thus destroyed, will not fraud, corruption, and avarice, or the opposite workings of courtfactions to bring disgrace on each other, ruin armies and fleets without the help of an enemy, and give up the independence of the nation to foreigners, after having betrayed its liberties to a king? All these mischiefs you saw attendant on that luxury, which some modern philosophers account (as I am informed) the highest good to a state. Time will show that their doctrines are pernicious to society, pernicious to government; and that yours, tempered and moderated so as to render them more practicable in the present circumstances of your country, are wise, salutary, and deserving of the general thanks of mankind. But, lest you should think, from the praise I have given you, that flattery can find a place in Elysium, allow me to lament, with the tender sorrow of a friend, that a man so superior to all other follies could give in to the reveries of a Madame Guyon, a distracted enthusiast. How strange was it to see the two great lights of France,

[merged small][ocr errors]

you and the bishop of Meaux, engaged in a controversy, whether a madwoman were a heretic or a saint !

Fen.-I confess my own weakness, and the ridiculousness of the dispute. But did not your warm imagination carry you also into some reveries about Divine love, in which you talked unintelligibly even to yourself?

Pla.-I felt something more than I was able to express. Fen.-I had my feelings, too, as fine and as lively as yours. But we should both have done better to have avoided those subjects, in which sentiment took the place of reason.

MARCUS AURELIUS PHILOSOPHUS SERVIUS TULLIUS.

Servius Tullius.-Yes, Marcus, though I own you to have been the first of mankind in virtue and goodness, though, while you governed, philosophy sat on the throne and diffused the benign influences of her administration over the whole Roman empire; yet, as a king, I might, perhaps, pretend to a merit even superior to yours.

Marcus Aurelius.-That philosophy you ascribe to me has taught me to feel my own defects, and to venerate the virtues of other men. Tell me, therefore, in what consisted the superiority of your merit as a king.

S. Tul.-It consisted in this, that I gave my people freedom. I diminished, I limited the kingly power, when it was placed in my hands. I need not tell you, that the plan of government instituted by me was adopted by the Romans, when they had driven out Tarquin, the destroyer of their liberty; and gave its form to that republic, composed of a due mixture of the regal, aristocratical, and democratical powers, the strength and wisdom of which subdued the world. Thus all the glory of that great people, who for many ages excelled the rest of mankind in the arts of war and of policy, belongs originally to me. M. Aur.-There is much truth in what you say. But would not the Romans have done better, if, after the expulsion of Tarquin, they had vested the regal power in a limited monarch, instead of placing it in two annual elective magistrates, with the title of "consuls?" This was a great deviation from your plan of government, and, I think, an unwise one. For a divided royalty is a solecism, an absurdity in politics. Nor was the regal power, committed to the administration of consuls, continued in

their hands long enough to enable them to finish any difficult war, or other act of great moment. Hence arose a necessity of prolonging their commands beyond the legal term; of shortening the interval prescribed by the laws between the elections to those offices; and of granting extraordinary commissions and powers; by all which, the republic was in the end destroyed.

S. Tul.-The revolution which ensued upon the death of Lucretia was made with so much anger, that it is no wonder the Romans abolished in their fury the name of king, and desired to weaken a power the exercise of which had been so grievous; though the doing this was attended with all the inconveniencies you have justly observed. But if anger acted too violently in reforming abuses, philosophy might have wisely corrected that error. Marcus Aurelius might have new-modelled the constitution of Rome. He might have made it a limited monarchy, leaving to the emperors all the power that was necessary to govern a wide-extended empire, and to the senate and people all the liberty that could be consistent with order and obedience to government; a liberty purged of faction, and guarded against anarchy.

M. Aur. I should have been happy indeed, if it had been in my power to do such good to my country. But the gods themselves cannot force their blessings on men who, by their vices, are become incapable to receive them. Liberty, like power, is only good for those who possess it, when it is under the constant direction of virtue. No laws can have force enough to hinder it from degenerating into faction and anarchy, where the morals of a nation are depraved; and continued habits of vice will eradicate the very love of it out of the hearts of a people. A Marcus Brutus, in my time, could not have drawn to his standard a single legion of Romans. But, further, it is certain that the spirit of liberty is absolutely incompatible with the spirit of conquest. To keep great conquered nations in subjection and obedience, great standing armies are necessary. The generals of those armies will not long remain subjects; and whoever acquires dominion by the sword, must rule by the sword. If he do not destroy liberty, liberty will destroy him.

S. Tul.-Do you, then, justify Augustus for the change he made in the Roman government?

M. Aur.-I do not; for Augustus had no lawful autho

"

ין

rity to make that change. His power was usurpation and breach of trust. But the government, which he seized with a violent hand, came to me by a lawful and established rule of succession.

S. Tul.-Can any length of establishment make despotism lawful? Is not liberty an inherent, inalienable right of mankind?

M. Aur. They have an inherent right to be governed by laws, not by arbitrary will. But forms of government may, and must, be occasionally changed, with the consent of the people. When I reigned over them, the Romans were governed by laws.

S. Tul.-Yes, because your moderation, and the precepts of that philosophy in which your youth had been tutored, inclined you to make the laws the rules of your government, and the bounds of your power. But, if you had desired to govern otherwise, had they power to restrain you?

M. Aur. They had not. The imperial authority, in my time, had no limitations.

S. Tul.-Rome, therefore, was, in reality, as much enslaved under you as under your son; and you left him the power of tyrannizing over it by hereditary right.

M. Aur.-I did; and the conclusion of that tyranny was his murder.

S. Tul.-Unhappy father! unhappy king! What a detestable thing is absolute monarchy, when even the virtues of Marcus Aurelius could not hinder it from being destructive to his family, and pernicious to his country, any longer than the period of his own life! But how happy is that kingdom, in which a limited monarch presides over a state so justly poised, that it guards itself from such evils, and has no need to take refuge in arbitrary power against the dangers of anarchy, which is almost as bad a resource, as it would be for a ship to run itself on a rock, in order to escape from the agitation of a tempest!

« 前へ次へ »