s had a more ferocious appearance than they have at this
day. In these early and unrefined ages, the jarring part of a certain
chaotic constitution supported their several pretensions by the sword.
Experience and policy have since taught other methods.

At nunc res agitur tenui pulmone rubetae.

But how far corruption, venality, the contempt of honor, the oblivion of
all duty to our country, and the most abandoned public prostitution, are
preferable to the more glaring and violent effects of faction, I will
not presume to determine. Sure I am that they are very great evils.

I have done with the forms of government. During the course of my
inquiry you may have observed a very material difference between my
manner of reasoning and that which is in use amongst the abettors of
artificial society. They form their plans upon what seems most eligible
to their imaginations, for the ordering of mankind. I discover the
mistakes in those plans, from the real known consequences which have
resulted from them. They have enlisted reason to fight against itself,
and employ its whole force to prove that it is an insufficient guide to
them in the conduct of their lives. But unhappily for us, in proportion
as we have deviated from the plain rule of our nature, and turned our
reason against itself, in that proportion have we increased the follies
and miseries of mankind. The more deeply we penetrate into the labyrinth
of art, the further we find ourselves from those ends for which we
entered it. This has happened in almost every species of artificial
society, and in all times. We found, or we thought we found, an
inconvenience in having every man the judge of his own cause. Therefore
judges were set up, at first, with discretionary powers. But it was soon
found a miserable slavery to have our lives and properties precarious,
and hanging upon the arbitrary determination of any one man, or set of
men. We fled to laws as a remedy for this evil. By these we persuaded
ourselves we might know with some certainty upon what ground we stood.
But lo! differences arose upon the sense and interpretation of those
laws. Thus we were brought back to our old incertitude. New laws were
made to expound the old; and new difficulties arose upon the new laws;
as words multiplied, opportunities of cavilling upon them multiplied
also. Then recourse was had to notes, comments, glosses, reports,
_responsa prudentum_, learned readings: eagle stood against ea