t to be initiated in the sober mysteries
of truth and reason. My antagonists have already done as much as I could
desire. Parties in religion and politics make sufficient discoveries
concerning each other, to give a sober man a proper caution against them
all. The monarchic, and aristocratical, and popular partisans, have been
jointly laying their axes to the root of all government, and have, in
their turns, proved each other absurd and inconvenient. In vain you tell
me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the
abuse. The thing! the thing itself is the abuse! Observe, my lord, I
pray you, that grand error upon which all artificial legislative power
is founded. It was observed, that men had ungovernable passions, which
made it necessary to guard against the violence they might offer to each
other. They appointed governors over them for this reason. But a worse
and more perplexing difficulty arises, how to be defended against the
governors? _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_ In vain they change from a
single person to a few. These few have the passions of the one; and they
unite to strengthen themselves, and to secure the gratification of their
lawless passions at the expense of the general good. In vain do we fly
to the many. The case is worse; their passions are less under the
government of reason, they are augmented by the contagion, and defended
against all attacks by their multitude.

I have purposely avoided the mention of the mixed form of government,
for reasons that will be very obvious to your lordship. But my caution
can avail me but little. You will not fail to urge it against me in
favor of political society. You will not fail to show how the errors of
the several simple modes are corrected by a mixture of all of them, and
a proper balance of the several powers in such a state. I confess, my
lord, that this has been long a darling mistake of my own; and that of
all the sacrifices I have made to truth, this has been by far the
greatest. When I confess that I think this notion a mistake, I know to
whom I am speaking, for I am satisfied that reasons are like liquors,
and there are some of such a nature as none but strong heads can bear.
There are few with whom I can communicate so freely as with Pope. But
Pope cannot bear every truth. He has a timidity which hinders the full
exertion of his faculties, almost as effectually as bigotry cramps those
of the general herd of mankind. But whoev