was-with the name of a maxim, the matter is not much mended. It is Lord Bacon who says that "nothing is so easily made as a maxim and certainly a definition is manufactured with equal facility. A political maxim is the work of induction, and cannot stand against experience, or stand on anything but experience. But this maxim, or definition, or whatever else it may be, sets fact at defiance. If you go back to antiquity, you will obtain no countenance for this hypothesis; and if you look at home you will gain less still. I have read that Sparta, and Rome, and Athens, and many others of the ancient family were republics. They were so in form undoubtedly the last approaching nearer to a perfect democracy than any other government which has yet been known in the world. Judging of them also by their fruits, they were of the highest order of republics. Sparta could scarcely be any other than a republic, when a Spartan matron could say to her son just marching to battle, "Return victorious, or return no more." It was the unconquerable spirit of liberty, nurtured by republican habits and institutions, that illustrated the Pass of Thermopylæ. slavery was not only tolerated in Sparta, but was established by one of the fundamental laws of Lycurgus, having for its object the encouragement of that very spirit. Attica was full of slaves; yet Yet |