ere happier than those
which lived under different forms, it is merely _ex abundanti_. For we
should be greatly mistaken, if we really thought that the majority of
the people which filled these cities enjoyed even that nominal political
freedom of which I have spoken so much already. In reality, they had no
part of it. In Athens there were usually from ten to thirty thousand
freemen; this was the utmost. But the slaves usually amounted to four
hundred thousand, and sometimes to a great many more. The freemen of
Sparta and Rome were not more numerous in proportion to those whom they
held in a slavery even more terrible than the Athenian. Therefore state
the matter fairly: the free states never formed, though they were taken
altogether, the thousandth part of the habitable globe; the freemen in
these states were never the twentieth part of the people, and the time
they subsisted is scarce anything in that immense ocean of duration in
which time and slavery are so nearly commensurate. Therefore call these
free states, or popular governments, or what you please; when we
consider the majority of their inhabitants, and regard the natural
rights of mankind, they must appear, in reality and truth, no better
than pitiful and oppressive oligarchies.

After so fair an examen, wherein nothing has been exaggerated; no fact
produced which cannot be proved, and none which has been produced in
any wise forced or strained, while thousands have, for brevity, been
omitted; after so candid a discussion in all respects; what slave so
passive, what bigot so blind, what enthusiast so headlong, what
politician so hardened, as to stand up in defence of a system calculated
for a curse to mankind? a curse under which they smart and groan to this
hour, without thoroughly knowing the nature of the disease, and wanting
understanding or courage to supply the remedy.

I need not excuse myself to your lordship, nor, I think, to any honest
man, for the zeal I have shown in this cause; for it is an honest zeal,
and in a good cause. I have defended natural religion against a
confederacy of atheists and divines. I now plead for natural society
against politicians, and for natural reason against all three. When the
world is in a fitter temper than it is at present to hear truth, or when
I shall be more indifferent about its temper, my thoughts may become
more public. In the mean time, let them repose in my own bosom, and in
the bosoms of such men as are fi