When the rapacious and mercenary assemble in
parties, it is of no consequence under what leader they inlist, whether
Caesar or Pompey; the hopes of rapine or pay are the only motives from which
they become attached to either.
In the disorder of corrupted societies, the scene has been frequently
changed from democracy to despotism, and from the last too, in its turn, to
the first. From amidst the democracy of corrupt men, and from a scene of
lawless confusion, the tyrant ascends a throne with arms reeking in blood.
But his abuses, or his weaknesses, in the station he has gained, in their
turn awaken and give way to the spirit of mutiny and revenge. The cries of
murder and desolation, which in the ordinary course of military government
terrified the subject in his private retreat, sound through the vaults, and
pierce the grates and iron doors of the seraglio. Democracy seems to revive
in a scene of wild disorder and tumult; but both the extremes are but the
transient fits of paroxysm or languor in a distempered state.
If men be anywhere arrived at this measure of depravity, there appears no
immediate hope of redress.
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